On 10 May 1981, after 23 long years of opposition, the left returned to power. François Mitterrand finally defeated his opponent, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, winning 52% of the vote. "The man of the past" has defeated the "man of the passive". If the arrival of the Socialist Party arouses immediate fantasies, on the right (the Russian tanks at the Concorde) as on the left (fear of a coup d'état fomented by the right), Mitterrand experiments that the Fifth Republic, which he had fought so much, offers him the same stability that the right had been able to enjoy since 1958. But May 10, 1981 remains engraved in the memories of a whole generation of French people, both because of the emotion, positive or negative, aroused by this major political shift, and by the first measures that resulted from it.
If the left has a free hand to reform, it is primarily because it obtains a majority in the Assembly. Accommodating himself to the prerogatives of a presidential power that he did not have...
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