14 PER CENT MARGIN Giscard d’Estaing has fragile hold

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33539, 21 May 1974, Page 13

14 PER CENT MARGIN Giscard d’Estaing has fragile hold

(N. Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

PARIS, May 20.

The President elect of France (Mr Valery Giscard d’Estaing) faces a difficult task in uniting France under his leadership after a very narrow victory over the Socialist cartdidate, Mr Francois Mitterrand, in the Presidential election yesterday.

Mr Giscard D’Estaing, a moderate conservative, will have a fragile hold on power in a country which is almost evenly divided between Right and Left.

His immediate tasks will be to consolidate his position, tackle the country’s serious inflation, and deter civil unrest threatened by Commun-ist-led unions in the event of his victory. Mr Giscard d’Estaing, who at 48 is the youngest French President to be elected by universal suffrage, scraped into power by about 1.4 per cent of the vote in a turn-out of 27 million. He polled about 50.7 per cent to 49.3 per cent for Mr Mitterrand. His winning margin over Mr Mitterrand, who ran as the candidate of the united Left with Communist support, was only about 370,000 votes. Conciliatory Seemingly acknowledging his difficult position, Mr Giscard d’Estaing has been sympathetic to Mr Mitterrand, saying he would have a role to play in French politics now and in the future.

A sombre Mr Mitterrand, in conceding his defeat, wished the new leader well, but urged his own supporters to prepare for future

political struggles. “Our fight continues,” he said, “because you represent the world of youth and labour, and your victory is inevitable.” Mr Giscard d’Estaing, who projected himself in the campaign as a President for all the French people, has pledged to carry out a programme of social progress that he believes will appeal to a much broader segment of the population than the bare majority which voted for him. Gaullist loss He won office by pushing the Gaullist candidate, Mr Jacquest Chaban Delmas, into third place in the first round, on May 5, and some political observers think Mr Chaban Delmas’s supporters may try to make political capital from the vital Gaullist majority in the National Assembly.

While it would be hard to say Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s success ends the 16-year Gaullist era in French politics, it does deprive the'’Gaullists of their monopoly of Fiench domestic and foreign policy decisions. Even if victory does not constitute a break with the Fifth Republic, it does represent the arrival of a new generation of politicians less marked than their elders by the historic shadow of General de Gaulle. For most observers, Mr

Giscard d’Estaing is probably the best representative of that generation. His career in Government began with • de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, when the General made him one of the youngest-ever Finance Ministers in 1959. Brilliant past But he finally broke clear of the orthodox Gaullists, and in 1969 opposed President de Gaulle on the unsuccessful referendum on regional reform. He returned to the Finance Ministry with the election of President Pompidou later that year.

Mr Giscard d’Estaing has had one of the most brilliant careers in the history of French politics, but he now has to perform the task outlined by Mr Mitterrand: “To accomplish his mission, while preserving the essential nature of the national community.”