A Socialist whimper

Jacques Chirac, with an eye on history and his feet on desperation, wanted a new elan''. He didn't say new mandate. Sunday's snap electio...

Jacques Chirac, with an eye on history and his feet on desperation, wanted a 8220;new elan8221;. He didn8217;t say new mandate. Sunday8217;s snap election to the National Assembly didn8217;t give him either. Rather, a Socialist who doesn8217;t have either the elan of a Tony Blair or the grandeur of a Mitterrand has led his backward-looking party to a first-round upset victory.

A big-yawn election has produced a result of marginal protest. It has happened because there continues to be a big gap between Chirac8217;s idealism and popular realism. Does it mean that the French in general are in no mood to go along with Chirac8217;s European trip? After all, he is one of those rare Gaullists who would like to be as European as Helmut Kohl of Germany.

This election was his secret weapon to trim the bloated welfare state the privileges of which were in constant struggle with the Maastricht-born supranationalism. It was also a referendum nobody said so, interestingly on the single European currency euro. But France will qualify on time, along with Germany, for the euro only if it reduces the deficit.

And that cannot be achieved without the Fifth Republic shedding the accumulated fat of social security. Chirac and his Prime Minister, Alain Juppe, were hoping to do the unpopular with a popular mandate 8220;with a single voice, and a strong one8221;. The first-round non punctures Chirac8217;s dream but it reveals a Gallic paradox as well.

Though Europe necessitated the election, the vote was not about Europe. It was about unemployment. Lionel Jospin8217;s Socialists, whose chief ally is an unreconstructed Communist party, have an answer, but it is, in today8217;s Socialist standards, rather pre-historic. Privatisation, no; subsidy, yes; public sector, yes 8212; the French Socialists are anti-market, and such a position can hardly serve the cause of employment. France is saddled with Western Europe8217;s biggest public sector.

It requires an extra dash of political elan to tame this holy cow. Jospin may have succeeded in tapping the popular disillusion, but his answers 700,000 jobs, mostly in public sector are too comical to dispel it. Even on European integration and France8217;s place in the world, the Socialists are hopelessly Socialist: renegotiations over the euro, and a veto against military co-operation with NATO. Tony Blair was certainly a wrong aphrodisiac for Jospin, for the British socialist had won the election by espousing market socialism.

The second round can still redeem the situation. If Chirac wants to avoid a debilitating cohabitation with the Socialists, he will have to come out with words that carry conviction. Cohabitation ensures nothing but stagnation. Chirac8217;s wrongly demonised Prime Minister has already offered to resign. Such an unsolicited sacrifice can be electorally beneficial only if Chirac calls the Socialist bluff.

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He will have to step out of the holy tenets of French Conservatism which is still wary of globalisation and economic liberalism. He will have to convince the disillusioned that subsidies and protection will only make France a financially sick nation. Jacques Chirac could still provide a 8220;new elan8221; to the second bout on the next Sunday. France as well as Europe require his freedom at this moment. It is for him to match his history-seeking ambition with ground-breaking slogans.