France's Troubled Socialists Eject Rocard, Turn to Left

PARIS -- Ten months away from presidential elections, France's Socialists have dumped their battered leader Michel Rocard and taken a turn to the left in a desperate bid to dig themselves out of their own grave. Rocard resigned as head of the French Socialist party on Sunday after the movement's national council made a no-confidence vote against him. Delegates said Rocard, the party's likely candidate for next year's presidential elections, lost the confidence motion, which he had introduced, by 129 votes to 88 with 48 abstentions. The no-confidence motion followed the party's disastrous showing in last weekend's European parliament elections. It got only 14.4 percent of the vote, its worst score in decades. The party voted to replace Rocard with Henri Emmanuelli, a blunt, left-leaning orthodox Socialist, who was elected to lead the Socialist Party until the year-end party congress. Rocard, a former prime minister, took over the party last year after it was voted out of office in French general elections. A member of France's small but influential Protestant community, Rocard is a former extreme left-winger who converted to social democracy. He served as minister of planning and later minister of agriculture between 1981 and 1985. Rocard's insistence on preaching free-market economics and the need for financial austerity between 1981 and 1985, when the socialists were bent on nationalization and spending their way out of recession, had created deep tensions between President Fran?ois Mitterrand and himself, and many observers saw Rocard's dismissal as the last act of a 25-year rivalry between the two. In getting rid of Rocard, the party has also robbed itself of its "natural candidate" for next year's elections.The blunt Emmanuelli, a former National Assembly speaker notorious for angry outbursts, is not credited with presidential weight.