French Left to try to fix rift for election run-off

Press, 14 March 1978, Page 8

French Left to try to fix rift for election run-off

NZPA-Reuter

Paris

France’s Opposition Socialists and Communists are due to hold decisive summit talks todav after taking an unexpectedly slim lead over the Centre-Right Government parties in the first round of the General Election on Sunday.

With results in from all but one of the 491 constituencies, the combined Left took a slight lead of just 1.9 per cent over the Centre-Right coalition. The Socialists, Communists, and Left-wing Radicals had 45.1 per cent and the extreme Leftists 9.3 per cent. The ruling coalition — Gaullists, Republicans, Centrists, and others — had 46.5 per cent. Opinion polls had predicted a stronger performance by the Left, and more particularly the Socialists, in the first round. Government politicians said the result of the decisive run-off next Sunday was now wide open.

“Nothing has been won yet, and nothing is lost either.” said the Prime Minister (Mr Raymond Barre), one of a dozen Government Ministers elected outright on the first ballot. Mr Barre, who belongs to no partv, did not have a seat in Parliament before the election. ) The former Gaullist Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac, who was also returned to Parliament in ‘the first! round, was more optimistic.; “In the second round, the l coalition will overtake the j Opoosition,” he said. In the first round the candidates who got an absolute] majority were elected to! Parliament. In the next] round only the candidates! who got more than 125 peri cent of the votes can compete and the candidate with] the most votes will win. The Socialist leader, j Francois Mitterrand, said' that the Left-wing was now] clearly in the majority ini France and that his party] was now the biggest in the country, with some seven! million votes. Mr Mitterrand and the Communist chief, George Marchais, were among those; forced to a run off. I

' Mr Mitterrand, who just j failed to beat Mr Valery ] Giscard d’Estaing in the 1974 French Presidential election, appealed to the Communists to patch up their differences with his party. “United we shall win ’’ he said.

i W'thtn the hour, Mr ] Marchais announced that he 1 had invited Mr Mitterrand land the allied Leftist Radical [leader, Robert Fabre, to a 'summit meeting.

Mr Marchais, whose party I was estimated to have picked up the 21 per cent of jthe vote he considers the minimum to join a Left-wing 1 Government, indicated he would drive a hard bargain with the Socialists and Radicals.

! Mr Marchais said that the ] summit talks were to work out a clear agreement on a joint government pro- ] gramme, a Socialist-Com-i munist government, and a jdeai to smooth the passage of best placed Leftist candidates in the second round on I Sunday.

The Communists have so ilfar refused to order their J candidates to step down in I favour of better-placed

[Socialists or Radicals for the [second round. i Nor have they told their I highly disciplined party [members to switch their votes to the Socialists in those constituencies where the Communist candidates were outdistanced. The Left-wing parties have been at daggers drawn for six months since negotiations on the revision of their 1972 "common programme for government” broke down.

"If the Socialists had agreed to reopen negotiations and work out a new common programme, the Left’s results today would have been better,” Mr Marchais said after the poll. Privately, the Communists were surprised that the Socialists had not done better. “What happened to the famous 30 per cent the Socialists were supposed to get?” asked one Communist candidate. The turn-out for the election was a record 83 per l cent,

The conservative President, faced with the prospect of having to live with a Left-wing Government, made

two major election speeches in the run up to the first round, the second speech just 12 hours before the polls opened. Without naming the Opposition parties, he said the French economy was still too fragile to stand up to their election promises of radical economic and social change. The original SocialistCommunist Government programme, drawn up in 1972, envisaged the nationalisation of nine major industrial concerns, together with the remainder of French banking and credit not already in public ownership. But the two parties fell out when they tried to re|Vise the programme last year.

The Socialists were for sticking to the original nationalisation plan, while the Communists wanted to extend it to the steel industry, big car and oil firms, and more than 700 subsidiary companies.

Official freed A French Government official, Pierre Huguet, has been released by Moslem guerrillas after being kidnapped two weeks ago, the French Embassy in Manila has said. Mr Huguet, who is 59, was seized by a Muslim band suspected of belonging to the separatist Moro National Liberation Front in a Zamboangan village on February 26. The M.N.L.F. is spearheading a five-year-old Moslem revolt for self-rule in the south and was believed to have kept Mr Huguet on nearby Basilan Island, Informed sources in Zamboanga said Mr Huguet was swapped for an undisclosed ransom and the freedom of arrested relatives of the suspected kidnappers. — Manila.