VIEWS OF THE WEEK
The Sixth Republic?
DON COOK writes from Paris:
Until a couple of weeks ago, a certain amount of euphoric political chatter was to be heard on the Paris cocktail-and-salon circuit to the effect that if General de Gaulle could not be defeated for the Presidency, at least his majority could be cut below 50 per cent so that he would be forced into a humiliating run-off ballot for re-election.
There were even those who were excitedly predicting that if de Gaulle were forced into a run-off second ballot he would haughtily with- draw from the contest completely. It was pointed out that plenty of Frenchmen are fed up and worried at France's loss of friends at the hands of de Gaulle—his feuds and fights with his European partners, his NATO allies, and his endless and needless sniping at the United States, his 'everybody's out of step but me' foreign policy. This feeling, it was being cheerily theorised, could now be translated into votes in the Presi- dential election—if only there were candidates to vote for!
Alas, how quickly even this toy balloon of French politics has collapsed. Not only have events played into de Gaulle's hands. Once again he has shown that ruthless ability to go over to the attack at a moment of his own choosing and on grounds of his own choice. De Gaulle's sudden assault on supra-nationalism in Brussels has• to be seen not only as a major *European crisis, but also a determined move of French domestic politics. The recent chatter about cut- ting de Gaulle's majority below 50 per cent has dried up and blown away, and the General is more completely the master of the French political scene than ever.
A clash between France and the Common Market was inevitable. General de Gaulle does not like integration in Europe any more than he likes integration in NATO. Earlier this year, he com- plained bitterly to diplomatic visitors about the fact that Dr. Walter Hallstein, the head of the Common Market Commission, had gone to Washington and been received at the White House by President Johnson—'pretending that he speaks for Europe . . . this has got to stop, de Gaulle was saying contemptuously.
It was only a question of time before this broke out into the open—time and a suitable issue. In ' the end, the Common Market Commission and France's partners either misjudged or were out- manoeuvred. They apparently believed that France was so dependent on an agricultural agreement, and so intractably involved in the workings of the Common Market, that General de Gaulle would pay the price of further con- cessions on political integration in order to please his farmers. They were completely wrong. With all their well-known technical and dip- lomatic skill, the French at Brussels side-stepped or side-tracked all the ancillary issues and argu- ments about integration, and manoeuvred the breakdown on very firm technical grounds. In- stead of the French being in a corner, the Common Market itself is now in the corner.
De Gaulle is now able to say to his farmers that he tried everything to get Europe to live up to its promises to France, and he could not allow France to be tied up in argument any longer. He is able to say to the European integra- tioniStS that the Brussels exercise simply proves
the dangers of putting France's fate in the hands of the Common Market Commission. Are the voters of France going-to vote for France, in the person of General de Gaulle, or are they going to vote for Brussels, for integration, and for European partners who do not live up to their promises to France? Thii is the ground of
-General de Gaulle's political choosing.
Even while the Brussels crisis was moving to its climax, poor Gaston Defferre's presidential candidacy collapsed. An earnest and hard- working man, if not much of a speaker or per- sonality, the Socialist mayor of Marseilles had spent eighteen months of hard politicking and a great deal of his own money trying to rouse the French to the idea that democracy needed an alternative to de Gaulle. In the end, he finally threw in the towel after three days of haggling with other party leaders for a coalition. Over what did it all flounder? In part over the issue of state assistance for Catholic schools—the same old political football which used to make coalition-forming between the Socialists and the MRP such a mess in the days of the Fourth Republic. After seven years of Gaullist rule, the French were again treated to the spectacle, or the spectre, of the squabbles of the Fourth Republic all over again. The Sixth Republic has suffered its first governmental upset,' snorted Le Figaro. After that, Antoine Pinay was more elusive than ever, commenting that Defferre had started his candidacy far too early, and that General de Gaulle was going to run again and would win overwhelmingly. Talk is now turning in a vague kind of way to Maurice Faure as the man who should now come forward and keep the democratic processes turning over in France.
Meanwhile, just when de Gaulle's anti- Americanism was beginning to backfire some- what, whp should turn up to save the General but the Vice-President of the United States and four Republican members of the House of Rep- resentatives. Arriving in Paris with the two Gemini astronauts, Vice-President Humphrey was speedily accorded an unusual Sunday after- noon appointment at the Elysee Palace. He spent eighty minutes talking with de Gaulle, who has not taken back one word he ever said about the United States or its policies, has not changed his mind or his theories or his attitude, and cer- tainly has not stopped changing his dollars into gold. But Humphrey came out exuding: 'It's never difficult to understand a friend.' Afte/f that, the House Republican 'fact-finding Learn, after a week in Paris, issued a report in Washing' ton urging President Johnson to make a speciiil trip to see de Gaulle to try for an understanding. The General, in short, has won something like 3 temporary clean bill of health for all that he is doing to the Americans from the Antericatr themselves!
In the midst of all this, it was no accident or coincidence that de Gaulle announced that the Presidential elections will be held on December 5 '—with a run-off ballot two weeks later on December 19, if necessary.
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