De Gaulle Working Towards Two Main Political Parties

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 11

De Gaulle Working Towards Two Main Political Parties

(N.ZP.A.-Ktuttr)

PARIS. With a general election due in March, President de Gaulle is working to weld France’s many political parties and splinter groups into two main parties. For the first time since 1875 the National Assembly has a pro-Government majority which has stood the test of two elections. What it has not yet got is a coherant opposition party.

The official list of members of the National Assembly divides them into 11 parties or groups of which two, the Gaullist Union of the New Republic and the Independent Republicans, form the majority.

The other nine form a disunited opposition. They include the Communists, two groups of Socialists, several groups of Radicals or Liberals, right-wing Conservatives and the midway Catholic group of the Popular Republican Movement.

The Socialists, under Mr Guy Mollet, the left-wing

Radicals, under Mr Rene Billiere, and some of the political clubs are members of a co-ordinating body called the Socialist and Democratic Federation. Chairman of the federation is Mr Francois Mitterand, who at the time of last year’s presidential election was accepted by Communists, Socialists, Radicals and other Left-wing elements as their joint candidate. In spite of this strong line-up of scattered opposition forces, General de Gaulle defeated Mr Mitterand. Since then the cohesion of the federation has weakened.

REFUSED TQ JOIN The Communists have so far refused to join. Were they to join, some of the Radicals inside the federation would no doubt leave. The federation is really a three-legged stool which risks losing its radical leg if it takes sides with the Communists.

Many Socialists, and Mr Mitterand himself, depend on Communists to get re-elected to Parliament Many Radicals depend on Conservatives and strongly anti - Communist voters to retain their seats. The Communist Party makes things no easier by having laid down the line that “in no circumstances” will it recommend its supporters to give their votes to a “reactionary.”

By “reactionary” they mean right-centre or right-wing candidates, but especially Senator Jean Lecanuet’s new group, the Democratic Centre. This was to have absorbed the Catholic Popular Republican Movement and other splinter groups of the centre.

In fact it has not done so and leads an ambiguous poli-

tical life alongside those whom it wanted to unite under its banner. “PERSONAL POWER”

The Radical Party, which has only 25 members in the 482-seat National Assembly, has just thrown a bucket of cold water on Mr Mitterand's hopes of closer understanding with the Communists. At a party congress in Marseilles it endorsed the general aims of the federation against the “personal power” of President de Gaulle, but it refused to spurn Senator Lecanuet and candidates standing to the right of the Socialist-cum-Radical federation. The chances of a united

Left emerging from the March elections with a majority in Parliament are considered small.

At the same time, political observers feel that in the unlikely event of the present majority parties failing to win outright, there will be no difficulty in forming a working majority in the Assembly in favour of President de Gaulle’s policies. Gaullist sources believe that a large number of Popular Republican Movement members, Radicals, and others who backed the 1967 budget will, if need be, ensure a majority for President de Gaulle next spring.