Word: mitterrand
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Nothing seemed to go right for French President François Mitterrand last week. His Premier, Pierre Mauroy, was chased out of the annual Paris Agriculture Show by the boos of 1,000 hecklers who tossed beer cans at him and shouted, "Resign! Resign!" Army Chief of Staff General Jean Delaunay quit to protest plans to curb military spending by cutting manpower in the armed forces. But the greatest show of displeasure came from a majority of the country's 28 million voters. In the first of two rounds of balloting for municipal elections, they delivered an unambiguous message...
...French voters cast 51% of their ballots in favor of the center-right opposition, compared with only 46% for the governing Socialist-Communist alliance. It was an almost symmetrical reversal of the results that had brought Mitterrand to office in May 1981. As a result, the left stood to lose power not in 15 cities, as it had once expected, but in about 40. Conceded Jean Poperen, deputy leader of the Socialist Party: "There has been a certain setback. I don't deny...
Held ostensibly to elect mayors and councilmen in 36,400 municipalities, the election had in fact become a referendum on the Mitterrand government. Indeed, the Socialists suffered their worst losses in large cities, where campaigning had centered not on local issues or personalities but on national policy. As the results came in, Socialist cities fell like dominoes-first the Brittany port of Brest, then the champagne capital of Reims, then the major industrial center of Nantes. The most sobering and startling of all losses was in the southeastern university town of Grenoble. There Conservative Alain Carignon trounced Socialist Hubert Dubedout...
...Socialists' difficulties reflected pervasive French anxiety about the economy. Unemployment is 8.9%, compared with 7.2% when Mitterrand was elected President. Inflation, which runs at 3.7% in West Germany and 4.9% in Britain, remains a stubborn 9.7% in France. And the foreign trade deficit, which reached $1.4 billion in January alone, may surpass last year's record $14 billion. As a result, the franc, which has already been devalued twice under Mitterrand, seems almost certain to be devalued again, even though the Bank of France has been spending some $150 million a week to shore up the currency. Meanwhile...
...hinted that the government should respond to a serious setback in the municipal elections by dissolving parliament and seeking a new national mandate. But the former President did not do that when his coalition was trounced in the 1977 municipal elections, and there is every reason to believe that Mitterrand will respect that precedent no matter how poorly the left does next month...