Rarely had postwar France faced a political sweepstakes fraught with so many unpredictable consequences as it did in Sunday's legislative elections. Up for grabs were 577 National Assembly seats, contested by some 7,000 candidates, who were debating issues that ranged from the future of the country's nationalized industries to ways of solving France's high unemployment. Also at stake was nothing less than the future of the Fifth Republic.
Since the birth of the Republic in 1958, the party of the President has also controlled the legislature. No one was quite certain how a government would operate with a President from one...
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