France: Divided They Stand

Antoine Pinay has shaved off the little mustache and discarded the round hat with upturned brim that were once his trademarks as Premier of the Fourth Republic. But his popularity with Frenchmen remains second only to that of De Gaulle himself. Last week a dele gation representing three center parties of France presented itself in Pinay’s handsome apartment overlooking the Bois de Boulogne in Paris to put a question. Would Pinay stand for President in the French elections next Dec. 5?

For months the stoutly pro-American and pro-European Pinay, still clear-eyed and vigorous at 73, had been insisting that he would run only sur demande, and then only in “the case of grave and dramatic circumstances.” The center delegates thought they had such a case in De Gaulle’s harshly anti-NATO, anti-Common Market press-conference pronouncements a fortnight ago. But Pinay last week professed to be still unconvinced. If things were all that bad, he asked, why were not Deputies resigning, workers marching in the street? He would run only if assured at least a third of the votes. The delegation withdrew, promised to report back in two weeks.

On the Beaches. Pinay’s coyness mirrored De Gaulle’s own. Le general cannily intends to withhold his own election plans until the last moment, but nobody much doubts that he will try for another seven-year term.*Nor does anyone doubt that he can succeed. Still, two candidates from the right and one from the left, plus an obscure entry from the farmers’ lobby, have leaped into the ring.

On the right is Attorney Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, 57, who last week was campaigning in, of all places, Saigon. De Gaulle’s catcalls for negotiations have so angered the South Vietnamese that General Ky last June broke off relations with France. So Tixier’s assertion that “the injustice committed by General de Gaulle as regards South Viet Nam is inadmissible” fell on ready ears. An unredeemed opponent of Algerian freedom, Tixier made his reputation defending S.A.O. terrorists whom the De Gaulle government brought to trial. Tixier spent all of August touring beaches and resorts, holding forth under a rented circus tent. By Tixier’s accounting, it was a huge success. He talked to 125,000 Frenchmen and, he said, increased his potential share of the French vote from 18% to 25%. Most observers suspect he will be lucky to poll 10%.

After the Conference. Another right-wing entry is Senator Pierre Marcilhacy, 55, a distinguished attorney who writes novels, plays jazz piano, and paints watercolors. Pro-Common Market and something of a middle-class moralist, Marcilhacy at 6 ft. 7 in. towers over the 6-ft. 4-in. De Gaulle. But that is almost his only advantage, and, as he admits, he will be fortunate to get as many as 1,000,000 of the 20 million votes expected to be cast in December.

The man on the left is Socialist François Mitterrand, 48, a brilliant, mercurial Senator whose political gifts have earned him the nickname “the Florentine,” and whose parliamentary style has won the grudging respect of the Gaullists. He scorns the Fifth Republic as “the permanent coup d’état,” and abruptly announced his candidacy an hour after De Gaulle’s press conference with the blunt gibe that the general’s “temperament is incompatible with democracy.” Mitterrand might well pick up much of Socialist Gaston Defferre’s support, unattached since Defferre withdrew. He might pick up some Communist votes as well—if the Communists do not decide to run a man of their own. The French Reds face a curious dilemma: it is almost impossible for them to find a French Communist who is as anti-American, anti-NATO and anti-Common Market as Charles de Gaulle himself.

*Almost as if his campaign had already begun, the French government television network treated viewers to Singer Gilbert Bécaud’s rendition of a new song called Tu Le Regretteras—You Will Miss Him. Him, of course, was De Gaulle. Sample stanza:

This legendary man,

Among the living.

I’ll bet a hundred francs

That you’ll be sorry for a long time

When he is gone.