Word: mitterrand
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...lyrical ode to friendship and freedom, he plans to celebrate the survival and triumph of democracy in Western Europe after it was almost snuffed out during World War II. Strasbourg, however, is not without its own petty imbroglios. Reagan was initially invited to lunch by French President Francois Mitterrand, but when the European Parliament's president, Pierre Pflimlin, a longtime opponent of Mitterrand's Socialists, issued Reagan an official counterinvitation, a miffed Mitterrand withdrew...
...name, La Proportionnelle, may sound musical, but the controversial new electoral plan based on proportional representation, proposed last week by President Francois Mitterrand's government, has provoked feelings that are anything but harmonious. "Shameful," declared Jacques Chirac, the mayor of Paris and leader of the right-leaning neo-Gaullists. A volley from the left came only 13 hours after the announcement of the plan, when the highly popular Minister of Agriculture, Michel Rocard, a Socialist and longtime Mitterrand rival, resigned in protest...
...take-all system in election districts. Under the old scheme, the party that won the most votes in a district took the seat in that district; the revised rules will apportion seats according to the votes won by each party in each of France's regional units called departments. Mitterrand, whose term runs until 1988, is clearly intent on bolstering the chances of his Socialists, who are trailing in the polls, for next year's parliamentary elections. Even so, the center-right opposition may win the most seats overall. One reason: Mitterrand's economic austerity programs have eroded support...
...second round of voting in almost two-thirds of the districts. Nonetheless, the last bout of nationwide voting before the all important parliamentary elections next March was scrutinized on both left and right as a barometer of the national mood and an augury of things to come. President Francois Mitterrand's Socialists, though rebuffed, could gain some solace from the fact that their steady decline since 1982 might have leveled off. For its part, the right, though victorious, was made distinctly uneasy by the success of the renegade Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose National Front sounded a belligerent anti-immigration...
...elections depends, for the most part, on reclaiming the center. Perhaps their best hope in that effort lies with Premier Laurent Fabius. Over the course of his eight months in office, Fabius, 38, France's youngest head of government since Duc Decazes in 1819, has been working to give Mitterrand's government a snappy new image. He has, in fact, become the very embodiment of the government's passage from socialist idealism to managerial pragmatism. During his regularly televised fireside chats, he confidently predicts economic improvement with the help of four-color graphics on his French-made Bull MICRAL personal...