Word: mollet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Late one afternoon last week, at the end of a long ministerial meeting in the mirrored Salon des Ambassadeurs at the Elysee Palace, grave, bespectacled Mollet rose from his place beside French President Rene Coty and walked briskly out through the glass doors to face a crowd of newsmen in the cobblestoned courtyard. Calmly, he read from a typewritten sheet: "Before the Ministers' meeting I offered to Monsieur Coty, President of the Republic, my resignation and that of my government." Reason: he could not go along with the U.S. and British decision to accept Nasser's conditions...
Ever since the British burned Joan of Arc. martyrdom by foreigners has been pure glory for a Frenchman. Hard-pressed by critics of his Algerian policy and urgently in need of tax funds to plug his cracking war economy. France's Premier Guy Mollet last week chose to risk glorious extinction, at the stake of the U.N. Security Council rather than be buried in the ignominy of domestic issues...
Ready to Stay. Before newsmen could dash to their telephones with the news that the 15-month-old government (a Fourth Republic record) was ended, Mollet explained that, at President Coty's request, he had agreed to stay in office. "Resigning today might seem, to some people, like an attempt to run away," he said. Far from running away, Mollet was sending Foreign Minister Christian Pineau to demand a showdown against Egypt in the U.N.' Security Council...
...Mollet's maneuver was timed to coincide with the National Assembly debate on the government's demand for 150 billion francs ($428 million) in new taxes. Last week, as the Assembly Finance Committee tore up Finance Minister Paul Ra-madier's tax plan (indirect levies which would fall heavily on upper-income brackets), there was a significant rise in the price of the gold Napoleon, a coin that Frenchmen traditionally buy when they become nervous about their country's currency. Suggestions that the franc be devalued* were described by Mollet as "crime and imbecility...
Premier Guy Mollet faces a showdown today in the National Assembly on his demand that Frenchmen ante up more taxes to pay the cost of fighting rebellion in Algeria...