A New Challenger?

Though two years still remain of his term, France's President Charles de Gaulle has already let it be known that he will run for reelection. In Paris last week, another beret was thrown into the ring, that of breezy, competent Gaston Defferre, 53, mayor of Marseille.

Defferre is the mysterious "Monsieur X" whose virtues as a candidate have recently been touted by the influential left-wing weekly L'Express. The description fitted Defferre so perfectly that few Frenchmen had any doubt whom L'Express had in mind. As the Monsieur X campaign boomed on, Gaullists began to squirm, and Defferre's original resistance to the presidential fever weakened.

Even a Yacht. Some of Defferre's fellow Socialists began to squirm as well. Uneasiest of all was Party Secretary Guy Mollet, who has long been jealous of Defferre's growing power in the party and his even wider appeal to the nation. When the governing board of the Socialist Party met last week at its Paris headquarters just off Place Pigalle, Mollet fought hard to stop the Socialists from naming anyone as a presidential candidate--at least at this moment. But of the 43 Socialists present at last week's meeting, fully 35 backed Defferre and only eight stood with Mollet. It seems certain that Defferre will get full Socialist Party support at next February's special congress.

The man who has emerged as De Gaulle's major rival is nearly as unusual as le grand Charles himself. In a Roman Catholic country, Defferre is a Protestant. He is a co-owner of a prosperous newspaper, Le Provencal, and though a convinced Socialist, possesses one of those conspicuous bourgeois appurtenances, a yacht. An antiCommunist, Defferre nevertheless gets Communist support at elections.

Onetime Gaullist. Born at Marsi-llargues, 80 miles west of Marseille, Defferre took his law degree at Aix-en-Provence, joined the Resistance during the war, served for a time as a Gaullist in North Africa. After the Liberation, Defferre was elected mayor of Marseille, has served continuously in Parliament since 1946, and was a decolonizer long before De Gaulle: the 1956 loi-cadre, giving autonomy to France's African empire, was Defferre's creation.

In Marseille, where Defferre lives with his attractive wife Marie-Antoinette in a villa overlooking the harbor, politics can be as rough as in Chicago. Handsome, greying Gaston Defferre plays rough when necessary but is mostly interested in results. During his ten years as mayor, Marseille, France's second largest city (pop. 778,000), has balanced its budget, won the national blue ribbon for housing construction, and set up long-range city planning that may become a national model.

Even if he finally emerges as the only major rival of De Gaulle for the presidency, Defferre's chances of winning do not seem bright. As a Protestant, he is obviously considered suspect by many of the Catholic center. But he can be depended upon to make lively what might have been a dull campaign and to ask questions that trouble even Gaullist Frenchmen, questions about European policy, the independent nuclear deterrent, and, especially, about inflation. "The general bears the entire responsibility for the deterioration of our financial position," Defferre charges. "You can't deny De Gaulle's immense qualities, but he is truly isolating us. He has the taste for drama, the taste for calamity."

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