Chirac Seeks Way to Overtake Mitterrand

Premier Jacques Chirac met with his closest lieutenants Monday to map out a campaign for the difficult task of mustering enough support to defeat President Francois Mitterrand in the final round of the French presidential election.

Although a columnist for Le Figaro, the conservative Paris newspaper that supports Chirac fervently, wrote that French rightists “have no reason to look on the game as lost,” most political analysts were skeptical about Chirac’s chances. Two polls predicted that the 71-year-old Mitterrand, a Socialist, would defeat Chirac, a 55-year-old conservative, easily in the May 8 runoff, by 55% to 45% in one case, by 53% to 47% in the other.

The problem for Chirac is a delicate one. Although he led the rightist candidates in the first round of voting Sunday, his total of 19.9% was far behind Mitterrand’s 34.1% and, even more humiliating, amounted to the lowest ever scored in a first round by the top conservative presidential candidate since direct elections of French presidents began in 1965.

To defeat Mitterrand, Chirac must amass votes from the supporters of the two right-wing candidates who finished just behind him: Raymond Barre (16.6%), a moderate, professorial former premier, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, an extremist former paratrooper who whips up feelings against immigrants. But Barre and Le Pen are so different that it is hard to imagine a Chirac campaign that would appeal to the supporters of one without alienating the others.

Le Pen, in fact, quickly bristled at remarks made by Barre when he endorsed Chirac for the runoff soon after the returns of the first round on Sunday came in. Barre, speaking with Chirac at his side, called on the premier to defend “an open and tolerant society that refuses xenophobia, racism and all extremes.”

In a television interview Monday, Le Pen said that Barre, by endorsing Chirac with those remarks, had offered the premier “a hand in the shape of a cobra.”

Le Pen, who shocked politicians and analysts by winning 14.4% of the vote, the highest score ever achieved by him or his party, was the obvious spoiler in the election. There is little doubt that Minister of Culture Francois Leotard, a Barre supporter now campaigning for Chirac, had Le Pen in mind when he told reporters, “France woke up today with a hangover.”

But at least one politician, Mitterrand, showed no signs of any hangover as he flew, as scheduled, to the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe for two days. Mitterrand, while campaigning, could bask in both the sun and the adulation there. The total vote of Martinique and Guadeloupe is too meager to be decisive in a presidential election; only 200,000 islanders voted in the first round. But well over 50% of them voted for Mitterrand.

After conferring with his Cabinet, Chirac agreed to meet Mitterrand in a televised debate Thursday. Only a few days ago, the premier had objected to that date as too early for a debate. But once the first round returns came in, Chirac, obviously in need of something dramatic to transform his fortunes quickly, changed his mind and accepted the date.

A great deal of attention focused on Le Pen, 59, who says he will announce at a rally in Paris on Sunday what he wants his supporters to do in the runoff. This has naturally led to speculation that there might be negotiations between Le Pen and Chirac this week.

But Chirac, according to his spokesman, Alan Juppe, told a meeting of members of his Cabinet that “there are not going to be any negotiations with anybody because that is naturally not in the spirit of a presidential election.”

In any case, many pollsters and political analysts insist that perhaps half of Le Pen’s supporters will abstain or vote for Mitterrand in the second round no matter what Le Pen tells them.