France's 'cohabitation' government showing strain

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French trade unions are beginning to mobilize against 12 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1986 PARIS-After five months in office, the government of newly elected Prime Minister Jacques Chirac is beginning to encounter its first difficulties. A series of important strikes have broken out in the naval yards and in the transportation, telecommunications, and public employees' sectors.

Chirac's "honeymoon" may be rapidly coming to an end. Already his popularity is declining in the public opinion polls, while that of French President Francois Mitterand is rising to its highest level ever.

Recently, Mitterand stated that he would not sign a proposal of the conservative Chirac cabinet that would authorize the sale of 65 state-owned businesses and banks to private buyers. The government of "co -habitation" between Mitterand and Chirac, which has been harmonious until now, is beginning to show signs of strain.

The political backdrop On March 16, 1986, a coalition of rightwing parties (the RPR, led by Chirac, and the UDF, led by former President Giscard D'Estaing) won the parliamentary elections by a very narrow margin. This majority in the National Assembly was reinforced by the election of 35 deputies of the extreme right-wing National Front.

The right-wing majority, which proposed Chirac as prime minister, has had to face a Socialist Party (SP) that emerged strengthened from the elections, having obtained 32 percent of the votes.

Despite Mitterand's record of bowing to the demands of the capitalists by im -plementing a highly unpopular austerity program, French workers still voted in their majority for the ruling Socialist Party. They feared that a return of the right-wing parties would signify a frontal assault on their standard of living and their hard-won gains.

The French Communist Party (CP) received only 10 percent of the votes, just slightly more than the extreme right-wing National Front.

The total of right-wing votes in April 1981 (on the first round of the presidential elections) was 14.3 million (out of 37.2 million registered voters, or 80 percent of the voters). In March 1986, the total rightwing vote was 15.2 million (out of 39 million registered voters, or 78 percent of the voters.) A section of the middle-class which had supported Mitterand in 1981 shifted to the right.

This is hardly an electoral sweep for the right wing-especially considering that voter abstention was highest in the working-class districts that traditionally vote for the SP and CP. These abstentions reflected the widespread discontent of the workers with the pro-capitalist policies of the "socialist" government.

French workers did not turn to the rightwing parties for a solution to their demands. They either voted for Mitterand to stop Chirac, or they abstained in protest-and for lack of a credible revolutionary alternative to the two major workers' parties.

Thus, the period opened in French politics with the defeat of Giscard D'Estaing in the 1981 elections has not been closed.

Chirac's austerity program

During his first five months in office, Chirac has hurriedly sought to apply the policies implemented in the United States and Great Britain by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Some of these measures have been signed into law by Mitterand.

Chirac's program is clear: Denationalize and privatize the bulk of the public sector. The targets of these measures are the postal service, the state-owned industries, the banks, the telecommunications sector, and the health and education systems.

CC QU austerity policies.

Symbolically, Chirac and his minister Leotard began this reactionary program by selling the oldest and most important of the three public TV stations.

This privatization, of course, will go hand in hand with the increased quest for capitalist profitability—meaning increased speedup, crosscrafting, job restructuring, and layoffs. The government decrees and laws are also aimed at undermining the Labor Code, the rights of the workers in the public sector, and the rights of the trade unions.

All of this is accompanied by highly repressive laws against immigrant workers and even more restrictive laws on national security.

Chirac and Leotard want less state intervention in the economy. For them this means fewer teachers, fewer doctors, more police, and more military personnel. They are introducing private beds in public hospitals. They are increasing public funding to private religious schools, thus undermining public education. And they are permitting the concentration of large private press and industrial consortiums.

Chirac also plans to eliminate public funding of abortion. Many leaders of the right-wing UDF-RPR coalition want to reestablish the death sentence.

So far Chirac has blocked wage increases, eliminated 18,000 jobs in the public sector (his goal is 40,000 jobs), and frozen social security payments. At the same time, he has lifted the tax on large fortunes.

This policy is not at all parallel to the policy carried out before by the left. Yesterday, the SP and the CP in the government made major concessions to the right wing and to the bosses. Chirac, for Corstr capitalist his part, is not making workers and to the left.

Yesterday, the left pursued a policy of class collaboration. Today Chirac is carrying out a class war. Yesterday, the left did not keep its promises to the workers. Chirac, today, is keeping his promises to the bosses.

Chirac's goal is first and foremost to consolidate and strengthen his majority. He hopes to get rid of Mitterand and to remain in power for nine years. He has announced this publicly.

But will he able to accomplish these aims?

Nothing has been decided on this score. The working class, by removing Giscard in 1981, gained an important victory and, at least during the first year of Mitterand's presidency, obtained new gains. These included the 39-hour week, retirement at age 60, a fifth week of paid vacation, an increase of the lowest wages, funding for abortion, the abolition of the death sentence, and democratic rights for women.

But since late 1982, the successive left governments reversed gears and began implementing a capitalist austerity plan which included the closure of steel and metal industries in France's Northeast, attacks on the rights of immigrant workers, and the erosion of much of the social legislation won during the 1930s and '40s.

In fact, it was these austerity measures that actually eroded the SP and CP's working-class support, thereby paving the way for the right-wing parties to win the, 1986 parliamentary elections.

But the working class' capacity to respond to the attacks by Chirac should not be underestimated.

Emerging fightback

A spectacular and united strike of the subway workers in Paris broke out when the government fired a director who refused to lay off the workers. This was followed soon after by a mass strike of the railroad workers, and then of the public employees and the postal workers.

There has been growing opposition-and even mobilizations-among the workers at the "TF1" TV station against the government's privatization plan. The workers are looking for a way to stop Chirac now. Unfortunately, the SP and the CP don't appear to be interested in this task.

The social-democratic SP leaders explain that the "cohabitation" between Chirac and Mitterand must be allowed to continue to the end. They say that the workers must "fully go through the experience of the right wing" and that "Chirac must not be destabilized." These positions are not only demobilizing, they are suicidal.

Chirac and his narrow capitalist government majority have been carrying out a reactionary assault on the workers. If unchallenged, they could end up modifying the relationship of class forces in France for some time. If Mitterand doesn't provide the leadership to stop Chirac and put an end to the "cohabitation," he will be totally compromised and discredited The French CP leadership affirms that "France has massively shifted to the right" and that all of this is the fault of the Socialist Party. Every day L'Humanite, the CP daily newspaper, denounces both Chirac and Mitterand in the same manner. In the event of early presidential elections, it is not clear that the CP would support Mitterand on the second round of the elections, as it did in 1981.

The CP's policy of division, together with the wait-and-see attitude of the SP, risks playing into the hands of Chirac. These policies stand in the way of a united fightback of the French workers.

What will be the outcome of the inevitable confrontation between the wor -kers and the government?

One thing is certain: Time is on Chirac's side. If Chirac is able to hold out and apply his anti-working class program with the tacit consent of Mitterand, he will have increased his chances of winning the coming 1988 presidential elections. The idea put forward by the SP that public opinion will spontaneously move to the left in the face of Chirac's attacks is false.

Without a struggle at the workplace and in the factories against the austerity measures, without an organized fightback, without SP-CP unity, without trade-union unity, it is highly likely that Mitterand will lose. A new defeat for the SP would be a defeat for the CP, for the entire union movement, and for the working class as a whole.

This is why the "cohabitation" of Mitterand-Chirac must be denounced. This is why the call for unity of the workers' parties and trade unions is decisive to stop Chirac. This is why all struggles and strikes in defense of the public employees' jobs and against all the reactionary decrees and laws must converge with the demand to defeat Chirac at once.

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ALEC L4° International Viewpoint (DR)