Word: mitterrand
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Most significantly, the Communists won only 16.2%?just a slight improvement over Marchais's dismal 15.34% in the April 26 presidential voting. Thus Mitterrand, while espousing the unity of the left, finally succeeded where his center-right predecessors had failed, reducing the Communists to a marginal role in French society. On the morning after, Marchais found himself in no position to impose any demands on the Socialist President...
That fact?and the country's deliverance from the threat of a paralyzing constitutional deadlock?eased tensions not only in France but in Western capitals. "Now no one will be able to say Mitterrand is a prisoner of the Communists," said French Political Scientist Pierre Hassner. Nothing underscored the sense of relief as graphically as the reaction of the Paris stock exchange: within days of the first-round voting, values on the Bourse gained back 7% of the 30% lost after Mitterrand's election. The ailing franc, too, was showing signs of stabilizing...
Reflecting a major West German concern, Bonn's General-Anzeiger headlined: COMMUNIST PARTICIPATION UNNECESSARY. Reagan Administration officials privately expressed similar satisfaction. Said one U.S. official: "Mitterrand with a mandate has to be easier to deal with than a Mitterrand constantly forced to protect his left flank...
Defining how Mitterrand won his mandate, and what it really means, was not entirely clear even to the French, who delight in precise analysis. The most likely explanation was that the French, alarmed by rising inflation and unemployment, and tired of Gisçard's imperial style, had simply voted for change and thus wound up with François Mitterrand in the Elysée. At that point, according to this view, the logical French gave the new President a clear-cut Socialist majority in order to avoid a constitutional deadlock or a messy coalition with the Communists. "Having opted for change...
...plausible enough explanation: that a solid majority of men and women went to the polls four times in two months and chose a Socialist President and parliament because that was what they really wanted. "The people did not vote socialist because they are enthusiastic about nationalizations or Mitterrand's economic program," insists Lancelot. "They voted for Mitterrand because they were fed up with people who acted as if they owned the government...