Two Tough Rounds for the Gaullists

THERE was never much doubt that France's legislative elections would be a sharp setback for the party that President Georges Pompidou inherited from Charles de Gaulle four years ago.

The question was how much the Gaullists' recent weakness in the public opinion polls would change the National Assembly, which they had controlled for well over a decade. As the voters went to the polls for this week's first-round balloting, there were no clear answers.

Runoff. Though nothing would be certain until next week's second-round runoff, there was a good chance that the Gaullists would hang on to a slim majority, but it was also possible that they would be forced to seek a coalition with the small centrist parties-- or even lose control of the Assembly al together to the first leftist coalition since the Popular Front of the 1930s. What ever the results, the Gaullists have al most certainly lost the license, which they had exercised for the past 15 years, to speak for all of France.

In this week's voting, no fewer than 3,140 candidates were competing for 490 seats -- an average of more than six candidates per district. The full extent of the damage to the commanding 365-seat bloc that the Gaullists and their al lies carried into the election will not be known until next week's runoff.* But the pre-election opinion polls continued to suggest that Gaullist losses to the left-wing alliance of Franc,ois Mitterrand's Socialists and Georges Marchais's Communists would be heavy. The final poll, published by France-Soir, gave the So cialist-Communist combine and other leftist parties 47 per cent of the electorate. The Gaullists trailed with 36% (as compared with their 46% popular vote in the 1968 elections); the centrist parties, led by Publisher-Politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber and Rouen Mayor Jean Lecanuet, took 14%. By one reckoning, the Gaullists were assured of at least 225 seats, but there were no guarantees that they would pick up the 246 needed for a bare majority.

Though it was a crucial election, one that could prove every bit as momentous as the 1969 referendum that top pled De Gaulle, French voters seemed oddly unmoved. As election day approached, some candidates found them selves speaking to nearly empty auditoriums and searching for hands to shake. Touring his home district in the wine country of Burgundy one day last week, Gaullist Minister Jean-Philippe Lecat, the Pompidou government's official spokesman, drew crowds of two and three voters in some of the 15 towns and villages on his itinerary.

If the voters were unexcited, it was because the party leaders were uninspiring. Socialist Mitterrand, who is engaging in person but a stiff and weary figure on a TV screen, bored French audiences by repeatedly assuring them that the united-left program--nationalization of "strategic industries," banks and insurance companies--is "neither socialism nor Communism" but something he described as "economic democracy." Although many Frenchmen agree with Servan-Schreiber's proposals for decentralizing power within France, few share his sense of urgency about spearheading "a European new deal."

The anti-Gaullists gained some ground with the argument that "France is rich, but not the French," as Servan-Schreiber put it last week. He has been pointing out that achievements of the Pompidou years--a strong 6% growth rate, a stable society--have done little to thicken the wallets of ordinary Frenchmen. The two economic proposals that stirred wide interest--an increase in the minimum monthly wage from $176 to $215 and retirement at age 60 instead of 65--were claimed by both the centrists and the united left.

Scandal. How to account for France's electoral leftward tilt? A poll taken last December indicated that 47% of those who intended to vote for the united left planned to do so merely to register their dissatisfaction with the Gaullists. Besides the unevenness of the Pompidou prosperity, voters are bothered by the taint of scandal in the upper reaches of the regime and the increasingly dirigiste character of Gaullist rule (special security police carrying submachine guns are now a routine sight on campuses and city streets). At the same time, the ranks of voters who remember the triumphs of le grand Charles are slowly passing; the age of the average Gaullist voter is over 40.

Pompidou spent last week in virtual seclusion in the Elysee Palace, nursing a stubborn case of the flu, but his surrogates were out in force. They followed the same scare strategy that De Gaulle had practically patented years ago. At a rally in Toulouse last week, Premier Pierre Messmer once again hammered at the "vast disorder and waste" that would follow a united-left victory. Reform, he warned, "cannot be achieved in disorders of the mind, disorders in institutions, in monetary crisis and an eruption of violence."

The Gaullists are pinning their hopes partly on the questionable notion that many voters who planned to vote left in the first round did so merely to frighten the Gaullists, and that they will vote for the Gaullists in the second round because they themselves are frightened of the Communists. The Gaullists can count on one built-in advantage: gerrymandered districts. These explain why the Gaullists have always been able to return sizable majorities to the Assembly without ever having won more than 50% of the popular vote.

What if the left does win a majority? Pompidou has hinted strongly that he would refuse to name a Socialist Premier. But a leftist majority would almost certainly reject his own choice, leaving Pompidou the option of dissolving the Assembly and calling new elections. History has shown, however, that the French dislike being asked to vote all over again for the same candidates and usually return their first choice with an even larger majority. If that happened, Pompidou might very well resign, opening the way for a long and possibly tumultuous presidential election campaign. It is a prospect he hopes French voters will consider soberly when they head for the polls for the second time next week.

* Under the French election law, only candidates who poll an absolute majority of the votes cast and at least 25% of the total registered vote in their district are declared winners in the first round. In districts where there is no first-round winner, a runoff is held for all candidates who polled at least 10% of the registered vote in the first election. A simple plurity takes the runoff: in case of a tie, the oldest candidate wins.

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