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"A pact with the devil," said Interior Minister Pierre Joxe, a Socialist. At a rally before 8,000 supporters in a Paris sports stadium, Premier Rocard and Socialist Party Secretary Pierre Mauroy called the accord an "inadmissible act that obviously has national implications." Conservative leaders defended the Marseilles move by arguing that without it the Socialists would have carried off 15 of the 16 seats at stake in the area.
The Marseilles accord dominated the campaign between the two rounds of voting, as party politicians haggled and bargained before Sunday's final decisive contest. Under the French system, any candidate with more than 12.5% of the vote in the first round can stay in the race. In 455 of the country's 577 constituencies, no candidate emerged with a majority in the first round, which left plenty of room for horse trading. By agreement between the Socialists and the Communists, the trailing candidate from the two parties regularly stepped aside in favor of the one more likely to win. The same kind of arrangement with Jean-Marie Le Pen, though, stirred controversy at a time when the issue of racism in France has become particularly sensitive.
In a get-out-the-vote drive at the Socialists' Paris rally, Rocard and Mauroy dramatized the risks of the right's returning to power. As green laser beams crisscrossed the stadium and a 50-ft. projection of Mitterrand played upon a giant backdrop, Mauroy cried, "The right must be beaten back." Rocard urged the supporters darkly, "Let's look lucidly at the results of the first ballot -- the risk exists!"
Politicians generally were mystified by the first round. Rocard attributed the relatively poor Socialist showing to widespread complacency bred by opinion polls that had predicted a sizable majority for the President's party. Another reason was probably voter discontent with the Socialists for failing to broaden their political base by bringing more centrists into the government.
One lesson of the campaign may be that in the heat of the electoral battle, the old polarizing instincts proved stronger than all the talk of concord and consensus. Rocard, who had earlier called for an "opening of hearts and spirits," wound up evoking the threat of a rightist victory and starkly warning, "The choice is between me and Chirac." For his part, Chirac rejected the proffered "opening" as so much hypocritical "window dressing to cover a precipitous election." Perhaps it was former Premier Raymond Barre who best summed up the mood of the electorate in the wake of Mitterrand's calls for a measure of U.S.-style bipartisanship. Speaking at a rally south of Paris, Barre declared, "The French people want an end to our political wars of religion." Making that kind of peace may prove to be the greatest -- and most elusive -- challenge facing the new government.