Analysis : Old Doubts Resurface in France About Chirac : Premier’s Policies Seen as Weak in Wake of Student Protests, Transport Strike

The late Georges Pompidou, while president of France more than 15 years ago, said that Jacques Chirac faced a major problem--”growing up.”

Now Chirac is 54 and premier of France for the second time, but the same question hovers over him. In a political sense, has he matured enough to win the presidency of France in 1988?

Until this month, the answer seemed obvious. Chirac was riding high. It had become more and more evident that, under the strange double executive system of France, that he, not President Francois Mitterrand, was running the country. Chirac projected a dynamic image, a leader who, whether you agreed with him or not, got things done. The polls showed that he had a reasonable chance of winning the presidency in 1988, a position that would assume its old omnipotence if his conservative coalition controlled both the Parliament and the presidency.

But everything seemed to unravel when several hundred thousand university students early this month surprised the Chirac government with mass demonstrations against its university reform bill.

Failed to Gauge Protest

Chirac looked stubborn, foolish, maladroit and weak as he failed to gauge the intensity of the protest, unleashed police power on the students, hesitated and blustered, and finally, after a student died following a police beating, gave in to the demands and withdrew the bill.

The old doubts about Chirac quickly returned. Chirac, in his younger days, had been derided as a bulldozer who forged ahead without thinking, and many began to wonder if he had really changed.

Mitterrand, a Socialist, fueled the doubts with a condescending assessment during a radio interview. “Chirac has many good qualities,” Mitterrand said. “But I would prefer that they were put to use in the right place at the right time.”

Smarting under such criticism, Chirac, in the closing days of the year, has tried to stem the sudden tide against him and regain momentum. His refusal to give in to the railroad workers who crippled train travel throughout France during the Christmas holidays was part of the new Chirac strategy. This Chirac campaign is sure to intensify in the new year.

Two Goals in Mind

Chirac obviously has two goals in mind. He wants to project the image once more of a dynamic leader on the move, and he wants to shore up his support among right-wing voters who, judging by the parliamentary elections of last March and polls since then, are now the majority. A dynamic image plus solid support on the right would--according to the Chirac strategy--propel him into the presidency in 1988.

The goals have two obvious snares. The quest for dynamism can make Chirac seem stubborn instead of supple, and the voters may not really be as right-wing as they seem. Many analysts believe, in fact, that French voters, despite the March elections and the polls since then, have turned their backs on ideology. According to this view, they prefer the center rather than the right or left.

If so, Chirac, instead of shoring up rightist support with conservative stances, ought to be moving both himself and his most vocal right-wing militants toward the center.

Lost Control of Situation

The snares trapped Chirac in the student demonstrations. At first, Chirac refused to withdraw the university bill because he did not want to look weak and did not want to anger his right-wing militants by yielding to what they regarded as leftist pressure in the streets. In the end, he lost control of the situation, gave in to the students, and looked both weak and incompetent.

Chirac found a chance to recover from the student humiliations and act tough in the strikes that crippled transportation and dampened the Christmas holidays.

Union troubles began in mid-December when Mitterrand vetoed a Cabinet decree on hours for workers. The decree would have allowed employers to increase the hours of a worker without paying overtime so long as the average working week for the year as a whole remained at 39 hours.

Chirac, who has the votes to push almost anything through the National Assembly, could then have let the issue slide until the beginning of the 1987 session of the assembly next April. Instead, in an unprecedented parliamentary maneuver, he tacked the decree as an amendment to another piece of legislation and rammed it through the National Assembly without debate a few hours before the 1986 session ended. Mitterrand could do nothing about that; he can briefly delay bills passed by the Parliament but he cannot veto them.

Union Leaders Antagonized

The maneuver made Chirac seem dynamic, but it also antagonized the main union federations of France on the eve of some labor disputes in government-run corporations. Andre Bergeron, who is regarded as the most moderate of French union leaders, warned, “This precipitous action is dangerous, especially since it comes at a moment when conflicts in the public sector have burst out a little everywhere.”

The conflicts then erupted into a strike that crippled rail transportation throughout the country and into a parallel strike that paralyzed subway travel in the metropolitan Paris area. The strikes infuriated vacationers blocked from their resorts and Paris merchants who found few customers in their shops on the last two days of the Christmas shopping season.

In a show of firmness, Chirac made sure that the government-owned rail and subway corporations would resist the demands of the workers. He obviously believed that the fury of vacationers and merchants would be directed at the unions and the leftist parties rather than at the Chirac government and its ruling conservative coalition. But he could be wrong.

Difficult Campaigning Seen

In either case, the strikes of 1986 made it clear that France is entering a difficult year of presidential campaigning.

There are many candidates, but two pose the most danger for Chirac. All polls show that Mitterrand, if he chose to run again, would probably defeat Chirac handily. Chirac passed the word to associates recently that, from now on, his government will start attacking Mitterrand whenever it feels the president is championing leftist causes rather that acting as an arbiter above politics.

Chirac’s second most dangerous rival is former Premier Raymond Barre, a conservative who opposed Chirac’s decision to cooperate with a Socialist president in the double executive system that most French call “cohabitation.”

Barre has not spoken out very much in recent months but plans to do so on national television during the first week of the new year. Most analysts believe that Barre has been emboldened by Chirac’s wounds from the student protests.