A Caretaker Who Cares

HIS lease on the Elysee Palace runs only 35 days, and his mandate is hardly precise. He is empowered to organize new elections for the presidency of France, and he must get along with the government of Premier Maurice Couve de Murville until De Gaulle's elected successor is chosen. Yet Alain Poher, a rotund, 60-year-old moderate and veteran of a lifetime in French politics, undertook his duties as interim President of France last week with a sure sense of purpose and resolve that surprised and annoyed the Gaullists.

Almost his first act was to summon the director of France's state-controlled radio and television networks. Under De Gaulle, the O.R.T.F. (Office de la Radio et Television Franc,aise) was a shamelessly partisan instrument of politics. For the forthcoming election, Poher told the director, it must be absolutely impartial. If it is not, he warned, he will carry his complaint straight to the French public. Poher does not really have the power to give that kind of order, but on hearing of his threat, Couve reportedly blanched. Poher is almost certain to have his way.

Next, Poher asked Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin to reduce the number of policemen blanketing Paris on riot standby. He thought that they were a partisan element as well, tending to give credence to De Gaulle's oft-proclaimed prophecy that after his departure chaos would ensue. Then he dismissed Gaullist Jacques Foccart as Secretary-General for African Affairs. Knowledgeable Frenchmen were delighted: Foccart's African designation was in fact a fac,ade for his job as boss of the Gaullist "Barbouzes," a thuggish lot of secret police and informers.

Understandably, Poher's first Cabinet meeting with the Gaullist government was, said a Minister, "glacial." Poher's aides gaily replied that if the Ministers had found the meeting frosty, Poher had warmly enjoyed himself. The interim President was not amused, however, when a few hours later news agencies carried the remarks of Foreign Minister Michel Debre made at the meeting, that "France suffered a defeat last Sunday." Poher's office issued a sharp rebuke, noting that Ministers were not authorized to disclose the Cabinet's secret deliberations.

Poher was largely unknown to Frenchmen before the referendum battles, in spite of a 25-year public career. The son of a successful civil engineer, he won degrees in engineering, law and political science, became a protege of Robert Schuman and served at sub-Cabinet level in several Fourth Republic governments before entering the Senate. Schuman converted him into a European unionist. Poher worked with the European Coal and Steel Community, later became a member of the European Parliament at Strasbourg. Last October he was elected Senate President, succeeding its longtime leader Gaston Monnerville, who had resigned to campaign full-time against De Gaulle's referendum.

Poher soon joined the opposition, too. On April 17, his 60th birthday, he announced on a national television program that he rejected De Gaulle's propositions. After that, Poher crisscrossed France by auto, train and plane to argue against them in person. His home-folks approach on the hustings led newsmen to call him a French Harry Truman; it also helped to galvanize middle-class discontent into a decisive "no" vote. "Because one man resigns," Poher insisted in town after town, "France will not be consumed by chaos." He has been suggested as a centrist candidate for President because of his performance. He maintains that "I am not ambitious" and says that he would agree to run only if he got the kind of draft that is now unlikely in view of factional bickering in the centrist parties where his strength would lie. Unless he changes his mind, Poher will thus surrender his Elysian prerogatives after 35 days, taking away a memory of temporary power well-employed and a sense of satisfaction that the deluge did not come.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.