France's 'socialist' Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, is certainly good at one thing. Nailing the lid on the coffin of the French Socialist Party France's least ecades, appears incapable of openins ner mout was losing the Socialists a few more points in the pous. ow a major victory for the far right Front atonal looks almost certain in the coming local elections.
Debacle
The latest of Cresson's spectacular botch-jobs has been the Astaire babache, Ine simple facts might lead you to the conplete non-event. But Cresson's skill managed to convert it into a full-scale governmental crisis.
George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was flown into France for a vital operation after a cerebral stroke, fixed up by the Red Cross/Red Crescent. Then he was flown out again. Hardly the stuff of front-page headBut within hours resignasions and sackings were declared left, right and centre in Cresson's administration, as ne napiess PM collapsed the rigns. shat the rigat-wing declared Habash a 'terrorist' is no great surprise; and nor is heir hypocrisy in demanding that he be refused medical attention.
It is the reaction of the Cresson/ Mitterrand duo that is of interest. The fact that they immediately collapsed into the racist agenda of the right is tion in deep crisis. that was born with the arriva of Edith Cresson, though she has done a remarkable job at worsening it. Rather it is the consequence of the lengthy degeneration of a party that started with lukewarm policies, and has ended up with a similar agenda to the right-wing RPR and UDF.
This is a fertile breedingground for the extreme right.
India and Pakistan have subAnd there is no doubt which party is on the rise in France today. Le Pen's Front National nave scorta a tew victories and are sure to win more in the local polls, particularly in Paris and other centres of urban poverty.
Le Pen himself looks on Course for election f Nice/Marseille, even if his prediction of 70 per cent-plus is over optimistic. Meanwhile the PS are scraping around to get their vote above 20 per cent. first round of one local election in Nice are still worse: the Socialist vote dropped by nearly half to 12 per cent; and the FN candidate Jacques Peyrat scored almost 40 per cent.
The elections are shaping up to be a pretty gloomy affair; but elsewhere things are look. ing brighter. The 100,000strong anti-racist protest on January 25 was a promising display of unity between France's black communities, yout ana staent ana the trade union movement. It is Francols Mitterrand: not so sanguine these days certainly outside parliament that things are moving on the French left.
The anti-racist fightback is now getting organised and building up to a mass demonstration against the Major Blowtorch Front National on May Day. It is here that French leftists are concentrating their energies. And it is among these forces that a posinve the discredited leaders of the PS lies.