France: The Gaullists v. Everybody

Like a well-written detective novel, France's electoral system has built-in suspense. Instead of settling the contest after one election, the French heighten the drama and enchance the element of surprise by holding a runoff election one week later among the candidates who polled 5% or more of the total vote. Last weekend, in the first round, France's 28.5 million voters cast their ballots for 2,267 candidates from seven major political groupings. This weekend the survivors enter the final round that will decide the winners of France's 487 seats in the National Assembly.

Simple Choice. Coming immediately in the wake of the revolt that rocked France, the campaigning was understandably intense and emotional. In the closing days, the party of General Charles de Gaulle, which had concentrated its attacks on the Communists, shifted some of its criticism to the centrists, who presented themselves as a moderate third force between the two power blocs, and even to the Gaullists' old allies, the Independent Republicans of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. "These are candidates of diversion, division and treason," warned Premier Georges Pompidou in his final appeals. "They are between two chairs, arid I hope they fall on their derriere."

Out on the hustings, Pompidou plugged the Gaullist theme that France must polarize or perish. Campaigning in his bleak, mountainous home region of Cantal, he explained: "The choice is simple, dear friends. It must be made between totalitarian Communism and liberty and democracy." Meanwhile, all across France, Gaullist campaign workers sought to rekindle the revulsion that the average Frenchman felt toward the June violence by showing a specially prepared 30-minute film of the rioting on the Left Bank. In city after city, some 8,000 student volunteers, who call themselves "Youth for Progress," worked frantically for De Gaulle, painting Gaullist slogans on streets and fighting with Communist youngsters for the best locations to paste up posters.

The opposition tried as best it could to counter the Gaullist tactics. "Two months ago, you would have voted anti-Gaullist, and two months from now you would vote anti-Gaullist again," declared François Mitterrand, leader of the Federation of the Democratic Socialist Left, in his final TV speech. Former Premier Pierre Mendès-France, who leads the resurgent United Socialist Party, warned in Grenoble: "A continuation of Gaullism means inevitably the continuation of protest and social agitation."

Speaking to the crowd of 600 in the courtyard of a Paris boys' school, where dilapidated urinals were plainly in view, Centrist Leader Jacques Duhamel drew cheers by asking: "Wouldn't it be better to spend money on schools rather than on the illusionary force de frappe?" In an ironical turnabout, the Communists attacked the Gaullists for their no-holds-barred attempt to win an all-out majority in the National Assembly. "Unlike the Gaullist party," chided Party Chairman Waldeck Rochet, "the Communists do not want power alone, but only to have their rightful place in a government of democratic parties."