A French lesson
The startling victory of the Socialist Party in Sunday's election in France has proven once again that French politics is a mass of confusion that even the best of French politicians sometimes fail to grasp. After overwhelmingly voting Alain Juppe's center-right coalition into power four years ago, the same voters elected him out with equal decisiveness to make way for Socialist leader Lionel Jospin to become prime minister.
The Socialist Party's victory is a major blow to President Jacques Chirac who had called the snap election 10 months earlier than scheduled, in the confidence that it would give him a friendly majority for the rest of his presidency till 2002. He lost the gamble, and now has to share power with the Socialist Party, an uncomfortable prospect for either of them.
The French voting pattern is also baffling because this is the third time in 11 years that they have endorsed "cohabitation" between two parties of rival ideologies to govern the country. This time there is an added twist to the arrangement. Falling short of a comfortable majority, Jospin will have to turn to the Communist Party to shore up his power in government. Already, the Communist Party has made a long list of demands as a condition for its support.
The question of European integration appeared to be a decisive factor in many of the recent general elections in a number of European states this past year, and France was no exception. In Britain, the long rein of the Conservative Party ended last month in part because it attempted to take the country out of its European commitments.
The British Labor Party won the election because it believed in Europe. The French Socialist Party also won in part because of its European stand, but the similarity with the British Labor Party ended there. The socialists did not oppose Chirac's plan on European integration; they simply wanted to slow the process down because of the economic hardships such moves, especially the currency integration, had brought to France. The Communist Party, judging from its demands, seems to want to decrease the pace further.
Only time will tell whether Jopin can govern effectively given he has to contend with forces pulled him from two opposite ends. These factors could actually work for the good of the French people eventually because it means Jopin will have to thread between the two forces. Perhaps the outcome will be a shift back to the center and toward moderation.
The French seem to have developed a special knack that makes its politics confusing, yet at the same time dynamic. France has seen more changes in government than Britain and Germany in the last two decades, but its economy has flourished nevertheless, and democracy has been as lively, if not more so, than its two large neighbors.
Amid the mass of confusion that Sunday's election results have sent, outsiders could probably find some valuable lessons in politics and democracy. After all, the French, to quote Francis Bacon, are wiser than they seem.