Paris:- Saturday, 14. December 1996:- As you may have guessed, if you have been reading this column once in a while - especially last week's - Parisians are a little bit nervous these days. Ten days of intensive investigations by a considerable army of police have not produced any answers to last week's bombing of the RER train at Port-Royal.

The 'usual suspects' were rounded up and then released. I have long thought these 'suspects' are on standby - since their non-appearance in 'Casablanca' - and they do not even bother to take their tooth brushes when roused out of their warm beds in pre-dawn raids.

Prime Time for the President of France

Thursday morning's editions of Le Parisian had the headline, 'Our 10 Questions for the President' - in anticipation of the evening's scheduled broadcast, which began at 20:50 on the commercial TV TF1 channel and the all-news LCI channel, and lasted two hours.

According to earlier reports, the President had been cramming for this encounter for weeks, and the PR machine drummed up public anticipation to a high pitch. To put it mildly, the French are concerned, and they have a lot to be concerned about - so they could be expected to be receptive.

The format: five professional journalists with lots of credits, facing the President, in a studio with a small audience. The viewing audience was estimated at 10.5 million at the beginning and 8.6 million two hours later.

I would not characterize 'sound-bites' as a legitimate form of communication. On the other hand, I do not think anything especially important is going to be said if the time allotted to saying it is 90 minutes, plus an extra 30 for overtime. Keeping this in mind, this is Le Parisien's Friday morning headline:

'Le Grand Ratage' - which means something like 'The Big Bungle.' I don't know if 'ratage' is the right word, because Libération's Friday headline was a bit simpler: 'C'est Tout?' - 'That's It?' This morning's Le Parisien gets back on the track with the headline, 'Employment - the Forgotten Dossier.'

There are 3.5 million 'official' unemployed in France today - about 200 thousand more than when Mr. Chirac was elected in 1995. There are another 1.5 million with less-than-perfect work contracts - part-time workers and seasonal workers. Nobody knows the number of 'unofficial' unemployed; once off the rolls it doesn't matter whether they are working or out of benefits, just so long as they are 'off.'

To be fair, Mr. Chirac inherited many problems caused by globalization from his predecessors, and he echoes their complaints: the French are conservative. But both the Left and the Right have been urging the French to tighten their belts, to make an effort - for a good many years now - I say seven - and the French have done exactly as asked of them. Many have had no pay raises for years; last month's so-called negative-inflation was a danger signal - yet another one.

The French do not want to know about more belt-tightening in the future; they want to know about full employment for their children, starting tomorrow.

They didn't hear anything new on Thursday night.

[The broadcast was organised by TF1 management and they simply chose not to invite journalists from the state TV channels A2 and FR3 - but it is thought that - the 'powers,' the RPR party, that is - think the public TV journalists are all red-leftists, liable to ask annoying questions. Somebody should tell these 'powers' that to exclude journalists this way for these reasons - will only give them a desire to 'get even' the next time around - and these 'powers' might do well not to forget who is going to be in the hot seat then.

Michel Péricard, president of the RPR group in the Assembly National, was quoted by Le Parisian as saying that the jouralists chosen were most likely to pose the questions occupying French minds. Meanwhile, during the Presidential broadcast, state TV channels A2 and FR3 captured nearly eight million viewers with a newsmagazine show and an old movie.]