Launches Early Start on Election Drives : Mitterrand Seeks to Boost Personal and Party Appeal

For almost four years, no one in France had seen President Francois Mitterrand stump and shout before cheering thousands. This weekend, though, he suddenly did just that. Now, all France knows it is caught in an election campaign.

The next elections for the National Assembly are more than a year away, and the next presidential elections are more than three years away. Yet almost every major newspaper in France has described Mitterrand’s speech Friday night in the sports arena of Rennes, the main city of Brittany in western France, as the unofficial start of an electoral campaign.

The speech was less significant for its content than for its setting, staging and tone. For an hour and 40 minutes Mitterrand, rarely looking at his notes, spoke about the problems of France, the glory of France, and the place of France in a united Europe.

The arena, packed with 10,000 faithful who had been gathered there by the president’s Socialist Party, was bedecked in French flags and smart, political banners in the style of a political rally. “Francois, count on us,” said one.

Mitterrand, whose standing in the polls is the lowest of any president since the beginning of the Fifth French Republic in 1958, was professorial, emotional, and sometimes pleading as he described the situation in France and its promise for the future.

Mitterrand’s day in Rennes also made clear the slogan that will mark the president’s campaign. A quotation of his was featured on posters announcing the rally: “I believe in a France that triumphs.”

That slogan was echoed throughout the day. One of the banners in the arena proclaimed, “We Are the France That Triumphs.” When Mitterrand toured a computer plant in the afternoon, the employees presented him with a music box that, when the lid was lifted, echoed with the voice of Mitterrand saying, “I believe in a France that triumphs.”

Mitterrand did not repeat the slogan in his speech, but almost every line was infused with the theme. He told the thousands of cheering Socialists that they must not abandon policies simply because they are unpopular. “You must persevere when you are sure that you have taken the right road,” he said.

In a way, it was a strange partisan speech. Mitterrand never used the word Socialist. Instead, he talked about France as a whole and its need to modernize in order to triumph on world markets. The President clearly plans to occupy the middle ground in the campaign.

It is clear that the Socialists would lose their majority in the National Assembly if the legislative elections were held now. Mitterrand has obviously decided that he must enter the campaign to try to revive Socialist hopes.

This, as the Rennes speech showed, will require an enormous change in his recent style. Since his election in 1981, Mitterrand has acted in the French tradition of a president somewhat aloof and above the fray. He has spoken often on television and made innumerable speeches throughout the country. However, only small groups were present for these speeches, and his television appearances have always been low-keyed and intellectual.

The first notices on his reversion to his campaign style of 1981 were mixed and partisan. Liberation, a Paris newspaper that often supports him, said that Mitterrand had “recovered his punch of yesteryear.” But Christine Clerc of the rightist Figaro in Paris opened her column with the sarcastic comment, “What sweet perfume of nostalgia!”