Prospects for the legislative elections
FRANCE cialist Party president wanted new parliamentary elections. Mitterrand sought to avoid dissolving the assembly by getting enough UDF deputies to support his govemment. These maneuvers failed. The SP then tried to get bourgeois politicians to run on its "presidential majority slate." Again it failed. There are just 40 non-SPers on the slate, 17 from the bour-
A SURVEY of voters in the May 8 presidential elections showed that 74% of workers voted for Mitterrand, 69% of young people between the ages of 25 and 34, and 57% of youth between the ages of 18 and 24, as well as 52% of women (Libération, May 10). The fact that a majority of women voted for the left candidate represents a culmination of important changes in France.
The social categories in which the poll indicated that Chirac got the majority were farmers (64%), employers (65%), retirees (53%) and people over the age of 65 (54%), as well as shopkeepers (73%).
GERRY FOLEY
HE RESULTS also indicated that
T
Mitterrand's strategy of aiming for the liberal bourgeois vote had failed. Only 13% of those who voted for Raymond Barre of the UDF, the supposedly more liberal bourgeois party, voted for Mitterrand. In fact, the crossovers from the National Front (NF) were significantly higher (22%).
It seems, therefore, that the Socialist Party president got the bulk of the working- class vote captured by the NF. "If not all
Mitterrand's voters are on the left, the profile of his electorate is a classically left one," Libération commented in its May 10 issue. In any case, it seems that even the limited promises of economic benefits for the working class and poor offered by the Socialists counted for a lot more electorally than their displays of "moderation" and overtures to bourgeois politicians.
Polarization seems likely to increase in the
June 5-12 legislative elections, according to the polls taken before the opening of the official campaign. A survey on May 14 indicated a first-round vote of 42% for the Socialist Party, about 8% higher than
François Mitterrand's first-round vote in the presidential elections and 5% higher than a poll taken on May 8.
Even on the day of the second round, the lines already drawn were more clearly than Mitterrand apparently wanted. The poll indicated that 58% of all voters and 65% of those who voted for the Sogeois Left Radicals and 23 independent "progressives," including the Marseilles millionaire Bernard Tapie. After a Socialist victory, however, bourgeois politicians may demonstrate more interest in the SP's offers, when such alliances would hold the SP back rather than help a majority SP govemment into office.
### Maneuver to create left/centre coalition
A poll done on May 14 gave the left 49.5%, as against 47.5% for the right. It also pointed to a continuing polarization of the left vote in the legislative elections, a drop in the far-left vote vote from 4.5% in the first round of the presidential elections to 1% and a further decline in the Communist Party vote. The two mainstream bourgeois parties have increased the pressure for polarization by deciding to run a joint slate under the title of the URC [Union and Rally of the Center].
The legislative elections present high hurdles for the far-left groups. It is necessary to have a slate of 80 to get just eight minutes' TV time. The minimum cost for running a candidate is from 20,000 to 30,000 francs. That means from 1,600,000 to 2,400,000 francs for a slate of 80
Lutte Ouvrière, a far left group claims to be Trotskyist, proposed a joint slate to the Communist Party, and after receiving a refusal announced that it would not run candidates. The Movement for a Workers Party, dominated by the current led by Pierre Lambert, which ran a weak campaign in the presidential elections, de-
The French Greens are not identified with the left per se, but most of their voters went over to Mitterrand in the second round. The Green candidate in the 1981 presidential election, Brice Lalonde, was given a post in the Rocard cabinet. They decided not to run a national slate in the legislative elections, although Green candidates will run in Alsace, where the party's presidential candidate Antoine Waechter got especially high votes in the first round.
The dissident current recently expelled from the Communist Party, the rénovateurs, decided not to try to run candidates, apparently because that would interfere with their linking up with a new dissident current in the CP that surfaced after the presidential elections, the réconstructeurs.
Thus, the only serious attempt to offer a far-left alternative in the legislative elections is the slate of about 50 candidates preMay 30, 1988 • #142 International Viewpoint
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FRANCE • DENMARK sented by the committees that supported the candidacy of Pierre Juquin for president. The Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR), French section of the Fourth International, participates in the committees.
SP succeeds in polarizing left vote
In one Paris constituency, David Assouline — an LCR member and leader of the massive student mobilizations in December 1986 — will run against Alain Devaquet, who introduced the legislation that touched off the student struggles. Assouline was also Juquin's campaign manager
The Socialist Party offered the Juquin committees three deputies within the framework of the "presidential majority" The proposal was rejected.
The Socialist Party's success in polarizing the left vote, however, has given it a very fluid electoral constituency. A considerable part of Mitterrand's vote in the second round had to come from people who supported the Communist Party and the far left, which together got over 11% of the total vote in the first round. Greens who voted for Mitterrand in the second round, on a single issue like immigrant workers. Thirdly, the union of the respectable right is a big obstacle to local deals between the NF and the more right-wing elements of
However, Le Pen's movement is likely to win local strongholds, particularly in Marseilles, and it is not a normal electoralist animal. It feeds on growing discontent and disorientation among mass popular layers. In that respect, the election of a weak Socialist government at a time when the economic picture is darkening threatens to open up new opportunities for the National Front. Le Pen has already begun a demagogic barrage against the presidential maioritv's "pink millionaire" candidate in
In its May 19 issue, François Sitel wrote in the LCR paper Rouge: "Two years of Chirac's policy have been enough to convince the majority of the voters of the need to get rid of his government. In the last days of the presidential campaign, the connivances with the extreme right turned into indecent invitations for an open alliance. The threat represented by the rise of the fascist and racist Le Pen current became more menacing. The urgent need to defeat the right was confirmed by the presidential election. It is necessary in the legislative elections to win a left majority and a gov-