The President faces a tough re-election fight
Officially, the campaign does not begin until April 10. President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, indeed, has not even told his countrymen whether he intends to try for a second seven-year term. Yet France's presidential election was unmistakably under way last week. With a typically combative statement, Paris Mayor and neo-Gaullist Leader Jacques Chirac, 48, formally announced his candidacy and pledged to halt the "process of degradation" that he blamed on France's present leadership. In the Paris suburb of Créteil ten days earlier, 361 Socialist delegates had...