Word: poher
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...still had some surprises to offer. According to form, ex-Premier Georges Pompidou ran well ahead of the other six candidates. As expected, he failed to attain a majority of the votes cast, necessitating a run-off election on June 15. His opponent then will be Interim President Alain Poher, and that, too, had been anticipated. What was unexpected was Poher's failure to get more than a quarter of the votes cast. It was a sharp drop in his earlier support, and it appeared largely due to the strong, late showing of Communist Jacques Duclos, an ebullient campaigner...
...Poher, by contrast, strove to explain "why an unknown such as myself had the audacity to enter the presidential race" and read on television one of the fan letters he had received urging him to run ("You have brought us reason to be courageous and hopeful"). Poher offered a platform that was the antithesis of Gaullism. He promised to do away with "prestige projects" and suggested that France could not afford De Gaulle's vaunted force de frappe. He also pledged a "profound change" in foreign policy, and to work for a united Europe for the "future...
...other main candidates-Socialist Gaston Defferre and Communist Jacques Duclos-are running for third place, primarily to establish their respective claims to speak for French workers. The real question is which of the front runners would inherit those votes in a runoff election, if all but Pompidou and Poher were eliminated (a runoff must be held if no candidate gets a majority in the first round...
Last week the latest poll on the voting in the first round on June 1 gave Pompidou 41% of the vote and Poher 30%, a seven-point slippage for Poher. What the survey could not reflect was whether or not the voters of the left, who make up the balance of the electorate, will line up solidly against Pompidou in the runoff election that will probably be needed on June 15-and put Poher over...
...Poher has already worked out his strategy for that final phase of the campaign. He intends to emerge from the Elysée Palace with an aggressive attack on the Gaullist record that Pompidou inescapably shares. As Poher's strategists see it, all they need now to ensure certain victory is a word of endorsement from De Gaulle-for Pompidou...