Mitterrand

by Philip Short

  [I cannot] imagine for a single second that I could assume the essential responsibilities of the French nation without seeking to bring together, to reunite and reconcile . . . Yes, there is a certain model of society which I personally prefer. Not for nothing have I . . . worked for the advent of socialism in France. [But] there is no socialism without freedom. I may have my preferences but I am the President of all French people. I consider the interests of the others to be [even] more exigent than the interests of our own [supporters]. It would be easy to take preference too far. Deep down, I have no preference. What I love . . . is France and the French!57

  This speech, in which he assumed the role of father figure to the nation, came just after the wave of bomb attacks by the CSPPA in Paris. The emphasis on national unity was not unconnected to the resurgence of Middle Eastern terrorism.

  The three principal right-wing leaders, Chirac, Giscard and Barre, closed ranks behind him. But their lieutenants – ‘featherbrains and demagogues who think they can make political advantage out of the blood of others,’ Mitterrand lashed out – had no such qualms, accusing the Left of ‘indifference, irresponsibility and laxness’.

  As Election Day neared, the bad news from the Middle East reached a crescendo. On March 5, Islamic Jihad announced the ‘execution’ of Michel Seurat (who in reality had died in January).58 Three days later, four members of a French television crew were kidnapped in Lebanon. The following week photographs of Seurat’s corpse were provided to a news agency. In Paris the bells of Notre-Dame tolled a death knell and news broadcasts observed a minute of silence. On Friday, March 14, as the campaign drew to a close, the hostage-takers provided video recordings, broadcast on French television that night, of the three other surviving hostages, Marcel Carton, Marcel Fontaine and Jean-Paul Kauffmann, who spoke of their depression and despair of ever regaining freedom.

  Throughout that week French government envoys had been negotiating in Teheran in a last-ditch effort to secure their release before Election Day. But as in January, after a semblance of trying to reach an accord, the Iranians broke off the discussions, claiming once again that the opposition was ready to give better terms.59 Whether they really believed that the incoming government would be more amenable to a hostage exchange than the Socialists is unclear, but they plainly decided that they had nothing to lose by creating bad blood between Mitterrand and his right-wing opponents.60

  In the end the bomb attacks and hostage-taking had no more effect on the electorate than the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. They were a blow against France, not against a political party, and may even have helped the Left in the sense that Mitterrand was perceived as a steady hand on the tiller in a turbulent time.

  The election was contested on familiar domestic themes.

  The Socialist Party’s slogan was: ‘Help! The Right is coming back!’ It was not very uplifting, but the image of a right-wing bogeyman, about to take back all the goodies which ‘Tonton’ and the Socialists had given the poorest members of society was a good scare tactic to mobilise the Left.

  The National Front trumpeted, ‘France and the French, First!’, which resonated with those who felt their heritage was being despoiled by the technocrats in Brussels and by the detritus of the Third World demanding a share of Europe’s wealth.

  The Gaullists and the UDF, which campaigned on Chirac’s slogan, ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow’, found it harder to articulate a distinctive identity because two of their preferred topics, immigration and insecurity, had been hijacked by the far Right. Instead they tried to mobilise the middle ground.

  When the ballots were counted, on Sunday, March 16, the Socialists had done better than most in the Party had expected, winning 31 per cent of the vote – their best result ever, apart from the landslide of 1981 – giving them 217 seats, including affiliated members. The Communists did even worse than in the European elections eighteen months earlier, obtaining 9.8 per cent and 35 seats, the first time since the 1920s the Party had received less than 10 per cent of the vote. The National Front, with an almost identical score, also won 35 seats, the best showing by the extreme Right since the Poujadist high tide in 1956. The Gaullists and the UDF had 290 seats, including affiliated members, just enough to claim an absolute majority, with Chirac’s RPR, as expected, the strongest right-wing party.

  As it turned out, both sides had got what they wanted.

  The victory of the Right was sufficiently narrow – a majority of only three seats – for Mitterrand to continue as President from a position of strength. But it was enough for the mainstream parties to be able to govern without having to keep looking over their shoulder at the National Front. A few days before the vote, Mitterrand had told Henry Kissinger with a certain relish: ‘Don’t worry. The game that’s starting now will be completely new. The most unexpected things are going to happen.’ To Americans, used to a system where the powers of the President and Congress are often in opposition, the notion of ‘cohabitation’ between Left and Right was par for the course. But in the US the respective attributions and prerogatives of executive and legislative authority have been honed over centuries. For France it meant a leap into the unknown. For the first time in the country’s history, a President of the Left and a Prime Minister from the Right would have not merely to cohabit – a term Mitterrand disliked; he preferred to speak of ‘coexistence’ – but to rule in tandem.

  * * *

  fn1 The British singer and actress who, with Serge Gainsbourg, was responsible for one of the iconic love songs of the 1960s, ‘Je t’aime, moi non plus,’ whose lyrics were thought to be so suggestive that it was banned by the BBC and radio stations in Spain, Switzerland and other European countries.

  fn2 The treatment of the private radio stations offered a salutary tale of the perils of political correctness. Mauroy, with Mitterrand’s support, refused to allow them to take advertising lest they fall into the hands of big business. ‘Advertising is the enemy!’ a group of left-wing producers declared, ‘Halt the domination of money!’ The predictable, and predicted, result was the opposite to that intended: community and cultural radio stations, which the Socialists wished to encourage, were starved of funds and forced to close, while stations backing the opposition, financed by big business, prospered. In 1984 Mitterrand acknowledged his error. Similarly muddled thinking prompted a bill to prevent excessive concentration of the press, an attempt to limit the power of the right-wing press baron, Robert Hersant, who controlled Le Figaro and France Soir. The bill, which was widely condemned, on the Left as well as the Right, as inimical to press freedom, was ruled unconstitutional. It was a good lesson in the futility of trying to achieve pluralism by dictate, whether in the media or anywhere else.

  fn3 Gorbachev first used the term perestroika at a meeting with Soviet Party officials in the winter of 1984, three months before Chernenko’s death. It became official Soviet policy fifteen months later and over the next five years was repeatedly redefined to allow a larger place for the private sector, which was virtually non-existent when Gorbachev came to power, and a reduction of the role of central planning.

  fn4 The question of how much Mitterrand knew has been hotly debated in France. It has been argued that when he used the term ‘neutralisation’ he must have – or should have – known that that could be interpreted as including military action. However, the balance of the evidence points the other way. Admiral Lacoste’s accounts – both in a handwritten report to André Giraud, who became Defence Minister in 1986, and later in his memoirs – were deliberately ambiguous. The Admiral implied – but refused to confirm explicitly – that Mitterrand was not informed that the DGSE intended to blow up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. Given that his political sympathies lay with the Right, his reluctance unequivocally to exculpate Mitterrand was understandable. On the other hand, if Mitterrand had given a clear order for the Rainbow Warrior to be sunk, Lacoste would no doubt have said so. That he did not appears to confirm that Mitterrand was not privy to the plan.
Circumstantial evidence supports that conclusion. The normal procedure for the President was to receive a detailed briefing – and to be required to give explicit approval – only where loss of life was expected to result, as in the Lebanese reprisals and the extralegal killing of terrorists, which were examined case by case. For an operation like the one in New Zealand, where no loss of life was envisaged, he would not have been informed in detail. Moreover Mitterrand was chronically averse to micromanaging subordinates. Once he had laid down a policy, he preferred to give those charged with carrying it out, whether ministers or senior officials, a free hand.

  That Hernu approved the operation, and then covered up for his subordinates after it failed, is confirmed by a variety of sources. The fact that the Minister had given the green light – a decision which Lacoste would have assumed had Mitterrand’s agreement – was a further reason for him not to have discussed it in detail with the President when they met.

  fn5 Abu Nidal’s interest was both in using France as neutral territory – through the same sort of Faustian pact as Giscard had reached with the Palestinians in the 1970s – and in obtaining the release of two members of his organisation who had been imprisoned there since 1978 for the murder of a PLO representative. He had started to put out feelers to the French through the intermediary of Austrian intelligence in the summer of 1983. A year later formal contacts with the DST began on the basis that the relationship would be ‘purely professional, between “action service” and “action service”’, and would be broken off immediately if any attack occurred against a French target.

  fn6 This is not to say that Mitterrand could have prevented attacks by Abdallah’s associates had he taken a firmer stand. The Italians had sentenced two members of the FARL, arrested at about the same time, to fifteen-year terms of imprisonment without attracting reprisals. But imprisoning Abdallah’s followers was one thing, imprisoning the leader himself was another. The core group of the FARL, comprising some thirty individuals, including three of Abdallah’s brothers, was drawn from Christian clans in three villages in north Lebanon. Its resources were limited. It would have focussed its energies on its leader’s release whatever position Mitterrand had adopted.

  13

  The Florentine

  FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND WAS not a man to lay his cards on the table.

  He had decided months earlier that he would name Jacques Chirac Prime Minister if, as he anticipated, the mainstream right-wing parties obtained an overall parliamentary majority. There were three principal reasons. Chirac’s party, the RPR, was the strongest, so constitutionally he was the natural choice: from the President’s point of view, it would show that he was being above-board and transparent. Secondly, if anyone else were designated, there was a risk that, a few weeks or months later, the RPR would provoke a vote of confidence to bring the government down, at which point the President would have to name Chirac anyway, not from a position of strength but under the pressure of events. Thirdly, he sensed that Chirac, of all the right-wing leaders, was the most dangerous opponent. By letting him share power he would fatally weaken him, just as he had done earlier to the Communist Party through the Union of the Left.

  Officially, however, his mind was not yet made up. To make it appear that he had not just one but several possible choices, Mitterrand went through the motions of sounding out Giscard and the Mayor of Bordeaux, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who were also in theory candidates to head the government.

  Chaban knew the President well enough to guess his intentions. He warned Chirac: ‘In two years Mitterrand will stand again. If you are Prime Minister, you will be standing against him. You should realise the French . . . won’t like that and your chances will be diminished.’ Chirac disagreed. His principal adviser, Édouard Balladur, who had pioneered the idea of cohabitation, had convinced him that Matignon would be his springboard to the Elysée, as it had once been for his mentor, Georges Pompidou. But the analogy was strained. Pompidou had not tried to stand against de Gaulle. Chirac risked having to stand against Mitterrand. To make that gamble pay off, he would have to show public opinion that he was able to outwit the President even as they worked together. It was a tall order. But Chirac was determined to try.

  The result was that for the next two years, cohabitation would play out as a cloak and dagger drama in which, behind a façade of unity, each of the two protagonists tried constantly to stab the other in the back.

  The French loved it.

  It was new and different. It had never been attempted before. At a time when the old ideological certainties were losing their appeal, the notion that Left and Right should be compelled to work together was infinitely attractive. Two-thirds of those questioned were enthusiastic about cohabitation.

  Mitterrand skilfully assumed the posture of a father-figure, watching over the welfare of the country for the greater good of all. Within twenty-four hours of the result he announced on television: ‘You have elected a new majority . . . Numerically the majority is narrow, but it exists. It is therefore from among its ranks that I shall name the person I choose to form a government.’ It was what people wanted to hear and his popularity soared.

  On Tuesday, March 18, the President received Chirac tête-à-tête for more than two hours to discuss the guidelines they would need to follow. The constitution had been drafted by de Gaulle to be elastic, laying down that the Prime Minister ‘directs the actions of the government’, while the President ‘ensures by his arbitration the proper functioning of the powers and continuity of the State’, acts as ‘the guarantor of national independence’ and ‘negotiates and ratifies treaties’. The President was ‘the Chief of the Armed Forces’, the Prime Minister was ‘responsible for national defence’ and the government ‘has the armed forces . . . at its disposal’. Where the powers of one ended and the other began was far from clear. When all were from the same side, responsibility was shared. But now that they were from opposing camps, the rules would have to be written as they went along.

  Neither was particularly forthcoming afterwards about what had been said. Chirac agreed in principle that Mitterrand should conserve his prerogatives in the realm of Foreign Policy and Defence, but without saying what those were. Mitterrand agreed that Chirac should accompany him to European and G7 summits, but without saying what role he would play there. Chirac said that, in order to circumvent parliamentary filibusters, he intended ‘in some cases’ to legislate by ordonnances, a type of decree which enables the Cabinet to rule, in certain circumstances, by administrative fiat. Mitterrand replied cautiously that ‘in some cases’ he would accept that. Two days later Chirac returned to the charge, asking him to authorise the use of decrees for a wide range of legislation as well as the convening of an extra session of parliament if it proved necessary to enact the government’s programme. Mitterrand refused.

  They did agree, however, that the two most sensitive external ministries, Foreign Affairs and Defence, should be held by relatively non-political figures: Jean-Bernard Raimond, a career diplomat who was then Ambassador to Moscow; and André Giraud, a civil service mandarin who had served as Industry Minister under Giscard.

  That afternoon, Thursday, March 20, the Elysée announced that Chirac had been appointed Prime Minister.

  The first meeting of the new Cabinet, held exceptionally on a Saturday, would remain seared into the memories of all who were present. Mitterrand entered, followed by the Prime Minister. Without looking at any of them, without shaking hands as was customary, Mitterrand took his seat in silence. Albin Chalandon, the Justice Minister, who had been a minister under Pompidou and de Gaulle, remembered him being ‘impressive, frightening even . . . deathly pale and completely turned in on himself . . . His refusal to go round the table shaking hands was a declaration of war.’

  ‘The atmosphere was glacial,’ another minister wrote. ‘He imposed his authority so strongly that at the end of the meeting we were all like terrorised schoolboys. In a word, the intruders were us.’ Mitterrand said afterwa
rds he felt encircled by a band of men ‘60 per cent of whom hated me and 80 per cent were fighting against me’. The Cabinet meeting had been ‘atrocious’, he told Attali. But if that was the case, it was because he had deliberately made it so in order to show that this was not ‘his’ government.

  Cohabitation was a misnomer. Coexistence with Chirac was a battleground.

  It was the kind of warfare, with his back to the wall, surrounded by hostile forces, at which Mitterrand excelled. ‘He suffered,’ Patrice Pelat remembered. ‘It was hard for him to see his opponents arrive as conquerors.’ But another side of him revelled in it. It was his chance to turn the tables on them and to do so single-handed.

  The following Wednesday, after Chirac had laid out before the Cabinet the main lines of the government’s programme, Mitterrand again expressed reservations about legislation by decree. In the slightly weary tones of a paterfamilias reminding his offspring yet again not to transgress the rules, he told them: ‘It wouldn’t please me to have to refuse to sign decrees after the government has already committed itself. We should not multiply sources of conflict when there are more than enough already.’1 Two weeks later, he repeated the warning. But Chirac, encouraged by Giscard, who told him that Mitterrand would have no choice but to sign a decree which the Cabinet had approved, decided to press ahead anyway.

  Matters came to a head on July 14, a Monday, when, in a television interview after the traditional Bastille Day parade, Mitterrand announced that he would refuse to approve decrees on privatisation. ‘My duty,’ he told his questioner, ‘is to ensure France’s independence and the national interest.’ The government’s proposals, he said, would allow foreign interests to acquire stakes in key sectors of the French economy, including enterprises nationalised by de Gaulle in 1945.2 He was also uncertain that the method of valuation applied was to the country’s advantage. If the government wished to proceed, it could take the issue to parliament, which could vote a law accordingly. But without parliamentary approval he was not prepared to sign measures whose justification seemed to him doubtful.