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RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
Assembly and the government.155 Parliamentary grievances were sharply
voiced over the government’s Algerian policy and over its behavior during
the miners’ strike of 1963. More significant are the repeated pleas from
the UDR benches for an end to the government’s cavalier treatment of its
supporters in the National Assembly. Among the critics have been such
prominent UDR deputies as Jacques Chaban-Delmas, President of the
National Assembly, René Tomasini, a` national UD-Ve secretary, Achile
Peretti, formerly a vice-president of the UNR group in the National As-
sembly, Joël Le Tac, then Director of La Nation, and Raymond Schmitt-
lein, then President of the UNR group in the National Assembly. In 1960,
Chaban-Delmas warned that “it is necessary that there be established be-
tween the Government and Parliament a relationship which admits the real
existence of Parliament.” He added that “an Executive without true par-
liamentary controls leads gradually to arbitrary action and to dictator-
ship.”150 In sharper tones, he protested in mid-1961 that the government
was behaving like “an autocrat, arrogating to itself full powers the better to
abusé them, especially by preventing, through its control of the agenda, the
discussion of any private member’s bill and indeed any subject desired by
the representatives of the nation.”''’7 In a similar vein, at a study conference
for UNR deputies held at Pornichet in September, 1961, René Tomasini
regretted the absence of a true dialogue between government and parlia-
ment. In three years, he noted, only 21 out of 496 bills proposed by depu-
ties had been placed by the government on the Assembly’s agenda, while
206 out of 273 government bills had been adopted.154 When Tomasini’s
colleagues joined in, asking for more government attention to parliament,
Prime Minister Michel Debré retorted angrily that his critics were men of
“frustrated ambitions,” and that he refused to be “a President of the Coun-
cil of the Fourth Republic.”159 Raymond Schmittlein, President of the UNR
group in the Assembly, seemed to be joining the critics when later in the
same meeting he argued that though the UNR must generally support the
Government, “. . . the turtle-shelled technocrats must cease to dominate
the regime. Civil servants have too much importance, and if l'intendance
ne suit pas, it is because political necessities are not being taken enough into
account.”1'1" Perhaps the most violent Gaullist critique of the government
came from the pen of Joël Le Tac in the special La Nation editorial men-
tioned above. Wrote Le Tac, “Its [the UNR’s] role should not be limited to
filling the stage, to amusing the gallery, between two television appear-
ances of General de Gaulle.”101
Particularly in the first Assembly, from 1959 to 1962, morale among the
UNR deputies frequently was low. Absenteeism was a continual problem,
as deputies frequently felt that attendance made little difference.102 Even
Gaullist deputies were not unaffected by a proud and long-standing French