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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 20, 1984
PAGE 9
At the same time, the Prime Minister is still engaged in a months-long
dispute with striking coal miners, who threaten to expand their action to
block railway shipments of coal from non-struck mines, as well as to picket
oil supply deliveries. Should the worst happen, a series of crises could
s� ut down power production and manufacturing industries beginning in the
winter.
To make matters worse, the government is struggling against an expanding
dock strike as well. Still worse, there are rumors of a campaign by senior
members of her own Tory Party to ditch Mrs. Thatcher.
In Paris meanwhile, Socialist President Francois Mitterrand has been forced
back into the middle, at least, in the spectrum of French politics. On
Tuesday, July 17, Mitterrand installed Laurent Fabius as Prime Minister.
Mitterrand wants to free up the economy a bit, and move the nation into an
expensive high-tech mold. A new ministry for research and technology has
been created. As a result of the shake-up, the four Communist ministers who
have been present in the Socialist-led coalition since 1981 have left,
disillusioned about Mitterrand's rightward push.
Polls have shown Mr. Mitterrand's popularity rating recently in the low 30s
percentile. He is thus trying to recover his standing in the public eye
before the 1986 parliamentary elections. Abandoning his socialist ethic,
he finally backed off of a plan to interfere with private (meaning mostly
Catholic} schools in France. Almost a million angry parents had taken to
the streets of Paris chanting, "Free schools will live." Mr. Mitterrand
was also booed as he drove down the Champs Elysees on Bastille Day.
Furthermore, his party was trounced in the June European Parliament
elections. Overall, the signs are there: Change, or else.
In West Germany as well the political scene may also shift more to the
right, or perhaps more correctly, to both the right and the left. The
small, centrist Free Democratic Party, which was wiped out in the European
Parliament elections, is barely hanging on in the center-right Bonn
coalition.
Current developments in West Germany were analyzed by
correspondent Friedrich Thelen, writing in the July 23 BUSINESS WEEK:
The political fortunes of Franz Josef Strauss, the hard-line boss
of Bavaria's Christian Social Union, are rising as those of West
Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) plummet. The
job of Foreign Minister, a longtime Strauss goal, may be within
reach of the combative politician following the disastrous
setback to the FDP, the minority partner in Bonn's ruling coali
tion, in June's elections for the European Parliament.
If
s trauss takes over the foreign-policy reins, he will toughen
Germany's stand against Moscow while he strengthens ties with the
U.S. and the NATO alliance.
A major shakeup within Chancellor Helmut Kohl's governing coali
tion--and possibly in Germany's broader political balance of
power--was set in motion by the June election because a German
law requires parties to win at least 5% of the total vote to
qualify for seats in a legislature. In the 1983 national elec
tion, the FDP won 7% of the vote and 35 Bundestag seats, giving
the coalition a majority in combination with the 255 seats won by
Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU} and its Bavarian wing,