THE Paris tribunal dropped a political bombshell this week when it announced that the Communist Party (PCF) secretary general, Mr Robert Hue, his predecessor, Mr Georges Marchais, who ran the party from 1972 until 1994, and two other PCF officials have been indicted for accepting £1.8 million in illegal donations from the Compagnie Generale des Eaux. The CGE is one of the biggest companies in France, with more than 220,000 employees.
Illegal financing of political parties and corruption have reached epidemic proportions in France. Charges like those levelled against the PCF are not unusual, but this is the first time the leader of a major political party has been indicted. At least five other cases involving French politicians are currently under investigation or being tried.
Court testimony this month proved that the CGE also gave £481,927 to the local Socialist Party government on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion in exchange for public works contracts.
This week's announcement was all the more humiliating given that the PCF had gloried in past revelations of the illegal financing of the Gaullist and Socialist parties. Communist officials had boasted that, unlike its competitors, their party never accepted commissions on government contracts in municipalities it controlled. The PCF's money its officials claimed, came solely from the contributions of party activists.
Communists say the ruling Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) fabricated the charges to discredit the PCF at a time when it was gaining ground. In the first round of a by election in Gardanne, southern France, to fill the vacant parliamentary seat of the disgraced politician, Mr Bernard Tapie, last Sunday, the Communist candidate received the highest number of votes.
But it is unlikely that the government was reacting to the Communists' showing in Gardanne the indictments were the result of the seizure of party accounts during a raid on PCF headquarters last June.
The high abstention rate in the Gardanne election - and the fact that all centrist candidates were eliminated in the first round - were symptomatic of voter disillusionment fostered by repeated corruption scandals. "All the main political parties have been involved in illegal financing," said Mr Claude Angeli, editor of the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, a publication which has been the nemesis of many corrupt French politicians since it was launched 81 years ago.
There is a danger that Mr Jean Marie Le Pen's racist National Front will reap the benefits of public dissatisfaction with traditional parties. "The only party not implicated in corruption is the National Front," said Mr Angeli. "Now the National Front is lecturing the public on corruption and morality - which is really over the top."
Until the Law on the Financing of Political Parties was passed in 1990, backhanders from large companies were essential to the survival of French political parties. A former prime minister, Mr Michel Rocard, thought he could bring probity to French politics. He pushed through the law limiting legal contributions to £6,000 and providing for public monies to finance parties. These measures meant the parties no longer had an excuse to accept gifts under the table.
European judges meeting recently in Geneva issued a statement strongly condemning the illegal financing of political parties and corruption, which they said were serious problems for all their countries.
