Word: mitterrand
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...economic expansion and social welfare would usher in a new era of grandeur for the republic. Since then, however, the party has lost much of that self-assurance, as voters have become disillusioned by the country's lagging economy and by suspicions that the government of President Francois Mitterrand has been trying to cover up its involvement in the July sabotage sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, flagship of the antinuclear Greenpeace movement. Opinion polls show that the voters are turning away from the Socialists to the conservative opposition parties. To many political observers, it now appears more than likely that...
...election campaign. Their real mission: to resolve the party's identity crisis and find ways to restore its lost respect. "Toulouse is not the congress of disillusion and defeat, as they would have us believe," insisted Gaston Defferre, one-time presidential candidate, former Interior Minister and now Mitterrand's Minister for Planning. "It is the congress of counterattack...
...Frenchmen, it has become increasingly difficult to know exactly where the Socialists stand on issues. After a vigorous campaign to abolish the ! death penalty and expand prisoners' rights, the party was forced by rising crime rates to back away from such liberalizations. Plagued by two-digit inflation in 1982, Mitterrand put pragmatism before ideology and turned from big-spending policies to belt-tightening austerity. Although it champions self-determination in Third World nations, the government has moved cautiously in meeting the demands of separatists in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. Last year Mitterrand replaced Premier Pierre Mauroy...
...challenge to that view is led by former Agriculture Minister Michel Rocard, 55, a political moderate and longtime Mitterrand rival. The Rocardiens are urging the party to shed its Marxist ideological trappings and modernize its image along Social Democratic lines. They say it must reject the Communists and court centrist and independent voters. Said Rocard: "The French people do not want another version of the (Socialist-Communist) common program, warmed over for today's taste...
...entourage later visited a museum dedicated to the father of Soviet Bolshevism, Lenin. That evening, it was Gorbachev's turn to entertain President Mitterrand and his wife Danielle at the stolid concrete Soviet embassy near the Bois de Boulogne. After his guests departed, the General Secretary held a late-night tete-a-tete with former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. The following morning Gorbachev returned to the embassy for meetings with, among others, French Communist Party Chief Georges Marchais...