Chirac's unpopularity proved in recent vote

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Just enough people voted for Jacques Chirac to make him President of France two years ago, but hardly anybody actually likes him. He is one of those people with such a single- minded ambition to climb to the top of the heap that eventually their compatriots just let them. But that explains why almost everybody is now delighted to see Chirac fail in such a spectacular fashion.

Chirac inherited a parliament where his own center-right coalition enjoyed a huge majority: 497 out of 577 seats. He called this election almost a year before he had to. As a result, he may spend the next five years of his seven-year presidential term 'cohabiting' with a left-wing prime minister and parliament.

There is still a chance that Chirac's allies could squeak in with a razor-thin majority in the second round of voting on June 1. We didn't get the word 'bourgeois' from the French by accident, and a lot of disillusioned conservative voters who abstained from the first round of voting on May 24 may turn out this Sunday now that the left is so close to winning.

That may save Chirac from 'cohabitation' -- but such a result virtually guarantees that a large part of the French population will soon take to the streets. Either way, the project for European economic and monetary union (EMU) is now in deep trouble.

So why are people so pleased to see Chirac get his comeuppance? Why do normally sensible analysts claim that stupid Chirac blundered in calling early elections, when the center- right's prospects would obviously have been even worse in an election next year? The concept of 'schadenfreude' leaps to mind.

'Schadenfreude' is a German word meaning joy in the misery of another, even if you don't benefit from it yourself. (Interesting which words English borrows from which languages, isn't it?). The sheer, selfless joy so many people feel at Chirac's humiliation is blinding them to the real reason he had to take his gamble.

The deadline for countries to meet the 'Maastricht criteria' and join the first wave of European Union members adopting a single currency in 1999 looms ever closer. To qualify, France must cut its budget deficit from 4.2 percent to a mere 3 percent by the end of this year. It would be an unthinkable blow to French pride to be left out -- but Chirac wasn't sure that he could bring the country, even his own parliamentary supporters, with him.

Like the last Conservative government in Britain, the center- right governing coalition in France contains many 'Eurosceptic' politicians who mistrust the grand plan for an economically unified Europe. They see it as the pet project of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and they don't believe it is politically feasible to make the spending cuts that would be needed for France to qualify.

Chirac's calculation was that if his coalition could win an early election, then the center-right's members of parliament, with five more years of guaranteed employment ahead of them, could be cajoled into voting for the cuts. Otherwise, facing parliamentary elections next year, they would refuse the jump -- or, if they did make the cuts, then the left would win next year and revoke them.

Chirac was seduced by polls that as recently as two months ago were predicting a comfortable center-right victory in a premature election this spring. But it wasn't a capricious gamble; moving the vote up a year was his best chance of escaping a truly dreadful dilemma next year. It just turned out to be too late already.

This means trouble in France, and trouble in Europe. No matter how the second round of voting came out yesterday, it has suddenly become clear that France is unlikely to meet the criteria for joining the single currency in 1999. Even a narrow center-right victory will confer no mandate to make the needed cuts, and any attempt to push them through will push the French into the streets.

And without France, EMU just isn't going to happen. At least, not on schedule and according to plan. Is this a bad thing?

Many on the left would argue that it is not. They support European unity, but not a plan for getting there that draws so heavily on right-wing economic thinking. There must, they say, be another way of doing it that isn't so hard on the workers. (Unemployment in France is already over 12 percent, and meeting the 'Maastricht criteria' would almost certainly send it even higher).

In theory, this may be true. In practice, Chancellor Kohl is probably the last German politician in this generation who can deliver his country into a real European union -- and he can only do that if he can reassure Germans that they are not giving up the rock-solid deutschmark for a less trustworthy 'euro'.

Without Germany, there is no possibility of a unified European economy. Without that, there is little chance that the European Union will ever develop the strength and confidence not only to treat Russia as a normal country, but to take the risk, when the Russian economy has fully recovered in ten or fifteen years, of admitting this economic giant into the European Union.

The long-term alternative is not apocalypse, but it is probably a less stable, less open, less prosperous Europe. And the short-term outlook in France is distinctly unappealing.

If the left wins control of parliament, then France faces five years of semi-paralysis as a socialist-led government wrestles with a right-wing president. And if the center-right pulls off a narrow victory, it may get very rough indeed.

The last time that happened was in 1967, when the French bourgeoisie turned out in full force in the second round to steal what looked like a victory for the left at the end of the first round. That was promptly followed by the violent upheavals of May, 1968, the closest thing to a full-scale revolution that France had seen in a hundred years.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the '68 upheavals in Paris, is now a member of the European Parliament for the German Green Party, but he still holds dual German-French citizenship, and he sees it all coming round again. "The worst thing that can happen is for Europe to be built in the way Chirac and Kohl have decided." he said recently. "We are going to have a third or fourth round in the streets of France this autumn."