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- <text id=92TT0768>
- <title>
- Apr. 13, 1992: World Notes:France
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Apr. 13, 1992 Campus of the Future
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 47
- World Notes
- FRANCE
- Madame 19% Flunks Out
- </hdr><body>
- <p> She did not govern quietly, and she did not go quietly.
- Sharp-tongued Prime Minister Edith Cresson, 58, drew fire while
- in office for having called the Japanese "ants" and saying that
- one-quarter of Anglo-Saxon men are homosexuals. In her letter
- of resignation, she complained that she had not been allowed to
- "fully complete" her mission.
- </p>
- <p> Only 10 months after President Francois Mitterrand made
- her the first woman to hold France's second highest office, she
- was forced to withdraw. Her resignation follows the ruling
- Socialist Party's humiliating trouncing two weeks ago in
- regional elections.
- </p>
- <p> Cresson--scorned at the end of her tenure as "Madame
- 19%" for her abysmal standing in the popularity polls and her
- party's devastating election results--had to take much of the
- blame. Near record unemployment of 9.9% accounted for the rest.
- </p>
- <p> Pierre Beregovoy, 66, the powerful Economics and Finance
- Minister, who was named to succeed her, is expected to restore
- some confidence in the party before parliamentary elections in
- March 1993. The son of a Ukrainian immigrant and a member of the
- Resistance during World War II, he is one of the few Socialist
- leaders from a working-class background.
- </p>
- <p> Beregovoy is a defender of a "strong franc" and fiscal
- orthodoxy. He may also be the Socialists' last trump card.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-