Chirac Seeks to Defend Record in TV Address

President Jacques Chirac, the victim of such a calamitous drop in popularity that he is now distrusted by more than half of the French, went on television Thursday to try to convince his people that he is leading them in the right direction.

“We need to modernize, we need to adapt,” he said. “If we don’t want to understand that France has to adapt to its time, then, it is true--we have no chance to get her running again.”

In an innovative format intended to reassure viewers that the head of state worries about their daily preoccupations, five television personalities quizzed Chirac after presenting videotaped reports on the country’s many social and economic problems, from persistently high unemployment to growing violence in the schools.

“We have the impression that France has broken down. What are you doing to get it running again?” Emmanuel Chain, one of the television journalists, asked.

“France today must do two things. It must reaffirm its identity and adapt itself to its times,” Chirac said in the broadcast, which lasted for more than 2 1/4 hours.

Buffeted by a bewildering number of woes, from France’s uncertain position in a unified Europe to insecurity about their jobs and social status, a growing number of French have come to believe that these are bad times; a recent poll found that 70% of the French believe that they are worse off than before, the highest degree of discontent for a decade and a half.

“France is not bored; France is going through a depression,” Alain Duhamel, one of the country’s best-known political analysts, summed up in an interview.

At a time of such malaise, which has been mirrored in Chirac’s own rapidly sinking ratings, members of the president’s entourage told reporters that Thursday’s broadcast--Chirac’s first long appearance on TV since Bastille Day in July--was intended to highlight government actions and provide people with some reassuring benchmarks at a time of profound change.

“The goal of the operation is to show the French that there is a pilot in the plane,” Duhamel said.

Chirac met with his interviewers in a chandelier-lit hall at the Elysee Palace. He made few specific promises but said there would be a review of the scandal-plagued justice system, greater efforts to reduce joblessness among the young, which he said now affects 21% of the French between the ages of 16 and 25, and tax cuts.

The videotaped reports included testimony from one unemployed man who said he had rummaged in trash cans for food, young Frenchmen of Arab origin who see no future in the shabby suburban ghettos where they live and a woman who signs work contracts for periods as short as a single day because she cannot find other employment.

Chirac won election by vowing to work to heal the “social rift” between haves and have-nots in French society, and the lack of results since then has dismayed many. In June 1995, a month after his victory over Socialist Lionel Jospin, 59% of the French pronounced themselves “satisfied” with Chirac’s vision and leadership. But by last month, Chirac’s favorable rating in opinion polls had plummeted to 27%, a showing Le Monde newspaper called “a drop in confidence without precedent.”

The popularity rating of Chirac’s handpicked prime minister, Alain Juppe, is also poor--31% in recent polls. But the president on Thursday night brushed off increasingly frequent calls for a change in government. Juppe “is conducting a difficult and courageous policy,” Chirac said.

Juppe has kindled popular fury by proposing cuts in many of the benefits that the French had grown accustomed to. Chirac said he considered himself “guarantor and guardian” of the heavily subsidized French public health system but told citizens the major reason for France’s economic stagnation was the long-standing and oppressive taxes on business and investment.

Chirac repeatedly noted how difficult it was to change France; he recalled a strike last month by truck drivers, which paralyzed commerce and was only settled when the government intervened. “The truth is that we are in a country that is profoundly conservative and that it’s extremely hard to make things move. . . ,” Chirac said. “You have to have the will to keep going, and, believe me, I do.”