French Socialist Tries to Swat Away Defeat : Elections: Ex-premier’s local mosquito record may drive constituents to dump him. Polls show they won’t be alone in rejecting the ruling party.

Poor Michel Rocard. After battling for years in the political trenches, rising to the lofty post of premier of France and emerging as the leading Socialist Party candidate for president in 1995, Rocard suddenly finds his future riding on the gossamer wings of mosquitoes.

The trouble is, say folks who live in the Seine River suburbs west of Paris where Rocard is a candidate for Parliament in Sunday’s national elections, the common mosquito is much too common here, driving citizens to fits of pique and frustration during summer. And many think that Rocard, in his secondary capacity as mayor of Conflans-Ste.-Honorine, has done nothing about it.

As a result of this biting issue and a more general public dissatisfaction with the governing Socialist Party, polls show Rocard--the favorite on the left to replace retiring French President Francois Mitterrand in 1995--behind in his race against a motorcycle-riding, neighboring mayor, Pierre Cardo, for the relatively minor position of deputy in the French National Assembly.

And if Rocard, 62, loses in the Assembly?

“He’s finished,” said Charles Pasqua, conservative leader of the Gaullist Rally for the Republic party and one of several opposition leaders who have come here in recent days to help the Cardo campaign.

But Jean-Paul Huchon, a trusted political adviser who served as chief of staff during Rocard’s three-year stint as premier from 1989 to 1991, countered: “If Michel Rocard loses, it will be part of a huge Socialist defeat in the elections. He will remain the top candidate for president. There are no other leaders of his stature on the left.”

In Sunday’s first round of parliamentary elections, polls show a coalition of moderate right-wing parties routing the governing Socialists. The most recent polls show the combined candidates of the Rally for the Republic and the Union for French Democracy parties winning as many as 420 of 577 seats available by the time the second round of voting is completed March 28.

In the most recent parliamentary election, in 1988, the Socialists won 37.5% of the vote, enough for 262 seats. That fell short of a majority, but the Socialists have ruled comfortably for five years with help from members of the French Communist Party who side with them on key votes.

This time, however, most surveys indicate that the Socialists will be lucky to survive with 100 seats. Despite the almost certain, overwhelming defeat of his party, Mitterrand has vowed to remain in office for the remaining two years of his term, setting up a politically schizophrenic “cohabitation” rule, in which the head of state and parliamentary government represent rival political forces.

“Mitterrand will stay for the very last drop,” said Franz-Olivier Giesbert, editor of the conservative Figaro newspaper and a Mitterrand biographer.

A cohabitation government is not new or even particularly unappealing to the French. Another recent poll in Figaro found 57% of voters resigned to a two-headed political state. An element of the French public enjoys the sometimes comic spectacle of rival, high-profile leaders operating under a constitution that does not clearly delineate the distribution of power in several key areas, including foreign affairs.

But Cohabitation II is likely to be a much rockier political marriage than what Mitterrand endured with Gaullist Premier Jacques Chirac in 1986-88, when the right held only a four-seat majority in the National Assembly.

Pressure will be greater than ever for Mitterrand, 76, already the longest-serving French ruler since Napoleon III, to step down. His treatment for prostate cancer, diagnosed last year, gives him an acceptable medical excuse to depart early.

But Mitterrand insists that he will remain to protect “social benefits” gained for the French in his 12 years of power and to allow his struggling Socialist colleagues to rally for the 1995 presidential vote after their expected disastrous defeat at the polls the next two Sundays.

Rocard is not the only prominent Socialist candidate in trouble going into the parliamentary elections. But more than any other, the faltering campaign of Rocard west of Paris has come to symbolize just how badly the once-proud Socialist Party is faring during the awkward fin de regne of Mitterrand, who created the modern party in 1971.

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Rocked by charges of corruption and mismanagement, the Socialists are a nearly spent political force. The latest-breaking scandal touched current Premier Pierre Beregovoy. A modest-living, self-educated family man, Beregovoy, popular among left- and right-wing voters, was generally believed to be beyond reproach.

But he recently admitted taking an interest-free $180,000 loan from the late French businessman Roger-Patrice Pelat, a Mitterrand intimate charged in French court with making millions of dollars from illegal insider trading involving the state-owned packaging firm, Pechiney.

In an attempt to pick up the pieces, Rocard recently suggested a “Big Bang” program that would blow up the old party structure and give birth to a renovated party made up of surviving Socialists, ecologists and progressive Communists. As the Economist noted in a recent article, the Rocard call for political reform in a Feb. 18 speech at Montlouis-sur-Loire, near Tours, was the political equivalent of Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s famous line during World War I: “My center is giving way, my right is in retreat. Situation excellent, I attack!”

But for Rocard to maintain the momentum of his charge, he must first win election in the 7th parliamentary district of France that includes Conflans-Ste.-Honorine. To do that, he must persuade voters that he is willing to do something about mosquitoes, as well as traffic and other local issues that preoccupy residents.

Unaccustomed to stumping in minor election battles, Rocard looked weary and depressed as he appeared before 150 voters at a late-night rally in Meulan, one of the larger towns in the district. Several times in the voter question-answer session, he confused the name of the town with Conflans-Ste.-Honorine, where he has been mayor since 1977. In France, politicians often hold positions at several levels of government, usually including mayor of a town.

At the end of the meeting, he declined to talk with reporters, saying he was exhausted.

Meanwhile, his opponent, Cardo, 43, mayor of nearby Chanteloup-les-Vignes, has scored points by demonstrating his detailed knowledge of traffic and potential solutions to the seemingly eternal bottlenecks on the nearby highway most residents take to Paris.

Rocard aides in the district have been forced onto the defensive. Although he denies that it will be a determining factor in the election, Rocard campaign communications director Laurent Sacchi admits there is a serious mosquito problem, caused by mild winters, the convergence of two main rivers--the Seine and Oise--in the district and the presence of one of the country’s largest water treatment plants.

“We have people who report getting more than 40 or 50 bites,” Sacchi said.

Sacchi said Rocard has a plan to attack the mosquitoes when breeding season starts in April.

But Cardo, a pipe-smoking personnel specialist at a nearby automobile factory, said April is not soon enough. “People are right to blame politicians who aren’t doing enough,” Cardo said. “To me, it’s an urgent issue.”