The Referendum

Charles de Gaulle needs a lot of room to move around in; and in the past few weeks two major events have combined to cramp his person and style badly. Two weeks ago it looked like political events in France were just going to follow their normal pattern: the President was going to overthrow Parliament and radically alter the Constitution. And he did both--but the results of his actions left de Gaulle in an ambiguous situation, in a world far removed from one ruled by the simple alternatives of "oui" and "non" which he favors.

In a way, it's a pity for de Gaulle he didn't wait till after the referendum of last Sunday before dissolving Parliament and demanding the nation give him a less cantankerous and independent one--if such a thing can be imagined. For de Gaulle's relatively poor showing in the referendum may mean the coming election will turn out far more unpleasantly than, even on Saturday night, de Gaulle could have guessed. (Although de Gaulle received 61 per cent of the yes-no votes, the figure represented falls to 46 per cent when abstentions are counted--the first time he has fallen below an absolute majority.)

Yet it may be delusory to say that de Gaulle could have saved himself this possible embarrassment. The chance he took in dissolving Parliament seemed a necessary response to Parliament's overthrow of his hand-picked Pompidou ministry last October 5: they couldn't do this to him. But what was a chance last week looks more like a dangerous gamble today; for the referendum result coming right after the Parliamentary upset indicates that the political initiative has been taken away from de Gaulle. He can no longer stand in his favorite pose of the implacable father, sternly watching his children go to the polls and cowing them into voting his way. The two set-backs must show de Gaulle not simply that the French people desire a partial return to the regular hurlu-burlu of Parliamentary politics, but that they want de Gaulle to show an interest in these processes, which he has, so far, in his career, held in contempt.

De Gaulle has responded with admirable alacrity to this challenge. Yesterday's New York Times reported plans for a regular party organization, to "put the Gaullist stamp of approval" on candidates of other major parties who are willing, not to put too fine a point on it, to sell out to de Gaulle. The organization will be run by de Gaulle's own Larry O'Brien, Andre Malraux. The remarks of Malraux to the press indicate no weakening of Gaullist disdain for France's party system: "If," he said in part, "in 1940, in 1958 (and a few times since, no?) France had been only there [in the Parliament], and not elsewhere [obviously in General de Gaulle], it would, perhaps, have been rather bad for her."

But the strident tones of Gaullist rhetoric must inevitably slip out of the pronouncements of the titans of the Fifth Republic as a consequence of recent events; to be replaced by the more familiar, if less exalted, language of partisan politics. De Gaulle's "French nation," united behind its leader and scorning the divisive and dilatory representative mechanism, has disappeared, to be replaced by the more familiar atomistic Frenchman, who does not prize unity above all things, nor value efficiency most highly. The vote in Sunday's referendum was, in fact, a vote against government by referendum.