Nicola Chiaromonte
PARIS LETTER
Commenting upon the government budget for
1949-1950,
Le
11l
onde,
that most judicious Parisian daily, wrote on November
15:
"Each year the budget is made up as if the government no longer had
control over expenditures or income, . .. (and obeyed) an imperious
necessity which eliminated any choice among the possible, the desirable,
and the necessary."
The same "imperioUli necessity" which dominates state finances
rules every other aspect of French public life. From foreign policy to
parliamentary deals everything happens as if nobody had any control
over the decisions he adopts. Why, for example, has Monsieur Queuille
been replaced by Monsieur Bidault as the head of the government?
Simply because with election time approaching the Socialists thought
they
must
wake, even
if
only for a few days, from their ministerial
slumber, and make at least a
gesture
against the freezing of salaries. So
they went on record by provoking one of the most farcical, complicated
and pointless searches for a new prime minister in all French history. The
outcome was hardly doubtful. With the present parliament there is only
one possible government coalition and it is the one that has operated
since
1947:
MRP, Socialists, and Radical Socialists. A crisis can result
only in a redistribution of portfolios, not of power.
What made the Socialist gesture particularly mystifying was the
fact that, by sticking to old Radical Socialist Queuille, Blum's party could
probably have succeeded in obtaining what Blum himself had asked
for and what the Radical Sociali5ts want more than anything else,
namely the abolition of proportional representation.
If
followed by new
general elections (which are likely to be decided upon soon in any
case) the return to the old electoral system would favor the clientele
method as against the party machines; hence, the Socialists and the
Radical Socialists would gain at the expense of the MRP and the
Stalinists. But the Socialists had to go on record, or so they thought. As
a consequence, a man like Bidault who does not represent anything but
the resounding political failure of the Resistance movement of which
