Chirac takes roller-coaster ride to tryst with Europe

THERE must be moments when French President Jacques Chirac wishes he could turn the clock back to April 21st and just let the old National Assembly - in which his ruling right-wing coalition had a four-fifths majority - float along quietly until elections next March.

In an open letter published on May 7th, Mr Chirac reminded the public why he had taken the biggest gamble of his career and turned politics upside down by calling an early election.

He did not want the country to get bogged down in a 10-month campaign. "It is also because 1 need the political strength to defend the interests of France in the coming important European deadlines," Mr Chirac wrote.

The two most important dates are the June 16th/17th Amsterdam summit, at which the Inter-Governmental Conference on EU reforms is to be concluded, and the spring, 1998, qualification for EMU.

But opinion polls are giving Mr Chirac a harrowing roller-coaster ride in the run-up to his rendezvous with Europe. If the Socialist and Communist left wins a majority, which now appears remotely possible, the French President will be doomed to spend the remaining five years of his presidency in cohabitation with the left, with the Socialist leader, Mr Lionel Jospin, as his prime minister.

Mr Chirac "cohabited" as prime minister to the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand between 1986 and 1988, and he knows it is hell.

Early polls promised a reduced but still strong right-wing parliamentary majority of up to 130 seats. But the right hit bottom last week, with one Louis Harris poll even putting the left two points ahead.

The right responded by ganging up on its unpopular Prime Minister, Mr Ala in Juppe, who is leading their campaign. Former president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, was one of the first to undermine Mr Juppe.

French people, he said, "wish to be governed differently", noting that Mr Chirac, "when he comes to naming a prime minister, will have to take into account what the French people were telling him".

Without anyone formally announcing that Mr Juppe would be dumped after the election, the beleaguered prime minister acquiesced. He announced that when a new law forbidding French politicians from holding several offices is passed he would prefer to retain his more humble job as mayor of Bordeaux.

That message - along with a clumsy outburst by the Communist Party chief, Mr Robert Hue, against his Socialist allies - reversed the left's rise in the opinion polls, and the right is again leading.

But opinion polls are unreliable, and a third of voters say they might change their minds. Most alarming of all, a poll published in Le Figaro on Monday showed that 51 per cent of French voters care little or nothing about the election.

The one thing they do care about is unemployment, which affects 3.1 million people, or 12.8 per cent of the workforce.

Sixty-seven per cent of French voters say unemployment is their greatest concern whereas only 12 per cent give priority to Europe. This explains why unemployment and the economy - not Europe - have dominated the campaign.

The right says it will reduce government spending and taxes to encourage initiative and create jobs. Individual efforts must be compensated and not, as too often happens, penalised," the centre-right programme says. "Taxes and welfare charges are suffocating the economy.

The right claims it has created a more healthy economy and fostered the beginning of economic growth - a dubious assertion at best. Rather than explain what, if anything, the right will do differently if it wins, Mr Juppe has concentrated on attacking the left's programme.

THE Socialists believe unemployment can be reduced through government intervention. "A return to the capitalism of the 19th century or the construction of a society of progress and solidarity for the 2 1st century - that is what is at stake in the coming election," their programme declares.

It promises to maintain public services and welfare benefits, create 700,000 jobs for young people and reduce the working week from 39 to 35 hours without a reduction in salaries The left says it would decrease VAT but raise taxes for the rich.

Mr Chirac and Mr Juppe refuse to admit that new austerity measures will be needed to meet the Maastricht criteria; instead, Mr Chirac has reverted to his unkept 1995 pledge to heal France's fracture sociale.

Likewise, Mr Jospin evaded Mr Juppe's questions as to whether he would appoint Communists to cabinet - and how he would replace the Pasqua and Debre immigration laws he wants to abolish.

The right promises "to make France the engine of a Europe that is close to its citizens" but devotes only two sentences to EMU which, it says, will "stimulate growth and employment".

The left frets that European integration threatens French sovereignty. Under the heading "Let us change Europe", the Socialists pose four conditions for France's participation in the single currency: that Spain and Italy be included; that relations between EMU participants be founded not on an austerity pact but on "a pact of solidarity and growth", allowing a policy of employment and social progress; the creation of "a European economic government" to co-ordinate economic polices within the EU; and that the euro not be overvalued against the dollar and yen.

Until the Labour election victory in Britain, the French campaign looked like an old-fashioned left-right contest. But the reaction in Paris made it clear that French politicians, with the exception of the extreme right and Communists, aspire to join Mr Tony Blair in the centre.

The scramble to identify with him was so total that France-Soir newspaper referred to the party leaders as "Tony Juppe and Lionel Blair".

With France's economic and European policies at stake, and only 11 days to the first round of voting, the parties have so far failed to define issues in terms that voters find relevant.

In announcing the poll, Mr Chirac said France needed a nouvel elan - a new burst of energy. But unless French politicians find that elusive elan quickly, voters may punish them by staying at home for both rounds on May 25th and June 1st.