Effortlessly, Mitterrand Has Become a First-Round Shoo-In

PARIS — President Francois Mitterrand of France, at first glance, does not seem to be campaigning very hard for reelection. He makes few speeches in the campaign and rarely mixes with voters. Yet he dominates the election in an uncanny way.

Even when Mitterrand does little, many French act as if they cannot keep their minds off him: the journalists, the rival candidates and, according to the polls, a majority of the voters.

He is expected to lead all his rivals by far in the first round of voting this Sunday and then defeat the probable runner-up, Premier Jacques Chirac, in a close race in the runoff round of voting May 8.

In its last poll published Saturday, the Paris newspaper Liberation reported that Mitterrand was leading with 38% of the first-round vote, followed by Chirac with 23.5%, former Premier Raymond Barre with 19%, extreme rightist Jean Marie Le Pen with 9.5% and Communist Party candidate Andre Lajoinie with 5%. In the runoff between the two candidates with the most votes, according to the Liberation poll, Mitterrand would defeat Chirac by 54% to 46%.

This poll, typical of most, also showed that Chirac has been steadily closing the gap between Mitterrand and himself. But the French will have to wait until the first returns Sunday night to find out if this trend is continuing, because the publication of polls is banned in France during the final week of a campaign.

The dominance by Mitterrand has been near total. His two main conservative rivals, Chirac and Barre, in their battle for the right to face Mitterrand in the runoff, have attacked him rather544499809deal of their time fretting over and reacting to the tactical moves of Mitterrand.

The campaign began, in fact, with everyone waiting for Mitterrand to announce whether he would run or not. Few analysts doubted that he would. But there was enough of an infinitesimal doubt to keep everyone talking about Mitterrand until he finally announced his candidacy in mid-March.

Age an Issue

The interest in Mitterrand is so pervasive that Chirac was thrown off balance in one important television interview by a long Mitterrand campaign statement issued earlier that day. The premier was forced to spend a good deal of valuable time commenting on the ideas of Mitterrand instead of boosting his own.

Both Chirac and Barre have found themselves replying to endless questions about how they would vote in the French National Assembly if a reelected Mitterrand named a new premier.

Of late, Chirac has found a new campaign issue, but it also focuses solely on Mitterrand--the age of the 71-year-old president.

“It is necessary to have a man,” the 55-year-old Chirac told a rally in Limoges a few nights ago, “who has energy and force, including physical force.”

The trouble with this issue, however, is that Mitterrand, in his few campaign appearances, has demonstrated an extraordinary vigor. He is able to speak, using only the barest notes, for almost two hours in an old-fashioned and powerful style of oratory unmatched by either Chirac or Barre.

Mitterrand scheduled only four campaign rallies for the entire campaign of the first round. But each has had extensive news and television coverage. Most French journalists believe that the president has a confident air as he tries to convince the French that, despite his Socialist ties, he is a political leader able to unite most of France behind him. His posters proclaim, “Mitterrand: United France.”

The biggest surprise in the campaign so far has been the poor showing of the 64-year-old Barre, who was regarded only a few months ago as one of the most popular politicians in France and the only conservative with a chance to defeat Mitterrand in the second round. But the professorial, slow-speaking, slow-moving and rotund former premier, a politician seemingly obsessed with proving that he has no flair, has succeeded in boring far more voters than he has excited.

Barre is the candidate of the center-right Union for the French Democracy, a party that is allied with Chirac’s right-wing Gaullist party, the Rally for the Republic, in the majority that controls the French National Assembly.

Barre has refused to launch any attacks against Chirac. Asked at a news conference last week to comment on a poll estimating that 61% of the French people believe Chirac is a good premier, Barre replied, “Count me among the 61%.”

Refuses to Play Rough

Barre’s refusal to play rough may be an admirable character trait, but it makes it difficult for conservative voters to figure out why they should vote for the boring Barre rather than the energetic Chirac.

Chirac has gained ground steadily with a dynamic campaign in which he has tried hard both to rally all right-wing voters behind him and to convince the rest of the French that he is a man of the center far better able to unite the country than Mitterrand.

To accomplish this, Chirac, listening to his advisers, has reined in some of his natural combativeness and his compulsion to forge heedlessly ahead. He often carries the almost incongruous pose these days of a smiling, gentle man of compromise and moderation.

Sometimes, however, his combativeness gets the best of him. During a recent television interview, for example, he showed his annoyance at some of the tough questions of the journalists and spewed out long-winded and vague replies that bore little resemblance to the questions. And he described Mitterrand as “always wrong on all the major issues that interest our country.”

Last week, there were many rumors in France about the imminent release of three French hostages in Beirut. The Chirac government has been working feverishly in secret negotiations to win their release. But any deal--if there ever was one--would have dissipated with the hijacking of the Kuwait Airways jumbo jet by terrorists believed allied to the groups holding the hostages. If the French government did arrange release of the hostages before the runoff May 8, it might improve Chirac’s chances considerably against Mitterrand.

Chirac may benefit in the second round by the failure of Barre to make much of a run in the first round. A close race would probably have embittered both conservative camps, prompting many Barre supporters to refuse to switch to Chirac in the second round. Without such bitterness, Chirac is expected to win the vote of the vast majority of Barre supporters in the second round.

Many analysts, however, believe that Chirac will win a smaller percentage of the vote of Le Pen supporters. According to several polls and political analysts, the extreme right-wing Le Pen is attracting a special breed of voters with his diatribes against government and against North African immigrants. A surprising number of Le Pen supporters have never voted before, and a surprising number have voted Communist.

In contrast to Le Pen, the Communists, badly split and losing many votes to the Socialist Mitterrand and some votes to the extreme right Le Pen, are in a sorry state. Once the largest party in France, the Communists are expected to poll their lowest percentage since the party was founded in 1920.