FRANCE: Democracy Is Patience

Of all the weapons with which the old French National Assembly battered the 24 postwar Cabinets of the preDe Gaulle Fourth Republic into helplessness and defeat, the favorite by far was the deadly instrument of interpellations (questions in debate). The technique was to pop a question at a minister, then toss in a series of motions, and demand a debate and a vote on every single one of them. As perfected in the 1952 debate that stymied the Tunisian reform program of Premier Pinay’s government, this method of ministerial massacre has been known ever since as ” Tunisification.”

Last week, when the new National Assembly met to consider its rules, the ghost of the Fourth Republic rose against the Fifth. The new Fifth’s constitution permits parliamentary votes only on formal votes of censure, on bills or on declarations made by the government. In the guise of laying down new procedural rules, Deputies sought to revive Tunisification. In the most brilliant speech of his career, Premier Michel Debre, the man most responsible for the new constitution, stood firm against this challenge. Freely admitting that as a Senator during the Fourth Republic, he had himself been “a master of the art” of Tunisification, he added: “Yet I was wrong.” He boldly pitched his argument to the widespread French anxiety, rarely expressed publicly, about what happens after President de Gaulle leaves the scene. “To guarantee the future of democracy in France,” at a time when Parliament itself is discredited in the public mind, Parliament must not assert its “harassing” power against the government. Added Debre: “My words are not dictated by a taste for theory but by the memory of the distortion of parliamentary methods that since 1872 has made the state its first victim. Democracy is a matter of great patience. It may be amusing to revise a government every six months, but true democracy lies in governmental stability between national elections. Those who criticize me most will recognize later how much they are obligated to us.”

His speech won the standing applause of a majority of the Assembly. Later, to newsmen, Premier Debre explained his position in more earthy language: “Whatever people may say or think, there is a parliamentary regime in France. The constitution provides a number of ways a government may be turned out of office, notably through a motion of censure, as in Great Britain. But the procedure of oral questions followed by a vote is the same as syphilis—first it weakens, then it kills.”