What's next for France?

What's Next for France?

IN THE fastest turnaround permitted by the constitution, the people of France will troop back to the polls on June 5 and June 12 to choose a new Chamber of Deputies. Francois Mitterrand, emboldened by his smashing victory over Jacques Chirac a month ago, hopes, if not to get a majority of deputies in the New assembly, at least to swell the Socialist ranks so that it will be the dominant party in the new legislature.

President Mitterrand's first gesture upon re-election was conciliatory. He chose as prime minister Michel Rocard--a Socialist, but not a socialist. He beleives in the free market and was highly critical of the socialist nostrums Mitterrand tried following his election in 1981 but, after two disastrous years, abandoned. "Efficiency and flexibility come only from the market," Rocard told the Wall Street Journal in a recent in-depth interview. With Rocard, Mitterrand hoped to forge an alliance with French centrists, the group headed by former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. But those overtures were rejected; center politicians were not ready to enter a coalition government that would leave their erstwhile ally Jacques Chirac and his Gaullist Rally for the Republic in the lurch, in opposition along with the minuscule Communist Party on the left and the boisterous and irresponsible Le Penistes on the far right.

So Francois Mitterrand is taking his case back to the people. France voted for Mitterrand in May not because he was a Socialist but because he offered the country tranquility and continuity, government without tension; because, too, it no longer feared a popular front with the Communists. It's a gamble. Will Mitterrand's diluted neo-socialism translate into votes for individual Socialist candidates?