French Premier Shuffles Cabinet, Adds 2 Ex-Rivals

With large sections of the state bureaucracy against him, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin vigorously shook up his government Monday, bringing in two Socialist heavyweights who were once his overt critics and rivals.

Former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, 53, longtime challenger to Jospin for mastery of the party, was named to the powerful post of finance and economics minister. Jack Lang, 60, a showboat who personifies the “caviar gauche [left]” that the austere Jospin professes to hate, will head the Education Ministry, a post Lang held in 1992-93.

In addition, Jospin added a fourth member of the Communist Party and a second member of the Greens to his Cabinet.

The extensive shuffle appeared designed to cement the unity of the Socialist-led government and provide Jospin a more politically savvy Cabinet as he prepares for elections in 2002, when it is assumed that he will be the left’s candidate for president.

TV commentators said Jospin’s desire seemed to be to hone the government’s instincts to better detect political goofs before making them. By increasing the Cabinet’s ideological diversity, Jospin also evidently hoped to mute the sniping and infighting that have been plaguing the French left. One issue is how to spend an expected $7-billion revenue windfall this year, the fruits of increased economic growth.

Jospin, in office since June 1997, said the revamped government’s priorities will continue to be “growth and employment for more justice.”

But one major concern for the Socialists has become retaining the loyalty of the politically active civil service. It was the failure of Jospin’s center-right predecessor, Alain Juppe, to do that that helped make his government one of the most unpopular in French history.

Lang, an associate of the late President Francois Mitterrand who once dismissed the unglamorous Jospin as a “loser,” takes the education portfolio from a longtime Jospin friend, Claude Allegre. Allegre’s abrasive, aloof style contributed to a near revolt by schoolteachers and university professors. In his most notorious remark, Allegre likened the state-run education system, the largest employer in France and the biggest spender of government money, to a “mammoth” and said it was time to put it on a diet.

Lang’s main political task will be to win back the loyalty of the country’s 800,000 teachers, normally a dependable bloc of left-of-center voters. A popular former minister of culture, Lang had been campaigning to be Socialist candidate for mayor of Paris but announced Monday that he was withdrawing. That also should suit Jospin, since possession of the Paris City Hall makes the holder an independent power in French politics.

Fabius is returning to the executive branch after becoming the youngest prime minister in French history at 37 in 1984.

A decade ago, Fabius challenged Jospin for control of the Socialist Party apparatus and ultimately lost. Since 1997, he has been speaker of the National Assembly, the more important house of the bicameral legislature, but had grown so weary of the job that he angled unsuccessfully this year for the presidency of the International Monetary Fund.

Fabius has become a vocal champion of lowering France’s tax burden. Last year, the state’s cut reached record levels, as 45.6% of French national wealth was taken by the government in taxes and contributions to health insurance and other social programs.

Fabius replaces Christian Sautter, a bland technocrat propelled into the limelight five months ago when Jospin’s original finance and economics minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, resigned because he was the target of a corruption probe.

When Sautter attempted a reorganization of his ministry to streamline the tax service, employees went on strike throughout France, paralyzing the system so completely that taxpayers were given an additional 15 days to file their annual returns.

Jospin canceled the reorganization plan, disavowing Sautter in the process. He also coolly cut the ground out from under Allegre, who wanted to reform the education system without spending more money.