Cohabitation government begins in France – archive, 1986

National Assembly elections in France: French right falls short of clear win

By Campbell Page and Paul Webster
17 March 1986

Dateline: Paris

The rightwing opposition in France has failed to win a clearcut majority in the National Assembly elections, a result bound to thrust the country into a period of great uncertainty and intense political manoeuvring.

Yesterday’s vote gives the main rightwing parties a bare absolute majority but leaves the Socialists as the largest single party in parliament. President Mitterrand still has enormous room for manoeuvre. The result means that he can pick as his prime minister a pliable centrist, such as the Gaullist, Mr Jacques Chaban-Delmas. He may even turn to a member of his own Socialist Party.

The elections, the first under the new system of proportional representation introduced by the Socialists, also saw a marked shift of weight on the political extremes, with the Communists suffering a great loss of support and the rightwing National Front pulling in more than 10% of the vote.

The mayor of Paris and opposition leader in the last Assembly, Mr Jacques Chirac, called on the French people to work together now that the elections are over. “The Choice has been made,” he said. “It is a matter now for all French people, no matter what their opinion, to rally together and participate in the necessary effort for renewal that the situation in France requires.”

The Socialist prime minister, Mr Laurent Fabius , smiling broadly, said the Socialist score was “remarkable” but he appeared to acknowledge implicitly that the five years of Socialist government had ended: “There will be other opportunities and we are more than ever the great movement of hope.”

The National Front leader, Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose party won 37 seats (10.7 Per cent) told a wildly cheering crowd of his supporters: “The left has been beaten.” He claimed that his movement had now overtaken the Communists. “Tonight we are celebrating a great victory,” he said.

Abandoning his previous refusal to do a deal with the other rightwing parties, Mr Le Pen offered the National Front’s support in exchange for a foothold in power. Mr Fabius said the Front’s arrival in parliament would cause “justified concern among all democrats” – a theme the Socialists are likely to emphasise in the next few days.

The conventional right, the neo-Gaullist RPR and the UDF, were set to win 41 per cent of the vote which would give them a fragile absolute majority of 11 with the support of rightwing independents, in the 577 seat house.

This is an edited extract. Read the article in full .

French parties learning to cohabit: analysis of relations between President Mitterrand and Premier Chirac

By Campbell Page
20 March 1986

Paris, since Monday, has offered the spectacle of two highly professional politicians negotiating their way towards cohabitation.

Jacques Chirac, 53, leader of the neo-Gaullist RPR, and also mayor of Paris, was sitting in some state at the imposing City Hall yesterday, receiving a stream of notables from the newly victorious majority.

President Mitterrand, who set the tone of constitutional correctness on Monday evening by acknowledging the majority and wishing it well, was waiting at the Elysée for the deal to be settled. He looked like a man without a care in the world.

But cohabitation, the peaceful coexistence of a president and prime minister of different political loyalties for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, is a formidable undertaking. The constitution, as Mr Chirac says, is flexible, but 28 years of presidential dominance have established customs and practices in the president’s favour.

Now the constitution has to be re-examined. Most politicians realise that flexibility implies ambiguity, and ambiguity has to be resolved by a shared interpretation on the part of both president and prime minister.

In a long interview on the last day of the election campaign, Mr Chirac emphasised that the new majority, however small its margin, should carry out its election platform. There would have to be a certain degree of harmony between the president, government and parliament. People would have to be reasonable and everyone should respect the constitution, “which is flexible and allows all the necessary adaptations”.

On Monday evening, President Mitterrand quickly recognised that the new prime minister would have to come from the ranks of the new majority.

Such recognition set Mr Chirac once again on the way to the prime ministership. One of the great contenders in French politics, he is known for his stamina and resilience.

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Pillow torque for president and premier

The relationship between Socialist President Mitterrand and the Conservative-controlled National Assembly

By Campbell Page
11 April 1986

The Socialist president and the rightwing prime minister are not at war, but they are willing to risk skirmishes and border incidents.

Both President Mitterrand and Mr Chirac want to escape the charge of collaboration and achieve a new kind of constitutional coexistence. Both have to be resolute in interpreting and acting on what they regard as their respective powers.

Surveys show that people like the idea of compromise between Right and Left, and even have far-fetched notions about the extent to which power could be shared. Since the experiment in cohabitation began, Mitterrand and Chirac have achieved much better results in the regular polls giving approval ratings of leading politicians, and now stand at close to 60%.

In any case, the president’s options have narrowed. If he resigned, the increasingly popular Mr Chirac would be a dangerous opponent in a presidential election. If Mr Mitterrand dissolved parliament, the rightwing majority would also certainly be enlarged if the Right had carried out its plan to abolish proportional representation and restore two-round majority voting.

Mr Chirac, with his hard-driving managerial style, and Mr Mitterrand, the great strategist in French politics, are worthy contestants. They know they must be able to present their differences in reasonable terms and look for ways of keeping cohabitation afloat.

Mr Mitterrand is obviously walking a tightrope. He cannot be seen to collaborate, and even the photographs of him presiding over the weekly cabinet show a stern-faced president who would rather die than fraternise. Nor can he appear to act as a political partisan out to wreck the new rightwing government.

Cohabitation can work in foreign affairs because French foreign policy is essentially bipartisan. In spite of the much-praised flexibility of the constitution, cohabitation would be inconceivable if an anti-nuclear prime minister tried to share power with a pro-nuclear president, or vice-versa.

The sharpest clashes between Mr Chirac and Mr Mitterrand have arisen from the government’s wish to introduce some urgent measures by decree after obtaining enabling laws from parliament.

This is an edited extract. Read the article in full .

French cohabitation ‘can go on’: Premier Chirac comments on his relationship with Premier Mitterrand

By Campbell Page
22 July 1986

The prime minister, Mr Jacques Chirac yesterday used his first press conference since his appointment four months ago to praise the flexibility of the French constitution and to imply that the experiment in power-sharing between himself and a Socialist president could continue.

Also in Paris yesterday, political extremists from the leftwing Action Directe group mocked a government pledge to end a series of guerrilla attacks by exploding a powerful car bomb outside the headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in one of the capital’s most heavily policed areas.

A week after President Mitterrand caused the first open dispute in the power-sharing government by refusing to sign a government decree on denationalisation, Mr Chirac said at his press conference that both he and the president respected the constitution and rules of democracy, neither wanted a coup d’état, and in those circumstances, things could hardly go wrong.

French institutions had worked well, which had been recognised by public opinion he said. Mr Chirac added that France had become a mature democracy, and the institutions of the Fifth Republic, after being put to the test once again, had come through successfully and shown how flexible and durable they were.

The prime minister yesterday emphasised that there had been a real break with the policy of the previous socialist administration as his government introduced its regime of economic liberalism.

This is an edited extract. Read the article in full .

The power-sharing arrangement lasted for two years until Mitterrand defeated Chirac in the presidential elections of 1988 and called for new legislative elections. These were won by a leftist majority, which lasted five years.