Word: mitterrand
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Throughout the closing weeks of the campaign, Giscard had prophesied darkly that since Mitterrand was backed by the Communists, his presidency would bring chaos-and Communists-into government. Giscard was using scare tactics that had worked for the center-right ever since the time of De Gaulle. The presence of a strong Communist Party, representing around 20% of the electorate, had always blocked the left from coming to power under the Fifth Republic. This time, though, Frenchmen no longer seemed as alarmed as in the past by a Communist Party that had polled a humiliatingly low 15.3% in the first...
Communist Party Chief Georges Marchais, though visibly shaken by his first-round setback, was hardly resigned to a marginal role under a Mitterrand presidency, however. Indeed, Marchais was quick to show that ill urging his disciplined followers to vote for Mitterrand in last week's runoff, he was making less than a genuine fraternal gesture of leftist solidarity. "This is not a blank check," he said and then asked, "Have you ever seen me support anyone for free?" There is little doubt that the wily proletarian leader will soon be knocking at the portals of Elysée Palace...
...many observers, Mitterrand's own formula for economic reform seems sweeping enough. Blaming Giscard's free-enterprise approach for France's record unemployment of 1.7 million (7.2%), Mitterrand campaigned doggedly on the promise of "another policy." Among other things, it calls for: 1) nationalization of the country's remaining private banks and eleven major industrial enterprises; 2) creation of 1,560,000 jobs, mostly through increased public hiring and a reduction of the work week to 35 hours; and 3) an immediate 25% raise in the minimum wage, to $3.60 an hour. Many French economists view...
...small southwestern town of Jarnac, in the Cognac region. His active political career began with World War II. Shot in the chest and captured near Verdun, he escaped from a German prison camp and joined the Resistance as an organizer of former P.O.W.s. Shortly after the war, Mitterrand was elected to the National Assembly as a candidate for the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, a small but pivotal center party that won a surprising number of Cabinet posts under the Fourth Republic. Over a 13-year period, Mitterrand held eight Cabinet posts-and earned a reputation...
...years on the hustings, Mitterrand's personal passion is not politics but literature. The new President spends hours reading or writing (he has authored ten books on politics) in the library of the town house in Paris' Left Bank where he lives with his wife of 36 years, Danielle. They have two grown sons. In place of Giscard's technocratic competence, Mitterrand offers a romantic if hazy vision of a more humane and just French society. "I don't calculate," says Mitterrand, "I feel...