ITALY / FRANCE
The crisis of representation THE French regional and cantonal elections of March 22 and 29, 1992, registered a shake-up in the country's political landscape. The big defeat of the ruling Socialist Party (PS) of President François Mitterrand -which got a mere 18% - led to a change of Prime Minister, with finance minister Pierre Bérégovoy ver there was a turnout of 68.7%, a record for this level of elections. And this means that the prepared attempts to explain the results, and especially the PS' catastrophe, by a low turnout, were rendered inoperable. Its 18.3% in the regional elections, a loss of 11 points compared to the previous regional contest in 1986, and five points down on the European elections of 1989, leave it in control of only one region (three before), losing a number of historic bastions in the process.
PS goes back to 1968 replacing Edith Cresson. FRANCIS SITEL T HE PS was doomed to fail. As
Patrick Jarreau wrote in Le Monde (May 31, 1992): "Eleven years of rule, and nine in government, have worn away the roots of the Socialist left. The deterioration has speeded up recently". Not only its electorate but even the PS' activists are turning away.
Knowing what was going to happen, Mitterrand employed schemes which would allow him to remain in power by taking his distance from his former party. His idea is that of a presidential majority in which the PS would be but one component, and which would rest on personalities not identified as being on either side of the left/right divide, such as Bernard Tapie (a flamboyant and shady millionaire entrepreneur), on small breakaway pieces accent on the social and economic demands of the workers and in the first place on the intransigent defence of the indexation of wages to prices. The problem of the strategy and functioning of the trade unions is obviously central.
It goes without saying that we must fight against any reactionary electoral reform and against all restrictions on democratic rights. But I wish to add immediately that we must not adopt a purely defensive approach. It would be an error in my view to centre our orientation on the defence of the 1948 constitution.
At a time when there is a rejection of the political system among very broad popular layers, it would be wrong to appear as a force which is attached to the status quo and thus facilitate the populist mystifications of the right and the far right, who present themselves as innovators. Is it necessary to recall that the workers' movement has always paid a very high price when it has fallen into such traps, for example, at the beginning of the 1930s in Germany, or in 1958 in France, faced with of the right and on an ecological movement whose way has been prepared by the "Génération ecologie" operation of government minister Brice Lalonde.
The regional elections are conducted on a proportional basis, unlike most elections in France which are conducted on a majority vote system. This means that these elections were especially effective in revealing new realities. On the right this means the emergence of the Front National (FN), a potential, but currently unacceptable partner for the established right parties, the RPR and UDF, to form a new right majority. On the left we saw the ecologists become a significant national force, offering the president new room for manoeuvre.
All predictions for this election counted on a high rate of abstention. In fact howeGaullism? • What, in your view, are the tasks of the party from the specifically organizational point of view?
The principal organizational problem is that of our youth work. The youth implantation of the PRC is very weak. The elections confirmed it: we had only around 40,000 more votes in the vote for the Chamber of Deputies in relation to the vote for the Senate, whereas there are around 4 million more electors.
Secondly, it is necessary to transform the popular and working class influence of the party into a structure with roots, which condition the activity of the party at all these levels. Finally, it is imperative to overcome the provisional nature of our organizational functioning. We need to be more efficient, more systematic and more democratic.
These are the problems that I intend to raise at the next meeting of the national political committee. *
The PS, which for a decade has put itself forward as the possible centre point for a recomposition of the whole workers' movement and beyond that of the progressive forces in their entirety, finds itself back in the situation of 1968, when Mitterrand picked up a small party and making it into his vehicle. Now it can no longer seriously pretend to have the right to exercise power. It has thus exhausted its potential, and its role must be downplayed. This is the meaning of the selection of Laurent Fabius as its new leader; this "renewer" has the task of ridding the party of some of its references to the workers' movement and make it an acceptable partner in a centre realignment cemented by fear of the Front National — a project that is by no means guaranteed of success. The traditional right, which one might have expected to benefit from the crumbling of the Socialist Party, was disappointed. The RPR-UDF alliance got 33% of the vote, a fall of eight points compared to 1986. The number of regional councils where it has an absolute majority fell from eight to three. Its presidencies rest on unstable foundations, often under pressure from the FN. The French Communist Party (PCF) meanwhile put itself forward as the "only opposition on the left" to the regime. With 8%, the party stemmed its electoral decline but no more; this means that its internal crisis will continue. Le Pen's neo-fascist FN did not get all it hoped for; in particular it did not get over the 15% level. It is clear that there was something of an anti-Le Pen electoral mobilization, reflected in the high turnout, and stimulated by the energetic anti-Le Pen mobilizations during the campaign. Nonetheless, one should not rejoice too soon. In these elections the vote was for a party, not simply for Le Pen himself; the NF now has 239 regional councillors compared to 137 after 1986. Furthermore, in the earlier election Le Pen had tried to hide behind respectable but not wholly reliable personalities, many of whom later defected elsewhere; this time the FN's candidates were solid party members. The FN is now 9 the second largest right wing party, behind
April 27, 1992