Tiff Compounds Problems for French Socialists : Two Young Leaders Jostle Publicly for Key Role in Parliamentary Elections

The governing French Socialist Party, which opinion polls show is already in trouble in parliamentary elections scheduled next March, has compounded its problems in recent days with the spectacle of a public ideological and personal battle between two of the party’s young leaders.

At issue are the nature and future of French socialism. Premier Laurent Fabius, 38, and party General Secretary Lionel Jospin, 47, are arguing about whether to move the party toward the center or keep it officially on the left. On top of this, each is insisting on personally leading the Socialist election campaign.

Ideological Tone

While there is a strong ideological tone to the debate, there is obviously a personal struggle as well between two top, politically appealing Socialists--each of whom may have his eye on running for the presidency in 1988 or later.

The French centrist and conservative parties--who hope to wrest control of the National Assembly from the Socialists in the next elections--are enjoying the troubles on the left. Raymond Barre, a former premier who is often in notable disagreement with other conservative leaders, called the Socialist struggle “a spaghetti Western in CinemaScope.”

Many analysts are puzzled by President Francois Mitterrand’s attitude toward the argument. He refused at first to say anything. A leader of great political skill, the 68-year-old Mitterrand may simply have felt that the time was ripe for the two young Socialist leaders to cut each other down to size.

Then, last week, insisting he was speaking as a citizen not as president, Mitterrand told a group of French journalists he believed that in the Fabius-Jospin argument “one is right, and the other is too.”

Mitterrand said that both men have leadership roles to perform in the forthcoming legislative campaign--Fabius as premier is the leader of the “majority” and Jospin as first secretary is the leader of the Socialists, who are “the framework” of the majority.

The president’s distinction, however, seemed out of date. In 1981, the Communists joined the Socialists in electing Mitterrand and taking control of the National Assembly through a coalition of the left. But the Communists withdrew their support last year, and Fabius’ assembly “majority” is now made up almost entirely of Socialists.

A political analyst for the influential newspaper Le Monde concluded that Mitterrand’s comments “were sufficiently balanced to be interpreted in several perfectly contradictory ways.”

There had been obvious differences of opinion between Fabius and Jospin before, but the current troubles began June 14, when Fabius addressed a political rally in Marseilles. The premier’s aides billed the rally as the start of the long parliamentary electoral campaign for the Socialists. In a newspaper interview, Fabius described himself as both “chief of the government and of the majority.”

Fabius has been a popular premier in his year in office. He created a good deal of excitement a few months ago when television cameras filmed him boarding a French supersonic jet fighter for a demonstration.

Fabius is looked on as pragmatic rather than ideological, and he believes that the Socialists have no future as a party unless they start appealing to voters in the political center.

Offers New Slogan

With this in mind during the Marseilles rally, he invoked his new slogan for France, “Modernize and rally together”--a phrase designed to appeal to the less ideological, to many centrists. Under a newly introduced system of proportional representation, some analysts believe that the Socialists could hold on to at least some share of power if they try to form a coalition with legislators from the center.

Jospin made clear his displeasure with the Marseilles speech in the next few days, citing Fabius’ assumption of leadership of the party campaign and Fabius’ less than ideological appeal.

Jospin, a former basketball player whose popularity surged in the polls a few months ago when he sang a popular song on a television show, has been general secretary of the party since 1981, when his predecessor, Mitterrand, was elected president of France.

Jospin was one of the architects of the alliance with the Communists that finally vaulted Mitterrand to power after more than two decades of trying. The president has a longer lease on political life than do lawmakers of his party; under constitution of the Fifth Republic, his seven-year term runs to 1988, regardless of who may control the National Assembly.

Quarrel Intensifies

On June 22, Jospin intensified the quarrel with Fabius by issuing a public letter to the executive committee of the party threatening to quit unless he leads the Socialist electoral campaign. “My mandate as (party) secretary is in your hands,” he said, asking the committee to settle the matter at its next meeting this Saturday.

Jospin said that, rather than appeal to the center, the party must maintain its strong leftist stance. Now that the Communist Party has withdrawn from the government coalition, he said, the Socialists should try to draw individual Communist voters with a leftist platform.

On top of this, Jospin insisted that the Socialist Party is “sovereign”--independent of the government even though the government is run by Socialists--and that the party, not the government, has the right to run the election campaign.

Many Socialists are looking for a stronger signal from Mitterrand than his comments that both Fabius and Jospin are right. They want Mitterrand to force the two younger men to settle their argument well before the next party congress in October.

No matter who leads the electoral campaign, however, the prospects for a party victory in the 1986 National Assembly elections are poor.

A recent survey by Sofres, a highly regarded French polling organization, reported that the Socialists would win only 23% of the vote if elections were held now. In general, Sofres said, the right and center parties would lead the leftist parties by 60% to 36%, with environmentalists taking the remaining 4%.