Cohabitation begins before cohabitation. On Saturday, March 15, 1986, on the eve of a one-round legislative election that would bring the right into government against François Mitterrand, the secretary general of the Elysée picked up the phone. Jean-Louis Bianco called Edouard Balladur, then Jacques Chirac’s main collaborator (he wouldn’t like the word). He delivered the presidential message: “May the mayor of Paris not make a triumphant declaration that would make his nomination impossible. May he leave me with the feeling of being free. May he not set any preconditions.” He would not do it. Five days later, Jacques Chirac was in François Mitterrand’s office. Away from the cameras, the president signed the decree appointing the Prime Minister. He jokes: “My hand is shaking, because once I have signed, I will no longer be able to unseat you. But in the end, I will find a way…” False pretenses, role plays, emissaries, secret meetings, underhanded tricks and dirty tricks: thirty-eight years ago, France invented a regime that was thought impossible, incompatible with the Fifth Republic, cohabitation.
Cohabitation, especially for the head of state, is being prepared. Just before the vote, L’Express made its front page on “The Elysée bunker”. François Mitterrand (service message to Emmanuel Macron) anticipated the alternation in the preceding months and appointed relatives or political friends to a series of senior civil service positions. At the Presidency of the Republic, a list is circulating that we jokingly nickname “all in shelters”. That’s not all: in August 1985, the Official newspaper publishes a decree increasing by around thirty the number of senior positions, appointed by the Council of Ministers, with double signatures of the President and Prime Minister.
Warning, accident possible. On July 14, 1986, the executive boat rocked for the first time. There was the tip of the iceberg. What everyone saw and heard was François Mitterrand, interviewed by Yves Mourousi at 1 p.m. on TF1 – in his office and not in the palace garden, against a backdrop of tricolor flags, because the event had to be presidentialized as much as possible – who announced his refusal to sign an order on privatizations. And then there was everything that happened behind the scenes during those hours that marked a decisive turning point in the cohabitation. A reversal of the balance of power. The beginning of Mitterrand’s victory over Chirac. First, be irreproachable in form. At the request of the president, the secretary general of the Elysée warned Maurice Ulrich, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. Then, be intractable once the decision had been made. Already, on the eve of his nomination to Matignon, Jacques Chirac had called Jean-Louis Bianco without further ado, he wanted to speak to the president: “I absolutely need orders on social measures. This could be a sticking point in the process.” Mitterrand did not take him on the phone, he did not call him back. It was Chirac who would do so a little later: “We can find a way to work things out.”
On July 14, at 8:45 p.m., the telephone rang in the president’s office, a call for History, as revealed by Pierre Favier and Michel Martin-Roland in The Mitterrand Decade. Chirac: “So, you want to put an end to cohabitation?”
Mitterrand: “I don’t wish it. But I accept the consequences of what I do. I don’t blame you. You do what you think you have to do. I recognize that it is not easy for you on the parliamentary level. […] You have convictions. Admit that I may have some. If your majority wants to impeach me, well, let them do so!”
Chirac: “According to lawyers, the president does not have the right to refuse to sign orders.”
Mitterrand: “I too am full of quotes from General de Gaulle and Michel Debré!”
Chirac: “Some are pushing me to resign to provoke an early presidential election.”
Mitterrand: “There will be no early presidential election. I am the one who dissolves Parliament. And besides, I have no intention of resigning. Think about it.”
End of the exchange. Mitterrand, in an almost entirely dark office, slips to his two advisors, Jean-Louis Bianco and Jacques Attali: “We will see what he will do. He will change his mind three times. Then he will give in. It is not Not a bad guy!” The next day, Chirac told a friend about his phone call the day before: “I’m on my ass, I just threatened Mitterrand to resign and he doesn’t care.” Jacques Pilhan, cited in The Wizard of the Elysée by François Bazin, will give the instructions: “Uncle digs a hole. Chirac falls in. We ask him if he hasn’t hurt himself too much. And then it starts again…”
Cohabitation does create bonds. Sometimes the president and the prime minister make common cause. On June 25, 1986, before the council of ministers, in the president’s office, this scene described by Jacques Attali in Verbatim. Chirac: “Naturally, I will have to ask again for authorization to use article 49.3.” Mitterrand, smiling: “It’s boring to have a Parliament, isn’t it?” Chirac: “How true!”
Between March 1986 and May 1988, the two men saw each other face to face on Wednesday mornings 102 times. Mitterrand stopped smoking a long time ago, he nevertheless provided Chirac, then a heavy smoker before the Lord, with a standing ashtray. Beyond the role plays, and there are so many of them during periods of cohabitation, it is often the appointments that are tense. Whether it’s an important position in the police or a sub-prefect… in Nièvre, Mitterrand’s electoral territory from whom no one asked his opinion.
“What game are you playing ?”
The devil is in the details. The new Minister of Defense, André Giraud, wants to replace the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Jean Saulnier, who was Mitterrand’s personal chief of staff at the Elysée for four years? A showdown. “What are you playing at with Saulnier?” Mitterrand asked the minister one day. There’s no reason not to be sneaky: here is the Head of State proposing the general on the list of promotions in the order of the Legion of Honor. Could he have played a role in the famous Rainbow Warrior affair, the Greenpeace ship sabotaged by the French secret services? The minister crosses his name off the list. Saulnier wants to resign, but Mitterrand stops him. And threatens: “If Saulnier is not reinstated on the list, I will refuse all the Legions of Honor proposed by the Defense.” Giraud gives in, the general is decorated but will have to wait a long time before being rehoused.
Obviously, cohabitation rhymes with tensions. And there are real ones, in a sometimes heavy climate. A Council of Ministers will be dispatched in twelve minutes, it is a question of saying the minimum in front of the president. Mitterrand: “Are there any observations?” Silence. Mitterrand: “Are there any observations made?” Re-silence. Move along, there’s nothing to be had.
But there are also moments of complicity. Mitterrand, before a Council of Ministers, about a trip to Alsace: “One of my bad memories is that, thanks to the solicitude of my colleagues, I was deprived of sauerkraut.” Chirac, very particular about his true reserved domain: “I was wary. I was served some.”
Moments of seduction. Montevideo (Uruguay), October 1987. Three ministers, Michel Noir, Gérard Longuet, Alain Carignon, are invited by the Head of State to have a drink at the residence of the French ambassador, after an official dinner. Great charming number, despite the time difference, fatigue will wait. Mitterrand will recount: “It was late, they were exhausted. I told them jokingly: ‘You know, five years of socialist legislature, it was becoming monotonous. With you, I became ten years younger’.”
Cohabitation is even moments of genuine laughter. One Wednesday, at the start of the Council of Ministers, Mitterrand took the wrong chair and sat in that of André Giraud, the Minister of Defense. Everyone sat down, except the latter: “Mr. President, you took my chair, and since I don’t want to take yours…” “You’re the only one.”
Damn “off”
It is not forbidden to make fun, as long as it is done properly. On January 1, 1987, railway workers showed up in Brégançon. They are on strike, but they want to wish the president a happy new year. The father of the nation opens the door and his arms to them. He dared to explain to Jacques Chirac on his return to Paris: “I couldn’t refuse them entry, they had flowers, you understand…”
The slightest leak turns into a state affair. One day, Mitterrand says “off the record” to some journalists about Chirac: “Vulgar, thug, weak-willed.” Even at that time, it happened that off the record broke the sound barrier, and not just anywhere, in the columns of World. Who knows why, the Prime Minister doesn’t like it. Matignon calls the Chained duck : “Old, vicious, fortune-teller.” No way.
Men are what they are, with their greatness and their smallness. But one should not underestimate the weight of institutions and the shock of functions. One morning in January 1987, Chirac slipped out of the Elysée during a ceremony. Discreetly, or almost. “Are you leaving us already, Mr. Prime Minister?” – damn, caught up by the patrol, in this case Mitterrand. “Yes, my gene… Er, yes, Mr. President, I have to go back to Matignon.” Sigmund sends his regards.
This is what is called the Prime Minister’s complex, facing the President from above. On December 1, 1986, both inaugurated the Musée d’Orsay. As the Socialist returned to his car, the crowd was noisily agitated. The President to Chirac: “It seems to me that I am being whistled at, Mr. Prime Minister.” Chirac: “No, Mr. President, it is me that these young people are jeering at.” Mitterrand: “Ah, I was also saying to myself: why would they be angry with me?”
Cohabitation stories usually end badly. This will have the uniqueness of ending with a confrontation between the president and the Prime Minister in front of the voters. Mitterrand declared himself a candidate for his own succession on March 22, 1988 and denounced “the clans, the camps, the factions”. The next day, the two meet in the Elysée office. The atmosphere is not full of fun. Chirac: “Your comments last night were insulting to me.” Mitterrand: “For two years, your actions have sometimes been insulting towards me.” This is how cohabitation goes: at the end of the sending, I receive the payment.
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