A Frappe for J.J.-S.S.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing wasted no time trying to implement his presidential visions for France. Since his election last month he has moved quickly and skillfully to put together what he calls "a new majority"--a broad coalition in the National Assembly of his own Independent Republicans, the centrists and liberal Gaullists. His efforts were rewarded when Premier Jacques Chirac won an overwhelming parliamentary vote of confidence for the new government. Last week, however, Giscard and Chirac discovered that there are pitfalls in moving ahead with too much haste. Only twelve days after appointing Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, 50, as Minister of Reform, they were forced to fire the millionaire publisher of L'Express and intellectual gadfly. The reason: J.J.-S.S.'s public criticism of the government's intention to continue nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Servan-Schreiber's brief tenure in the Cabinet came to an abrupt end after he read a wire-service report that France's nuclear-testing program in the Pacific Ocean would be resumed this month. Servan-Schreiber, a longtime opponent of testing, warned Chirac by telephone that he would speak out against the decision the next day. Chirac asked the volatile J.J.-S.S. to be "discreet," which was a bit like asking Martha Mitchell to abstain from telephone calls.

At a press conference, Servan-Schreiber said that the Cabinet had never discussed the tests: "The military faced the Cabinet with a fait accompli." That proved to be his undoing. Hours later, Defense Minister Jacques Soufflet, a hard-line Gaullist and a chief proponent of testing, issued an ultimatum: Giscard and Chirac would have to choose between him and Servan-Schreiber. They promptly dismissed Servan-Schreiber, the Premier explaining tersely, "The views he expressed this morning are incompatible with the basic principles of our policy."

Servan-Schreiber's ouster did not surprise many Frenchmen. Although sometimes unpredictable on other issues, he has been vehemently consistent in opposing not only nuclear testing but France's expensive force de frappe as well. Last year he went to the Pacific to demonstrate against France's atmospheric testing of nuclear devices. He has also backed the cause of Canadian Yachtsman David McTaggart, who sailed his 38-ft. ketch into the nuclear test area in 1972 and 1973 to protest the explosions. McTaggart is suing the French government for allegedly boarding his boat illegally and beating him so severely that one eye was almost blinded.

Future Tests. If Servan-Schreiber's ideas were clear, so were Giscard's. During his campaign for the presidency he had repeatedly stressed his support for the force de frappe without ever hinting that he would stop this year's atmospheric tests, although he has since said that future tests will probably be underground. Thus it appeared from the beginning that Giscard and Servan-Schreiber were on a collision course with political reality. It seemed inexplicable that Giscard had not obtained from Servan-Schreiber a pledge to voice opposition only within the Cabinet.

The answer seemed to be that Giscard and Servan-Schreiber deliberately avoided discussion of the issues that divided them. The new President was eager to build his new majority. ServanSchreiber, who had never risen higher than a Deputy in the National Assembly, was equally eager to grasp a greater share of political power. "I did not impose as a specific condition that Giscard ban tests," he said, "but that was hardly necessary. Essentially he agrees with me. The military and the hard-line Gaullists have imposed their will on the President."

Servan-Schreiber's departure from the Cabinet threatened to damage him far more than Giscard. At week's end factions within the Radical Party were calling on J.J.-S.S. to resign as leader for having joined Giscard's government in the first place. Charged Claude Catesson, the party's deputy secretary-general: "You ought to have known that everything separated you from those whom you have been fighting for the past four years."

Giscard had no such problems. Late in the week he captured French headlines with another bold policy decision. In a nationally televised address, he announced a "very ambitious" program to attack inflation. His plan calls for increased taxes, especially for corporations, reduced spending and tighter credit. The austerity measures have already run into opposition from both leftist and rightist critics of the government. But they also enabled Giscard to divert attention almost completely from the questionable judgment he showed in the Servan-Schreiber affair.

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