Pompidou To Run For Presidency

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31975, 30 April 1969, Page 13

Pompidou To Run For Presidency

(N .Z .P. A.-Reuter—Copyright >

PARIS, April 29.

The former Prime Minister, Mr Georges Pompidou, today became the first official candidate for the coming election to choose a successor to General de Gaulle as President of France.

Mr Pompidou announced his candidacy before going to a meeting of the Gaullist Party’s executive bureau this morning.

His candidacy was widelyexpected and he is the early favourite in the elections.

Mr Pompidou staked his claim to the Gaullist succession as far back as last January, when he announced he would run for the Presidency when it fell vacant. Some French sources expected Mr Pompidou to renew his candidacy today. Dozens of telegrams of support have been flowing into his office and local pro-Pompidou committees have been set up in Lyons and other provincial centres.

The Presidential campaign has already started in France, politicians jockeying for positions. Mr Pompidqu's most dangerous opponent in the Presidential election, expected to open on June 1, is Mr Alain Poher, the once obscure Centrist politician who as President of the Senate took over

yesterday as interim Head of State. Mr Poher has so far given no indication of whether he would stand. Mr Francois Mitterrand, the defeated candidate in the 11965 Presidential elections, indicated yesterday he would stand if chosen as the candidate of a united Left Mr Valery Giscard d’Estaing, leader of the Rightwing faction of the Gaullist Parliamentary Alliance, came out against Georges Pompidou as General de Gaulle’s successor.

Mr Giscard d’Estaing, who served as Finance Minister under General de Gaulle but condemned the referendum, did not mention the former Prime Minister by name when he outlined his position at a press conference. But he said France needed “a man of experience, who was not involved in the recent political battles between the majority and the opposition.”

The French Left-wing remains, however, in a state of disarray after its crushing defeat in last June’s General Elections, and this division could be aggravated rather than resolved in the political struggle ahead. The French Socialist Party’s executive is due to meet today to consider a letter from the Communist party leader, Mr Waldeck Rochet, proposing the drafting of a joint programme to present a single Left-wing candidate. And the Socialist leader, Mr Guy Mollet, has already said he would back Mr Poher against Mr Pompidou in the election’s first round, and a Communist candidate against Mr Pompidou in the second. France remained calm though subdued as General de Gaulle began his new political exile at his country retreat of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. Despite Government warnings of the deep troubles that would follow the President's resignation, the franc remained weak but standing,

and the revolutionaries who brought France to the verge of chaos last May remained : in the shadows. Since the Gaullists used last spring’s crisis as a springboard for an unprecedented election victory, radical elements have learned that an ill-considered move on their part can only serve to strengthen the hand of Conservatives. For this reason they remained well behaved through out the referendum campaign. Major disorders in the last 10 days would have been more than welcome to the Government, and could have tipped the scales for President de Gaulle.

There is no further consideration that the Army might not remain impassive in the major crisis which new trouble on the May scale would open up now, a factor of which revolutionaries, as well as many observers, are aware.