Word: socialistic
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...military spending by cutting manpower in the armed forces. But the greatest show of displeasure came from a majority of the country's 28 million voters. In the first of two rounds of balloting for municipal elections, they delivered an unambiguous message: mounting disillusionment with 22 months of Socialist rule...
...French voters cast 51% of their ballots in favor of the center-right opposition, compared with only 46% for the governing Socialist-Communist alliance. It was an almost symmetrical reversal of the results that had brought Mitterrand to office in May 1981. As a result, the left stood to lose power not in 15 cities, as it had once expected, but in about 40. Conceded Jean Poperen, deputy leader of the Socialist Party: "There has been a certain setback. I don't deny...
Held ostensibly to elect mayors and councilmen in 36,400 municipalities, the election had in fact become a referendum on the Mitterrand government. Indeed, the Socialists suffered their worst losses in large cities, where campaigning had centered not on local issues or personalities but on national policy. As the results came in, Socialist cities fell like dominoes-first the Brittany port of Brest, then the champagne capital of Reims, then the major industrial center of Nantes. The most sobering and startling of all losses was in the southeastern university town of Grenoble. There Conservative Alain Carignon trounced Socialist Hubert Dubedout...
...coincidence, perhaps, that the most prominent Socialists seemed to be the least popular. Among government ministers, who often by custom hold jobs as mayors or councilmen in their own towns, eight won reelection, but five were defeated outright in the first round. Although the losers do not automatically forfeit their ministerial posts, they may be the first victims in a government reshuffle. Seven more faced embarrassing runoffs (held whenever the first round produces no clear-cut winner). Among them: Interior Minister Gaston Defferre, who has ruled Marseille as a personal fiefdom for 30 years; Finance Minister Jacques Delors...
...between two equally unpalatable options: increased austerity measures and expanded protectionism. Mitterrand may even decide to form an entirely new government, without those ministers who, like Mauroy, performed unimpressively in the elections. But a change in faces may not be enough. After less than two years, Mitterrand's Socialist experiment is in urgent need of direction...