Broadly Based Rule Promised by Mitterrand : At 2nd Inauguration, He Says He Will Offer Posts to Non-Socialists

Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, promising once more to rule with a broadly based government and program acceptable to the vast majority of this country’s citizens, was inaugurated Saturday for a second seven-year term as president of France.

Invoking what has become the fashionable political code word of ouverture, or opening, Mitterrand’s conciliatory words indicated that he intends to offer Cabinet posts to prominent non-Socialists, no matter what the outcome of the June 5 and 12 parliamentary elections is.

According to most polls, Mitterrand’s Socialists, who lost their majority in the National Assembly two years ago, are now on their way to an overwhelming victory. A poll in the news weekly Le Point estimated Saturday that the Socialists and their closest allies would take 410 of the assembly’s 577 seats; other polls give the Socialists about 350 seats.

Simple Ceremony

Mitterrand, 71, was inaugurated in the festival hall of the Elysee Palace in a simple, solemn ceremony that contrasted greatly with the festivities of his first inauguration seven years ago.

On May 21, 1981, Mitterrand led a joyous parade of Socialists down the Champs Elysees to the tomb of the unknown soldier at the Arch of Triumph and then on to the Pantheon, the mausoleum of French heroes. There, he lay flowers at the tomb of Jean Moulin, a World War II Resistance leader who was slain by Nazi Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie; Jean Jaures, a legendary French Socialist leader before World War I; and Victor Shoelcher, a 19th-Century leftist politician who fought for abolition of slavery in the colonies and steadfastly opposed Emperor Napoleon III.

But the mood was far different Saturday. Mitterrand obviously did not want to celebrate his decisive defeat of then-Premier Jacques Chirac, the conservative candidate in the May 8 presidential election, as a leftist victory.

200 Guests

Robert Badinter, the president of the constitutional council, officially confirmed the election returns and proclaimed Mitterrand president. Gen. Andre Biard, grand chancellor of the French Legion of Honor, then presented Mitterrand with a ceremonial collar that is worn by all presidents in their function as grand master of the legion. Mitterrand spoke for a few minutes, shook the hands of almost 200 guests, including novelist Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu, and then walked outside the palace to review the troops of his Republican Guard. The ceremonies took no more than 30 minutes.

In his brief speech, Mitterrand said his victory showed that “the immense majority of French wanted to gather together all the forces that believe in the values of the French republic.”

Mitterrand noted that he had been unable to persuade representatives of all such forces to join his new government in the first few days after the presidential election because of several factors, including hesitations, delays and competitiveness, but “I intend to persevere.” The president pledged to make dialogue his priority and to ensure that “the general interest of the French prevails over the private and partisan interests.”

“Count on me,” he said.

‘Constructive Opposition’

Mitterrand and his new Socialist premier, Michel Rocard, were unable to persuade any prominent centrist to join the new government in the first days after the election. After supporting Chirac for so long, it struck many centrists as unseemly to rush so quickly to the other side. Centrists instead promised to serve in a “constructive opposition”--supporting some legislation that they liked but rejecting others.

But Mitterrand and Rocard felt that this would give the centrists a kind of sword of Damocles in a conservative-controlled assembly. They would be able to join the rightists in throwing out the Rocard government whenever they felt like it. That was unacceptable to the Socialists, and Mitterrand, instead of accepting a “constructive opposition,” dissolved the assembly and called new parliamentary elections that are expected to give the Rocard government a majority.

Many conservatives have denounced the dissolution of the assembly as a betrayal of Mitterrand’s campaign promise to rule with a government that encompassed more than leftists. But most analysts believe that Mitterrand, as he indicated in his brief address, will call centrists into his government once the parliamentary elections are over. This time, in the view of many analysts, the centrists will heed the call.