As a special correspondent for L'Espresso (1), Marco Pannella is following the French elections, and especially the line of action of the Left, which, with François Mitterrand as its mastermind, aims at obtaining the Presidency of the Republic. This is first time the perspective opens up of a Left-oriented alternative in a European country, on the basis of a broad programmatic coalition which includes the communists, the left-wing radicals as well as the socialists of the PSU and of the PS under the leadership of Mitterrand.

At the first round of voting, the Left polled 46,54% of votes; Pannella, unlike the majority of French observers and experts, predicts an overwhelming success for the parties of the Left.

(L'ESPRESSO), March 11, 1973)

Paris. "Everything is still possible" is the echo that pervades France on the eve of the second round of voting of next Sunday, in an increasingly tense and dramatic atmosphere. Everything, except the basic things, so it seems to me. There are, it is true, several results that are at this stage indisputable, and which punctually correspond to the major operations and to the fundamental enigmas of this French electoral occasion. I will try to summarize the situation:

1. The Left.

Politically, programmatically and electorally united as never before, the Left polls 46,54% of votes, that is, over 2 points more than 1967, when commentators spoke about a major victory for the Left; it achieves such percentage despite the centrist schism carried out by J.J. Servan-Schreiber and his Radical Party, until yesterday an ally of the Socialists. It can therefore be said that the common government program of the parties of the Left has been rewarded by a consistent and significant success. After having been attacked from all sides for over six months, labeled as irresponsible and aberrant by the President of the Republic, the common program, far from leading to a crisis, has been a means of growth and expansion. Also, this result means the legitimation of a method and an instrument that are unprecedented in the traditional French electoral confrontation. For its part, the Communist Party contradicts the polls that predicted its defeat in the coalition deployment, and on the contrary experiences a

consolidation of its current leadership and of its fundamental choices, thus averting the danger of an internal crisis and of new diversions. The party's sectarian current, which, according to Jacques Duclos himself, was very likely to manifest itself in these elections, has now become weaker. With its fake dialectic, the gross anti-communism revived by all those who, Pompidou more than others, particularly fear a deep renewal of the political battle and perspectives, has only served the purpose of helping the Communists. With 21,34% and over five million votes, the French communists are satisfied and confident, and ready to insist on the path undertaken. They have gained one point compared to 1967 and one compared to 1968. The Socialist Party is indisputably the political force that can boast the greatest success: it has reached its highest electoral score in 27 years, its greatest increase since 1968; approximately 1,5 million votes and four percentage points. It is growing in all the areas of the country,

penetrating in regions in which it had practically disappeared, as in the Paris urban and suburban region, or in the East, where it had never been politically present.

Its new leadership, young and ambitious, is gaining consents everywhere. It is winning back the votes of the working classes, which had been traditionally absorbed by the Gaullist Party, and is gaining the votes of the technical cadres of the industry and the economy from the Communist party. Its leader, Mitterrand, confirms himself as the natural leader of any possible government alternative. A question which is debated is whether he has achieved more or less votes with his left-wing radical allies compared to the Communists. If we attribute the votes of the 'independent socialists', against whom he did not present his candidates, to him, then he has scored more (if such were the case, he would poll 21,90% versus 21,34 of the Communist Party, 0,60 in the other hypothesis). But clearly, the problem is another one. A party that had polled only 6% of votes at the Presidential elections of 1968 with its candidate Defferre, albeit in extremely different conditions, now detains the same share of votes as the Comm

unists: far from being leveled in defeat or impotence, the Left has, with its success, recovered a certain balance. The leading left-wing Radicals will in any case double their parliamentary representation compared to the previous legislation, finally eliminating Servan-Schreiber, who had taken possession of their party and has now been defeated. In Bretagne and in Paris, the socialists of the PSU are giving back a consistent part of their electorate to the PS, however their prestige and their function as a libertarian and technically advanced socialist avant-garde is enhanced.

2. The majority

With its allies or marginal competitors, it totals about 9 million and 38% of votes. The official regime party, the UDR, detains 23,5%, the independent Republicans headed by Giscard d'Estaing 7%, the centrists of Duhamel 3,8%. This foreign legion lacks both a program and political unity: it has no reasons and ideals that cannot be summarized, as for the Christian Democrat Party in Italy, in one word: power and the resolve to maintain it at all costs. In the UDR itself, which should be the spearhead of the conservative party, there are intransigent Gaullists, extreme Right Jacobins, such as Debré: they are nationalists and authoritarians, factious and intolerant: and men such as Chaban-Delmas, Edgar Faure, former "radical" leaders of the 4th Republic, men of power, opportunists, with an eye for the "left", at least in the past. The independent Republicans share a common leader, Giscard, a man who officially embodies the liberal and liberist Right, but who also represents the reactionary tendencies of the Inte

rior minister, Marcellin, and the major hopes of the monopolist groups and of the capitalist interests. In fact, behind every group of the majority there is but one strategist and one leader whom the elections have strengthened: Georges Pompidou. With an electoral defeat, without him, the previous majority would have already fallen to pieces; and in any case, in the coming weeks, whatever the result of of the vote of 11 March, the Prime Minister, Mesmer, and the Secretary of the UDR, Peyrefitte, will be eliminated. The reasons are clear enough: you simply cannot pass from 12 million votes to 9 million votes without suffering any serious consequences; nor can you afford public ridicule without severe consequences, and this has punctually occurred whenever the majority was asked to illustrate its legislative programme.

3. The 'Reformers'.

They are experiencing their last weeks as an autonomous political movement and as the advocates of another project of a "third force", somewhere between the Left and the Gaullist-based majority. If we consider their forecasts and their programmes, as it is correct to do, and not the pre-electoral polls, we can say that they have suffered a heavy defeat, with less than three million votes. Paradoxically enough, they are considered the real arbitrators of Sunday's electoral clash. This is not true, if we think that Lecanuet and Servan-Schreiber (who are now opponents, among other things) can really and massively dispose of univocal shifts of their electorate from Paris. It is true that these supposed "reformers" had embarked a sundry crew indeed to prepare their takeover: former Oas, anti-Gaullist partisans from French Algeria, former ministers of the General, former Mendes-France loyalists, residues of the Christian Democrat Party, as well as followers of J.J. Servan-Schreiber.

It is instead partly true if we consider that their disoriented troops can, by converging toward the candidates of the regime, favour the conquest on the part of the latter of the absolute majority of seats.

Pompidou reveals himself

In such conditions, it is possible to state that "everything is possible" in the coming round of voting only if we continue to believe that there is and has ever been the possibility for the Left to assume power, to form the Government, to apply the essential part of its "common programme" in the traditional first "one hundred days" of its government: nationalizations, 100-Franc minimum salaries guarantied for all, relingquishement of the "force de frappe", doubled pensions as of sixty years of age, reduction of working hours in factories. But we have already explained, in the past weeks, that this perspective, apart from being unrealistic, if in fact not even pursued by the parties of the united Left themselves. Even if they acquired the absolute majority of seats, Pompidou would still have the possibility and the power to prevent such electoral success from translating itself into government responsibilities, at least for a year. And, during this year, with the conflict which would ensue, everything could

happen, everything indeed; it is unlikely that we would be faced to a situation similar to the present one. But can the Left, having conquered the absolute majority, acquire the corresponding 246 seats in any case?

"150 seats in a handkerchief", state the French papers unanimously. "A few thousand votes can cause sensational effects". Three weeks ago, we had stressed this theoretic evidence, which qualifies the French electoral system, without however much contributing to a concrete evaluation of what could happen on March 11. "The situation is good, considering our forecasts, but also very confused. The sums correspond to our surveys, but the single parts of the total don't", explain Denis Gaudoin and Xavier Marchetti, direct collaborators of the President of the Republic during a series of talks on Tuesday. Nonetheless, this reservation does not correspond to a true concern. Georges Pompidou had taken control of the situation and restored calm in the Gaullist and governmental alliance. In fact, on Sunday evening he was not even at the Elysium, but in his private apartment, in a five-storey upper class building in the Quai De Bethunes, on the island of St. Louis; from there he made no more than ten telephone calls, to

the Interior Minister Marcellin, and to his collaborators at the Elyseum, where he returned only on Monday to have lunch with Messmer, Giscard and Marcellin. Pompidou is an expert at evaluating electoral dossiers and the situation of the different municipalities. A clue on his evaluation could be the fact that he seems to have decided to intervene only briefly and with "determination" on television, for the second round of voting.

The Left might have had the possibility of achieving a new, major success: to face the candidates of the majority, at the ballot, with the socialist candidate instead of the communist one, in that the gap between the two deployments is minimal and can be filled with the convergence of part of the "reforming" electors. Seated around the ten tables, the leaders of the Left looked more as if they were gathered for a planning meeting, or for an informal talk, rather than to take dramatic and undelayable decisions.

25,000 more votes

After all, just like Pompidou is satisfied for having contained the losses, for having possibly delayed the moment of the final clash (with the hope of avoiding it forever), of having presumably stored a sufficient parliamentary majority, the leaders of the Left now seem to want to consolidate their success and progress, the change of trend which they have a achieved in less than a a year, to turn it into a more advanced platform in order to better organize and prepare themselves. The PS especially has no interest in increasing its parliamentary members too much before having transformed the new socialist-oriented current into a well-grounded and structured force at its base, in cities and in factories. In artificially dramatized and emphasized circumstances, it could experience a revival of centrist and third force temptations, and plunge once again into the schismatic mishaps which have always endangered the history of the democratic movements of our countries.

This could be an explanation for the fact that the PS has not even seriously attempted to ask the communists to follow a line of electoral behaviour strictly aimed at conquering the parliamentary majority already in the coming days; a goal which is, apart from anything, arduous and difficult. For this reason too, it seems to me that it is impossible to foresee only a consistent increase in the number of opposition seats compared to the 1967 elections (67 seats of the non-communist Left, 50 seats of the Communist Party). No great importance should be attached to whether these seats are 190 or 220.

Unless there is some surprise. Lacanuet will gather a maximum of 23 seats, about ten of which he could easily obtain from the government deployment in a few week's time, without even needing to embark in sensational negotiations or "historical" compromises between the "reformers" and the President of the Republic; meetings and agreements which will be undertaken only if there is the intention to get immediately rid of the Gaullist hard-liners like Debré. At any rate, it would be foolish to expect sensational events, both as far as the government and the new presidential "choices" are concerned, before late April. Unless the majority exceeds 260 elected candidates, Pompidou cannot appoint a new government. The resigning ministers, if they are elected members of Parliament, will have the possibility of voting regularly: those freshly appointed will not. In such event, at least 25 votes would be missing for the election of the President of the Chamber and for the responsibles of the Commissions.

Next week, therefore, will mark the beginning of the "third turn of voting": the one that will take place daily in factories, offices, universities, in the rural areas. The political clash in Parliament will assume the shape of a clearer and more calculated social and economic clash. Georges Seguy, with the CGT, and Edmond Maire for the CFDT, are also bracing for battle. But in France neither the obsolete "apertures" to the pseudo-reformers or the major investitures to the "progressivist" and "socialist" wing of the parties of the regime (which in Italy represent the goals for more or less historical changes for our Left) will be capable of defusing the time bomb of the democratic and socialist alternative to the system and to the regime.

These are the basic data on the situation. Would we have been wrong in believing in the possibility of an overwhelming success for the parties of the Left next Sunday, whereas the majority of French observers and experts maintain that this is a purely theoretical hypothesis? In that case, we will see which different perspectives will open up, and not just in France, but in Italy as well.

Translator's notes

(1) L'Espresso: Italian weekly magazine founded in Rome in 1955.