French Candidate (1981)

French Candidate (1981)
World | FRENCH CANDIDATES, OFF AT LAST, JOSTLING FOR POSITION
FRENCH CANDIDATES, OFF AT LAST, JOSTLING FOR POSITION
See the article in its original context from March 13, 1981 , Section A , Page 2 Buy Reprints
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Emmanuel Macron’s Second Term as President of France With the reelection of Emmanuel Macron, French voters favored his promise of stability over the temptation of an extremist lurch. Cabinet: President Macron’s new government combines continuity with change , as newcomers at the foreign and education ministries join first-term veterans. Prime Minister: Élisabeth Borne, the minister of labor who previously was in charge of the environment, is the second woman to hold the post in France . A Fragmented Parliament: Big gains by opposition groups in the June legislative elections will force the president to rely on compromise in his second term more than usual. A Combative Tone: In a televised interview on Bastille Day, Mr. Macron tried to reassure the French that he remained determined to address challenges such as inflation and climate change.
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By Richard Eder, Special To the New York Times
Starting the presidential campaign here is as difficult as organizing the croquet game in ''Alice in Wonderland.'' The players assemble and wander off; so do the wickets; and the issues, flamingolike, writhe up and goggle back at the players.
It is three months since Francois Mitterrand, the Socialist, announced his candidacy and then embarked on a long disappearance, including a trip to China. Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist, has been making hungry candidate noises since September, but announced only a month ago.
President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's re-electoral intentions have hung, a permanent trial balloon, over the French political landscape for most of his seven-year term: it was not until 10 days ago that he confirmed them. Only the Communist, Georges Marchais, mistaking himself, some say, for an American candidate, came out for himself early and often and ever since.
This week, with the first, or elimination, round of the election only six weeks away, the four major candidates are finally off. In one 48-hour burst of activity, the four made successive, intensive presentations to the French public. The format - two news conferences and two television interviews -did not allow a great deal of substance to come out, but it did provide glimpses of the styles and political concerns of each of the candidates.
Jacques Chirac, whose intense smile dominates the billboards of Paris - he is the Mayor - is a decided underdog to Mr. Giscard d'Estaing for the country's conservative vote. He is at this point trying harder, though this may not be a good thing in the country of Talleyrand and his celebrated phrase, ''Above all, not too much zeal.''
Interviewed on television, Mr. Chirac displayed the ducal manner toward journalists that, to one degree or another, all the candidates use. He repeatedly informed his principal questioner when it was time to change the subject, and at one point, sensing resistance, scolded him for impoliteness.
Mr. Chirac placed himself squarely between the larger guns of Mr. Giscard d'Estaing and Mr. Mitterrand, each of whom has declared that the election of the other would bring chaos. Both were right, he said. He is staking out the farthest right position of all the candidates, calling for a return to the gold standard, cuts in business taxes and a stiffer foreign policy. Taking a swipe at Mr. Giscard d'Estaing's balanced emphasis on conversing with Moscow while cultivating warmer ties with Washington, Mr. Chirac said that the President's foreign policy consisted of ''agreeing with whomever you are talking to.''
All this has given French commentators, who tend to look to America for movies and election campaigns, the opportunity to compare him with President Reagan. Mr. Reagan came up, in various contexts, with all four candidates this week.
Francois Mitterrand, whose Socialist followers are particularly unhappy with the implications of the new conservative line of the American Administration, lifted one of Mr. Reagan's main campaign themes to attack Mr. Giscard d'Estaing. ''French voters will ask themselves: Are they better off or worse off than they were in 1974?'' he said.
The Socialist leader, who held his first Cabinet post back in 1948 and ran against Mr. Giscard d'Estaing in 1974, runs the risk of seeming worn-out to the voters. At his first major press conference he was rather bland and subdued, prompting the newspaper Le Matin, which supports him, to warn that he would have to do better in the future.
He is a graceful speaker, however, even if not alway forceful, and he got off several well-received lines. Noting Mr. Giscard d'Estaing's television appearance the previous day, in which the President departed from his glacial style of recent years and displayed considerable warmth and charm, Mr. Mitterrand said:
''Mr. Giscard is a good candidate. It is remarkable that he can be such a good candidate and such a bad President. He has a lot of heart for two months every seven years.''
Valery Giscard d'Estaing's television interview was a considerable success, at least in terms of style. He managed to project both incisiveness and humor, and to overcome the didactic and aloof manner that has marked his more recent appearances.
Even his political enemies give him credit for a superior intelligence, and the President managed to put on a display of wit and agility in the face of some not very demanding questions. Mr. Giscard d'Estaing has a decided talent for person-to-person debate - he enjoys it and it shows - and he projected it on the television screen.
Using some fair theatrical timing, he built up his audience's expectations with a number of minor disclosures: he would not run for a third term, he would support Mr. Chirac if the latter emerged after the elimination round as the leading candidate against Mr. Mitterrand. These were hardly earthshaking, but it was specific, and it was a contrast to the vague eloquence that the campaign has shown so far.
The high point, dramatically, was his announcement that the diamonds given him by the former Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire had been turned over to charity. Mr. Giscard d'Estaing had refused to discuss the matter - the subject of charges that he had improperly accepted valuable gifts - in any detail until now. His assertion that he has not kept the diamonds, that they were not of great value, and that they were the normal kind of presents given by African leaders during ceremonial visits, has not been seriously disputed, and the issue seems to have been disposed of, for all political purposes.
Georges Marchais was uncommonly nice about Mr. Reagan. The new American President had said some warlike things, he allowed, but then so had President Nixon in the early days before he took up coexistence. Mr. Nixon's foreign policy is widely admired here, except in rigidly conservative circles.
Mr. Marchais, whom the French press enjoys because it doesn't feel it needs to be respectful with him, responded with his usual exuberant belligerency at a journalists' lunch. Asked about the conflict between the Communist Party and its intellectuals, many of whom have left or been expelled, he retorted, ''We still have more intellectuals than some parties have members.'' Anyway, he added, ''any democratic party would expel members who called for the defeat of the party candidate.''
The Communist leader, who faces the possibility of a continued decline in his party's votes - which might jeopardize his own leadership position -gave most of his emphasis to the issue that is likely to hurt Mr. Giscard d'Estaing: the country's growing rate of unemployment.
Mr. Marchais said that neither bourgeois journalists nor bourgeois politicians knew a thing about the daily problems of the workers. ''Mr. Marchais,'' a reporter asked. ''How much is a ticket on the Metro?'' Mr. Marchais, who has a car and driver, hazarded: ''Two francs, 40.''
There was an immediate journalistic hue, and a general cry of: ''One franc, 70.'' ''This is getting us very far from the campaign,'' Mr. Marchais retorted. ''I am grieved.'' ''Actually,'' whispered an accountant who had invited himself along out of curiosity, ''it's one franc 75 if you buy 10 tickets, three francs if you buy one, and four francs 50 if you go first-class.''
The politicians are correcting each other's figures these days, and the journalists are trying to correct the politicians. The voters are waiting to correct them both.

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Results of the second round: the candidate with the plurality of votes in each administrative division. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing: blue ; François Mitterrand: pink

Jump up ↑ Eder, Richard (11 May 1981). "Mitterrand Beats Giscard; Socialist Victory Reverses Trend of 23 Years In France" . New York Times . p. 1 . Retrieved 5 November 2010 .

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The French presidential election of 1981 took place on 10 May 1981, giving the presidency of France to François Mitterrand , the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic . [1]
In the first round of voting on 26 April 1981, a political spectrum of ten candidates stood for election, and the leading two candidates – Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing – advanced to a second round. Mitterrand and his Socialist Party received 51.76% of the vote, while Giscard and his Union for French Democracy trailed with about 48.24%, a margin of 1,065,956 votes.
The Socialist Party's electoral program was called 110 Propositions for France . Mitterrand served as President of France for the full seven-year term (1981–1988) and won re-election in 1988 .
The most important set of circumstances that gave François Mitterrand the advantage over President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was Giscard’s incumbency itself. Usually, being an incumbent is an advantage. This was not the case, however, during the 1981 French elections. The incumbent seemed to have been cursed with many financial and political misfortunes during his presidential term; these crippling situations included internal matters that he could have controlled (and chose to ignore), and external forces that were beyond the incumbent’s control.
Internal political shortcomings seem to have been at least as responsible as the external factors in causing Giscard's electoral loss. Though a pragmatic leader, Giscard had a haughty and disparaging personality. This made him appear inaccessible not only to the French people themselves but also to other cabinet members whose support he needed to reinforce his political legitimacy.
Moreover, Giscard himself felt that others involved in the political machine were inept and ill-suited to correctly implement his important policy decisions; he therefore took over the most minute details in his policy-making, leaving Prime Minister Jacques Chirac , his ministers , and several layers of civil servants without duties, dissatisfied and ultimately without any power. Frustrated, Chirac resigned in 1976, built his own party and proceeded to lambast Giscard's policies, starting with the December 1978 Call of Cochin . The scene was set for the 1981 election when Chirac, having lost the "primary" , failed to fully support Giscard in the second round, clearing the path for Mitterrand to take power.
Besides Giscard’s almost obsessive control over policy implementation, another internal political shortcoming of the incumbent appeared to be his ineffective tactics for deciding policy strategy. To the public at least, Giscard’s policies seemed to be sporadic, hasty, and ill-timed. His reforms proved unpopular with both the left and the right. In addition, Giscard abandoned other platforms that he had campaigned on in 1974. These policies were often couched as conspicuous (if not overly ambitious) pledges that ended up never quite being undertaken.
(As an indication of Giscard's failing popularity, a poll taken in June 1980 showed that even some people on the Left (15% of Socialists and 13% of Communists) had liked and endorsed Giscard previously because of his reformist attitude. By April 1981, however, his support on the left had dropped dramatically (7% and 1% of Socialists and Communists respectively). And there was no offsetting rise in his support on the Right.
As the election wore on and Chirac joined the race, Giscard had to appeal to his rightist constituency and drop most of these radical views. As a result, his popularity fell and he was thought of as an opportunist.
Finally, Giscard had promised to be open to the opposition in Parliament, but his behaviour in office did not match the expectations he had made for himself. Because of his personality and his control over policy implementation, the executive powers had become highly centralized; control was concentrated in the hands of Giscard and his cabinet composed of a few trusted friends—namely, Michel Poniatowski, a "faithful friend and advisor".
If Giscard’s internal political handicaps had effectively "crippled" him in the initial race, the external factors that decided the 1981 election were a deadly blow. Neatly summarized in an article by Hugh Dauncey: "It was Giscard's double misfortune that his presidency should be blighted both by unprecedented economic difficulties, and by a political system which was stubbornly unreceptive to the ouverture and centralist compromise that he required for his reforms to fully succeed". The electoral and party system (political system) in France had, indeed, undergone many critical changes during the previous years. In particular the introduction of the two-round, majority vote requirement played a large role in the election of 1981. The new electoral system divided the various right and left factions within themselves during the first round, but led to right and left polarization during the second round. This forced the right and left to strategize for both the first and second parts of the election.
Thus in the first round each candidate must present him or herself as the better candidate while being careful not to remove all credibility of his/her fellow right or left candidates, as their opponents may have to run again in the next round against the opposing right or left candidate. (Much as is the case with the primaries in the USA).
In the second round, however, total unity must be achieved. This leads to the movement of both groups toward the center, with coalitions between center groups and extremists within the right and left.
The new electoral "rules of the game," was one of the most notable factors that decided the 1981 election. The division within the right between the two main rightist factions, Giscard’s Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), and Chirac’s neo-Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) proved to be the final blow to Giscard (Painton, par. 12). When Chirac lost the "primary," he refused to advise his supporters to back Giscard in the runoff, though he himself stated he would vote for Giscard. In effect, Chirac refused to endorse Giscard as the sole candidate of the centre-right.
There was also the tactical ingenuity on the part of the Left that brought about Mitterrand’s victory. As author Penniman points out, in a shrewd move, the left gained "strength through disunity." The right’s disunity between the UDF and RPR factions brought about the downfall of their major candidate. The split between the left’s Socialist and Communist Parties, however, allowed the electorate to be more comfortable voting for the Socialists while gaining the Communist Party votes, which retains roughly 20% of the electorate votes.
Union for French Democracy ( Union pour la démocratie française )
Socialist Party ( Parti socialiste )
Rally for the Republic ( Rassemblement pour la République )
French Communist Party ( Parti communiste français )
Mouvement of Political Ecology ( Mouvement d'écologie politique )
Workers' Struggle ( Lutte Ouvrière )
Radical Party of the Left ( Parti radical de gauche )
Gaullist Miscellaneous Right ( Divers droite gaulliste )
Gaullist Miscellaneous Right ( Divers droite gaulliste )
Unified Socialist Party ( Parti socialiste unifié )

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

↑ Eder, Richard (11 May 1981). "Mitterrand Beats Giscard; Socialist Victory Reverses Trend of 23 Years in France" . The New York Times . p. 1 . Retrieved 5 November 2010 .

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Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Union for French Democracy

François Mitterrand
Socialist Party (France)

The French presidential election of 1981 took place on 10 May 1981, giving the presidency of France to François Mitterrand , the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic . [1]

26 April 1981 (first round) 10 May 1981 (second round)

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1981 presidential election in France
François Mitterrand Georges Marchais Jacques Chirac Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Brice Lalonde Arlette Laguiller Huguette Bouchardeau Marie-France Garaud Michel Debré Michel Crépeau
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French Candidate (1981)

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