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 Results of the second round: the candidate with the plurality of votes in each administrative division. Georges Pompidou Alain Poher | ||||||||||||||||
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The 1969 French presidential election took place on 1 June and 15 June 1969. It occurred due to the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle on 28 April 1969. De Gaulle had decided to consult the voters by referendum about regionalisation and the reform of the Senate, and he had announced he would resign if it resulted in a "no" vote. On 27 April, 53.5% of the voters had voted "no".
Presidential elections in France determine who will serve as the President of France for the next several years.
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French army officer and statesman who led the French Resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to establish democracy in France. In 1958, he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers by President René Coty. He was asked to rewrite the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position he was reelected to in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969. He was the dominant figure of France during the Cold War era, and his memory continues to influence French politics.
In the presidential election, the Gaullist Party (Union of Democrats for the Republic, UDR) was represented by former Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. He was very popular in the conservative electorate due to economic growth when he led the cabinet (from 1962 to 1968) and his role in the settlement of the May 68 crisis and winning the June 1968 legislative campaign. In his presidential campaign, he obtained the support of the Independent Republicans and their leader Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had voted "no" in the referendum.
The Union for the Defence of the Republic, after 1968 renamed Union of Democrats for the Republic, commonly abbreviated UDR, was a Gaullist political party of France that existed from 1968 to 1976.
Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968—the longest tenure in the position's history—and later President of the French Republic from 1969 until his death in 1974. He had long been a top aide to president Charles de Gaulle. As president, he was a moderate conservative who repaired France's relationship with the United States and maintained positive relations with the newly independent former colonies in Africa.
The left-wing French Communist Party (PCF) proposed to the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, later formed the Socialist Party) to present a candidate with a common programme, but the SFIO refused. The Left was severely divided in this election. The PCF candidate was Jacques Duclos, one of the historical leaders of the party. The mayor of Marseille, Gaston Defferre, was the SFIO candidate and campaigned with Pierre Mendès France, who would have become Prime Minister had Defferre been elected to the Presidency. This candidacy was the first – and so far, only – dual "ticket" in a French presidential election. But Defferre's campaign was weakened by the decision of centrist interim President Alain Poher to run. As Chairman of the Senate, Poher had led the "no" campaign in the referendum. The success of the "no" campaign gave him the legitimacy to run for the Presidency and he rallied a large swathe of centre-right and centre-left voters.
The French Communist Party is a communist party in France.
The French Section of the Workers' International was a French socialist party founded in 1905 and replaced in 1969 by the current Socialist Party (PS). It was created during the 1905 Globe Congress in Paris as a merger between the French Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of France in order to create the French section of the Second International, designated as the party of the workers' movement.
The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and was, for decades, the largest party of the French centre-left. The PS used to be one of the two major political parties in the French Fifth Republic, along with the Republicans. The Socialist Party replaced the earlier French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1969, and is currently led by First Secretary Olivier Faure. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES), the Socialist International (SI) and the Progressive Alliance.
Michel Rocard and Alain Krivine stood as candidates expressing the ideas of the May 1968 movements, though the Trotskyist Krivine took a far more radical stance.
Michel Rocard was a French politician and a member of the Socialist Party (PS). He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991, during which he created the Revenu minimum d'insertion (RMI), a social minimum welfare program for indigents, and achieved the Matignon Accords regarding the status of New Caledonia. He was a member of the European Parliament, and was strongly involved in European policies until 2009. In 2007, he joined a Commission under the authority of Sarkozy's Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos.
Alain Krivine is a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France. He is a member of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), which is the French section of the reunified Fourth International. He was a member of the LCR's political bureau until March 2006, when he resigned from that committee. He was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004.
