Juppe cast as punchbag in bruising contest

FRANCE is in for a brutal one month election campaign, the Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, has warned, and much of the brutality will be levelled at Mr Juppe himself. Because he is so unpopular, the Socialists have taken the safe step of making him their punching bag.

A televised debate between "the two Js", the haughty Mr Juppe and the hectoring Socialist leader Mr Lionel Jospin, should be the high point of the campaign, just a few days before the first round of elections on May 25th. Mr Jospin says Mr Juppe represents "a state confiscated by a political clan" and has denounced "the aggressiveness and excitability" of the Prime Minister.

President Chirac's decision to seek the support of the French people for domestic reforms and for EMU has created an almost despairing mood. This is France's moment of truth, Mr Francois Leotard, head of the centre right Union for French Democracy (UDF) said, while Mr Jospin described the election as "a choice of society, a choice of civilisation".

If the centre right wins a clear majority, as early opinion polls suggest it may, Mr Chirac will have carte blanche for the next five years. But trade unions and an exasperated electorate could impede attempts to privatise what has been called Europe's last centrally planned economy. This week's rail and airline strikes were a reminder that social unrest could upset the right's plans, even if it wins the elections.

Mr Chirac's worst nightmare is a left wing majority in the National Assembly. To have lost his majority in elections scheduled to take place next March would have been bad. But to lose in these conditions, after precipitating the contest himself, would be disastrous. The prospect of "cohabiting" with Mr Jospin as Prime Minister until 2002 is chilling; France could plunge into political gridlock, and the most divisive issue would be Mr Jospin's willingness to scrap France's EMU candidacy.

The right has been running the government for four years, and despite Mr Juppe's claim that it can be proud of its record, Mr Chirac would not have called early elections had it succeeded. The President is asking the electorate to give him a new mandate but Mr Juppe is essentially repeating the same promises of privatisation, government reform, lower taxes and welfare charges in hopes of stimulating business and employment.

If the government couldn't accomplish this with the biggest parliamentary majority since 1815, how will it be able to achieve it with a reduced bloc of deputies, opponents are asking.

LEFT and right agree that France is in crisis, but they offer different diagnoses and cures. For the right, the French system is the root of the problem, and it can be overcome by adopting a British or American style free market. For the left, the connection between Maastricht and France's economic woes is obvious; the answer is to renounce Maastricht.

Two former government ministers are asking these questions bluntly. On the right, Mr Alain Madelin, sacked as finance minister by Mr Juppe for trying to reform the bloated civil service in 1995, advocates a surgical break with state intervention.

"We must have the courage to question not only our system of a mixed economy, but also the statist organisation and hierarchy of decision . . . that constitute the French weakness," Mr Madelin wrote in Le Monde this week. At the other end of the spectrum, the former Socialist defence minister Mr Jean Pierre Chevenement says postponing monetary union is the only way to pull France out of depression.

France is one of the last countries that still boasts a real political left. In the 1993 general election campaign, the left was debilitated by corruption scandals

Ad power struggles, and it lost abysmally. Mr Chirac's surprise poll has reestablished the old left right polarity, which has the advantage of sidelining their common enemy, Mr JeanMarie Le Pen's extreme right National Front.

AFTER more than a decade of squabbling, the Communists and Socialists are trying to restore their old alliance. Even if the left loses, the strength of a leftist tradition going back to 1789 severely limits the right's ability to dismantle the welfare state.

Then there is that elusive phenomenon called the French national character. The propensity for soulsearching moodiness, the desire to punish those who govern badly, could work against both the left, still resented for its misrule in the 1980s, and the right, which has performed poorly in the 1990s.

"French society is completely anguished by the economic situation," a sociologist, Mr Emmanuel Todd, says. "A process that occurs naturally in the Anglo Saxon world, the deepening of social inequalities, we just can't take it, we freeze up. There is something in the French character that makes it hard for us to face moments of historic change."