May 10, 1981. At the Hôtel du Vieux-Morvan, in his Nivern stronghold of Château-Chinon, François Mitterrand awaits the results of the second round of the presidential elections that will pit him against the outgoing president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The phone rings around 6:30 p.m. It is Lionel Jospin, from the Paris headquarters of the Socialist Party (PS), rue de Solférino. Sofres’ estimates, which have just been transmitted to him, leave no room for doubt: victory has been achieved. “What a story, huh! What a story! »repeats the socialist leader to his loved ones.
What a story too, the rue des Italians, in Paris. On the second floor of the building. WorldThe political service is preparing for a long election night. The machine is well established, calm reigns. Until the moment when the face of the leftist candidate appears on television screens. Then a stunning scene occurs. The newspaper’s director, Jacques Fauvet, goes up one floor and enters the office of Raymond Barrillon, head of the political department. Without saying a word, the two men hug each other and burst into tears.
“We were stunned”recalls Anne Chaussebourg, then responsible for overseeing electoral operations. A disconcerting compliment, indeed, in the world very corseted of the time. Especially between these two “cold monsters” that everyone saw you. The austere Fauvet, the rude Barrillon.
However, the emotion overwhelms them. Because Mitterrand’s victory represents the culmination of the fight they waged against Giscard. It was not written beforehand. When he succeeded the newspaper’s founder, Hubert Beuve-Méry, in 1969, after having headed the political department for twenty years, Jacques Fauvet seemed a Christian Democrat by temperament. Nothing seems to predispose him to military on the left. Above all because it is still dominated by the Communist Party (PCF), to which he dedicated, with the very young Alain Duhamel, a pioneering and cruel work.
The change occurred during the 1974 presidential elections. In an article, the head of World is not limited to burying Gaullism and “the State of the UDR”. If he recognizes the talent of the candidate Giscard d’Estaing, he criticizes “What a responsibility! » who was the country’s great financier for twelve years, under De Gaulle and then Pompidou. Therefore, he advocates a true democratic alternation: “Is it fair, is it healthy, is it prudent that those who contribute most to the development and production of society be forever excluded from power, or even the hope of power? » And to conclude: “The party of the movement may be the one with the least risk. » Even with this ” maybe “embraces the strategy of Mitterrand, who beat the PS in 1971 and signed, a year later, a joint program with the PCF.
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