In chaotic regional elections, voters reject the entire Establishment and give new power to LePen's anti-foreign, anti-immigrant nationalists

By George J. Church--Reported by Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris

Since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in 1958 and cut short 14 years of political chaos, France has been a model of governmental stability. But last week brought back a strong whiff of the Fourth Republic atmosphere of clashing factions and evanescent coalitions. In elections for 22 regional councils throughout the country, voters dealt a stiff blow to the entire political establishment and catapulted fringe movements and personalities into new prominence; in many councils they will cast the deciding votes. The balloting has no direct effect on the national government; France is a highly centralized country in which the regional councils have little power. But the outcome does signal a public mood of sour discontent that will make the country decidedly more difficult for President Francois Mitterrand, or anyone else, to lead.

Domestic gripes--economic troubles, boredom with the governing Socialists, anger over corruption scandals--did most to produce this mood. But it was intensified by, and will further exacerbate, a more general malaise that is diluting the country's international influence--precisely when, at a critical time of transition, the European Community needs Paris' traditional leadership more than ever. The French are worried that their country is failing to find a new role in the post-cold war world and that within Europe it is being overshadowed by the rise of a unified and vibrant Germany. Should they assert themselves vigorously and strive to lead the new Europe or retreat into a kind of Gallic stockade and preoccupy themselves with domestic concerns? The regional elections pointed to a distressing trend toward the second option.

Mitterrand's Socialist Party scarcely looks able to supply any new leadership. It was rejected by more than four-fifths of the voters; the party polled a dismal 18%. But the Socialists had been expected to lose ground; the real surprise was that voters turned their back on the right as well. The Union for France, a coalition of the two main conservative parties, reaped a mere 33%, down 4 points from its share in the last regional elections in 1986. Just under half (49%) of those who cast ballots chose to leap out of the political mainstream altogether.

Out on the fringes, two environmentalist parties, the Greens and the newly formed Ecology Generation, pulled nearly 14%, more than double any previous share. The two, however, are as much rivals as allies. Ecology Generation is led by Brice Lalonde, who is Environment Minister in Mitterrand's Cabinet and is called "the Pink Submarine" by his opponents; they view him as a subversive Socialist who uses ecology as a front to promote his ambitions. Lalonde, in turn, calls Antoine Waechter, the leader of the Greens, a "totalitarian" who rejects all compromise.

The big winner, to the extent that there was any, was extreme-right-winger Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of the xenophobic National Front. His party also took 14% of the vote, only 4 points above its showing in the 1986 regional elections. But it established itself as a force in every region of France and as the most influential right-wing party in Europe. In some other areas its representatives will be the kingmakers, deciding who will lead closely divided councils. The Communists, once the biggest single party in France, bottomed out with 8% of the vote.

The splintering could not be blamed on public apathy. Though there had been widespread predictions that less than half of France's voters would show up at the polls, in fact 68% did. So the vote pointed to active disgust with traditional parties, politicians and politics.

It is a many-sided mood, in part contradictory. After winning office in 1981, the Socialists engaged in a burst of nationalization of industry that proved disastrous; ever since, the party has followed policies so conservative that to many voters it no longer seems to stand for anything. Mitterrand, at 75 and after nearly 11 years in power, has become an august, remote figure (he is sometimes sarcastically called Dieu, or God) and has seemed at times to lose his touch in foreign affairs, to the detriment of French influence.