Word: socialists
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Four proud years ago, France's Socialist Party swept into power with a swaggering self-confidence that its ambitious programs for economic expansion and social welfare would usher in a new era of grandeur for the republic. Since then, however, the party has lost much of that self-assurance, as voters have become disillusioned by the country's lagging economy and by suspicions that the government of President Francois Mitterrand has been trying to cover up its involvement in the July sabotage sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, flagship of the antinuclear Greenpeace movement. Opinion polls show that the voters...
Long before the Socialist delegates began filing into the cavernous Parc des Expositions on an island in the Garonne River, the battle lines on how best to resolve the party's problems had been drawn. On one side was a loyalist camp, known as the Mitterrandistes, whose advocates argue that the Socialists must not abandon their original constituency on the left. The loyalists are opposed to a coalition with centrist groups, even if the Socialists take a drubbing in next year's elections and want to leave the door open for a revival of the old alliance with the Communists...
...longtime Mitterrand rival. The Rocardiens are urging the party to shed its Marxist ideological trappings and modernize its image along Social Democratic lines. They say it must reject the Communists and court centrist and independent voters. Said Rocard: "The French people do not want another version of the (Socialist-Communist) common program, warmed over for today's taste...
Rocard, an economist, is a member of the Socialist Party steering committee and mayor of a Paris suburb called Conflans-Ste.-Honorine. Widely admired for his wit and personal charm, he is one of the country's most popular politicians, regularly topping the opinion polls with about a 55% approval rating on general leadership ability. Not only is he far in front of Mitterrand's 38%, but he also leads Premier Fabius, 39, and former Premier Raymond Barre, 61, the most popular conservative opposition figure, both of whom draw some 50%. Rocard, whose standing among the Socialist rank and file...
Speaking to an audience of about 25 people, Shawki, an editor of the Socialist Worker newspaper, said that since we live in a society in which violence like starvation and the nuclear arms race is part of our everyday existence, violence used to better society is needed and justified...