Launching France's biggest constitutional reform for four decades, President Jacques Chirac yesterday proposed cutting the seven-year presidential term to five years - a move that not only avoids future power-sharing between right and left, but also improves his chances of winning the next election.
In television interview broadcast last night, Mr Chirac backed down from his long-standing opposition to a shorter presidential term and announced an amendment to the constitution that could be put to a referendum as early as October and implemented in 2002.
The Socialist Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, has long favoured the idea of bringing the presidential and parliamentary terms into line, believing that this would increase the chances of one political grouping - left or right - holding sway in both the parliament and the Elysee Palace.
Three times in the last 14 years, including since Mr Chirac's disastrous early election call in 1997, the prime minister and the president have come from opposing sides of the political spectrum, a situation, known as "cohabitation", that many French politicians feel weakens the effectiveness of the government.
The Gaullist Mr Chirac said a year ago that a five-year term would be "a mistake", which he would never support.
He has now plainly changed his mind, partly because Mr Jospin has said that if necessary he would bypass the president and use parliament to launch the reform himself, and partly because the president, who is 67, realises that he stands a better chance of being re-elected for five years rather than seven in the next election in 2002.
Both men were stung into action by a former right-wing president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who last month announced that he would put the reform before parliament if no one else did. Opinion polls have shown that nearly 75 per cent of French voters approve of the plan.
While the move is almost certain to obtain the two-thirds majority it needs in both houses of parliament before being put to the public vote, it by no means enjoys the full support of all politicians.
Some on the left wing fear that it will increase the power of the president, who at present has very little influence on domestic policy unless he belongs to the prime minister's party. Many on the right, however, fear that it will reduce the head of state to a ceremonial figurehead.
"Either we're heading for a Sixth Republic without saying it, or we're moving towards a spectacular but vain patch-up job," commented the left-leaning Liberation.
Many constitutionalists refused even to speculate on what the future might hold. But one, Mr Stephane Baumont of Toulouse University, said it would lead to a complete change of regime. "We will be in a Sixth Republic, a presidential regime resembling the American system".
"The real benefit will be in greater political responsibility," he said. "At present, the people exercise it only once every seven years. Is that really often enough for a post that combines the powers of Bill Clinton and Queen Elizabeth?"
