FRENCH SOCIALISTS GAIN

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33653, 1 October 1974, Page 17

FRENCH SOCIALISTS GAIN

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) PARIS, September 30. The Socialist party of Francois Mitterrand stood today as the big winner in yesterday’s by-elections, involving six former Ministers of the late President Pompidou.

The former ministers all came in ahead of their opponents, with two being elected outright. But the Socialists gained in all districts in which they ran candidates.

Commentators said the outcome of the first round of voting — there will be runoffs next Sunday in the four constituencies where no-one gained an absolute majority — showed that the united Left gained ground generally, with the Socialists doing well. But they gave a warning that a by-election often draws protest votes against those in power. It was too early to say if voters were turning definitely against either the once-dominant Gaullists or against the Government of President

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, a non-Gauliist.

In yesterday’s balloting, a former Prime Minister (Mr Pierre Messmer) won 54.77 per cent of the vote compared with the 72 per cent he gained in the last General Legislative elections in March of 1973. Mr Messmer said after his victory that he would support Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s Presidential majority, “and keep a watch on it,” reflecting the ambivalent position of the Gaullists since the Presidential elections last May. With 180 seats in the 490-seat National Assembly, the Gaullist U.D.R. party is the largest group in the Lower House.

But since Mr Giscard d’Estaing took over they have, for the most part, followed docilely his new policy moves, many of them directly opposed to longstanding Gaullist doctrine. The by-election had been heralded as a sign of whether the Gaullists were doomed to fade away into the history books or whether the party which held sway over French political life for

16 years had a place in the future. Most commentators ignored this point today, while noting the gains of the Socialists.

The conservative daily, “Le Figaro,” said that the progress of the Socialists — the Communists in general lost some votes — marked “a certain amount of disillusion in public opinion” after last May’s Presidential election. But it added that this was “a more or less normal phenomenon, that can be explained by the current economic difficulties.”