Word: referendum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...question has been raised by De Gaulle's threat of apres moi le deluge-since for once there is no deluge in sight. Instead, Frenchmen have a visible alternative to De Gaulle in ex-Premier Georges Pompidou. He loyally rejects the proposition that a no vote on the referendum is a yes for himself, and last week was out campaigning vigorously for De Gaulle's program. Nonetheless, his presence on the hustings could only allay any fear of post-De Gaulle chaos and give voters a choice in deciding whether the general had perhaps cried wolf once...
...laboratory instruments, another producing furniture. Briare's real distinction, however, is invisible. In the past six national elections, the men and women of Briare have voted within a few percentage points of the entire French nation. To attempt to discover how Briare will vote in the April 27 referendum, TIME Correspondent John Blashill spent several days in the town and filed this report...
...most of Briare's 5,140 people, the referendum seems awfully remote. Hardly anyone except Mayor Henri Dabard, a brisk ex-World War I fighter pilot, talks about it in terms of regionalization or senate reform. Instead, Briare will be voting oui or non on De Gaulle, just as it has in the previous four referendums the general has staged since...
...Gaulle is a liar," he says. "He's too expensive, he has delusions of grandeur. I'm ready to kick him out. I'm going to vote no, and it will be the first time." A Briare attorney, a Gaullist, plans to vote against the referendum because he believes "it would be better for De Gaulle to leave now, while everything is relatively quiet, so there can be an orderly transition. If he dies in office, God only knows what will happen." The farmers who live near Briare seem more indifferent than the villagers. Maurice Vanjan...
...Frenchmen voted the same way they talked, the impression is that Briare will reject the referendum's proposals. I found only two people, the mayor and an insurance man, who said they would vote yes. Everyone else-workers, farmers, shopkeepers and professional men-said they would either vote no or cast a blank ballot. But Frenchmen have a way of confounding opinion seekers. Pierre Renaud, Briare's pharmacist-tobacconist, perhaps expressed it best. "The French are a funny people. They always complain a lot but usually vote oui." In France, it is the mind that does the talking...