Word: mitterrand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Paris, March 1978. A Socialist-Communist alliance wins control of France's National Assembly; crowds dance in the Place de la Concorde . . . President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing reluctantly names Socialist Party Chief François Mitterrand as France's Premier ... Communists get four of the 19 Cabinet posts, becoming the first party members to gain power in Western Europe since the 1940s . . . Transition appears smooth at first, but then...
That is the situation in the opening pages of a new novel published in France last week. Titled The 180 Days of Mitterrand, the book probes what will happen if the Socialist and Communist parties gain power in next March's parliamentary elections - which is entirely possible. The work of a so far anonymous author, Days is an instant hit: its first printing of 50,000 copies sold out in a day. The novel says the book editor of the French newsmagazine L 'Express, is "a marvelous projection of the present that always remains on the edge...
...Days' projection, reality is pretty grim. The left-wing coalition headed by François Mitterrand, France's Socialist Party leader, and Georges Marchais, boss of the Communist Party, starts out in triumph. The coalition wins a comfortable 293 places in the 490-seat Assembly. But six months later, the new government collapses...
...dozen additional cities with populations over 30,000, including Rennes, Nantes, Bourges, Le Mans and St.-Etienne. This gives the left control of 153 of France's 221 cities of that size. "It's double what we had aimed for," said jubilant Socialist Leader François Mitterrand. Almost as painful for Giscard was the election, as expected, of Gaullist Leader Jacques Chirac as mayor of Paris; the President's own candidate did not even win a seat on the capital's city council...
...worries about a new generation of "ugly Germans." In Paris, Sorbonne Political Scientist Alfred Grosser, a moderate leftist, deplored West Germany's "atmosphere of intolerance, surveillance, snooping and denunciation." A Swedish television report blasted the "socalled radicals' decree and its implications." French Socialist Leader François Mitterrand even set up a Committee for the Defense of Civic and Professional Rights in West Germany...