A warning to the Left
Sam White
Paris y ast Sunday's vote in the cantonal elec-
tions was not so much a defeat for the Socialists as a re-affirmation by the anti- Socialists that despite recent appearances they still constitute a majority in the coun- try. It is a fact which no observer and cer- tainly no politician should ever have lost sight of and explains why, despite the vast range of powers the Left in France now holds, its hold on power as such remains essentially fragile. Even its triumphs last May and June showed that clearly, for they were only made possible by an outraged sense of betrayal on the right and the ex- treme right at the hands of the previous regime. Large sections of them punished Giscard by voting for Mitterrand or abs- taining after their favourite candidate Chirac was eliminated. It did not require any large degree of disenchantment — or in many cases any disenchantment at all — for them to revert at the earliest opportunity to their original loyalties.
The warning that this was beginning to happen was sounded two months ago in four by-elections in widely differing consti- tuencies, three of which the Socialists had won last year and all of which they now lost in decisive fashion. Now comes the set-back of the cantonal elections in which the overall left vote, composed of Socialists, Communists and left-wing radicals, has dropped to 47.5 per cent, leaving the Gaullists and Giscardiens with a clear ma- jority in the country. This result cannot be ascribed to the normal swing of the pen- dulum against a government in mid-term, for the Socialists have only been in office for a mere ten months and are still in the process not of betraying promises but of ac- tually carrying them out. By the time the bills for these start coming in, especially in the form of higher taxes, the Government will be facing its next test — the much more important municipal elections in a year's time.
There was a time when cantonal elections were lowly affairs involving local worthies and local loyalties. This is no longer so. The last ones in 1976, won by the Left, marked the first step in its gradual conquest of power. Are we now witnessing the beginn- ings of the same process in reverse? These elections now concern not only local bigwigs but national figures. It is therefore notable that almost all the leaders of the op- position, including incidentally Giscard himself, were elected with enormous ma- jorities — despite recent boundary changes calculated in many cases to make the elec- tion of some of them difficult. Almost all prominent government supporters, in- cluding some ministers, are either already defeated or face the risk of defeat in next Sunday's second round. What were hither- to considered minor elections of little na- tional significance have now taken on something of the character of a referen- dum. Politicians acknowledge it and so does the electorate, witness last Sunday's record turn-out of 72 per cent.
In those circumstances the Government finds itself in much the same position as de Gaulle did in the Sixties when he was carry- ing out his own radical transformation of France and felt that he needed at every stage the support of the majority of the na- tion. It is to say the least doubtful if the Socialists can carry out their own projects involving a change of society against the op- position of half or more of the nation. The results of the cantonal elections are in this respect a first warning. The immediate pro- blem, however, is not there: it lies in the alliance with the Communists. The Socialists did well last Sunday, holding on to 30 per cent of the vote. It was the Com- munists who fared badly, confirming their decline for the third time in ten months
(first in the presidential and then in the parliamentary elections) and falling from 22 per cent of the vote in the cantonal elections of five years ago to only 16 per cent now. On paper this decline should delight President Mitterrand whose great objective it was to achieve just that. Unfortunately it has profited the Socialists only slightly and has had the overall effect of bringing the total left vote to below the level needed to win either a presidential or a parliamentary election. This of course defeats the chief purpose of the Socialist-Communist alliance which was not only to reduce the Communist vote but to swallow it, if not at one gulp then morsel by morsel. Not only is that not happening but, even more annoy- ingly, the Communist members of the Government are drawing from defeat all the advantages of victory.
Their electoral humiliations have been compensated for by ministerial office. Their trade union power has waxed as their parliamentary representation has declined. Their infiltration into the administration at every level has blossomed to a degree that has not been seen since the early Liberation years. Above all, their participation In government is compounded of such hypocrisy in foreign policy as seriously to compromise Mitterrand's credibility. As Raymond Aron points out, how can you have in the same government people who have diametrically opposed views on the Soviet Union's world role? The Communist ministers in the government may proclaim their loyalty to the President but the fact re- mains that they have a higher loyalty to the party which delegated them to their posts. It is a fact, incidentally, that the four Com- munist ministers were chosen not by the Prime Minister, Mauroy, but by the Com- munist leadership, just as the Communist journalists now chosen for French televi- sion have been picked not by the heads of the television news services but by the head of the Communist Party's propaganda sec- tion. In short, the balance of advantages and disadvantages in having Communist ministers is beginning to shift towards the latter. Yet one thing is certain: whatever the shifts and twists of government policy the Communists will never resign but.will stick to office like leeches.
The painful decision will have to be made by President Mitterrand himself. And the number of painful decisions that he will be called upon to make is steadily growing. He made one just the other day by asking for cuts in the growing budget deficit, the very deficit which was to have played so large a part in helping France to spend its way out of the depression. Another concerns the positively alarming increase in the balance of payments deficit. A third is the continu- ing decline of the franc in relation to the mark, which has brought about a further drain on French reserves in efforts to reduce the gap. Then there are the irate farmers and the European summit on agricultural prices. France is entering a period of austerity, with falling living stan- dards and likely devaluation in the summer.
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