PARIS -- All governments lie. One could even say that the bigger the governments, the bigger their lies. Sometimes, however, it happens that a politician gives off a particular feeling of honesty, even of transparency. It has long been the case for French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, with his look of Swedish pastor. He even went so far as to claim "an inventory right" on former President Francois Mitterrand's legacy, meaning that some of his deeds couldn't be morally approved.

It's true that a few people had been contending that Jospin's case was more complicated than commonly assumed, and that the young diplomat who joined the ranks of the Socialist Party in 1971 had actually been a Trotskyist militant since the 1960s. But the prime minister denied these rumors, saying that they were the result of confusion between his brother and himself.

Since then, all this has been rapidly forgotten.

Is this due to the proximity of the presidential election of 2002, which will almost certainly see Jospin run against President Jacques Chirac? A number of articles recently published in the French press leave no doubt, not only on Jospin's Trotskyist background, but to the fact he was practicing what the extreme leftists call "entrism": to "enter" a party with the goal of influencing it, while secretly remaining a militant of another party.

His Trotskyist days were not a short adventure for Jospin, since it seems he did not break his links with the group before 1987, 20 years after joining, at a time when he had been holding the most important job in the Socialist Party -- first secretary -- for six years!

Was Mitterrand, who had made the decision to appoint Jospin to this position, aware of his cover? Several observers of the French political scene don't rule out this possibility. The socialist president was by all means a Machiavellian, and he had privately explained his decision to appoint Jospin by saying: "He's the only one I'm sure will not hide under the table if the Communists come knocking."

Hostility to "Stalinism," which has been a common feature of the various Trotskyist movements since the murder in Mexico in 1940 of their hero, Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, alias Trotsky, by a Soviet agent, may very well help explain Jospin's attitude toward a French Communist Party that didn't try to conceal, until very recently, its Stalinist zeal.

It remains a fact that for six years the most important French party was in the hands of a man linked to an extreme leftist group that vowed to strive for the complete destruction of the "bourgeois" state. For those who often met Jospin at the time, like me, it's still hardly believable.

Too many details have now been given in this case to leave any room for doubt. Jospin was forced to publicly admit he lied before the National Assembly. But, curiously enough, he only made a partial admission, saying he had had secret "contacts," without acknowledging he had been a militant himself.

"It's true," he said, "that in the 1960s I took an interest in Trotskyist ideas, and I established relations with one of the groups of this political movement. It was a personnel, intellectual and political journey of which I am not in the least ashamed."

When the rightist opposition tried to exploit the case against him, Jospin briefly lost his nerves, saying: "I've taken a long time to answer before journalists. It's less serious than taking a long time to answer before judges." This was a clear allusion to Chirac's refusal, in the name of the constitution, to answer the judiciary's questions about some Paris scandals.

Both sides, however, are calm once again. Chirac and Jospin jointly participated in the recent NATO and EU summits, and managed to use the same language to speak with their foreign partners. But this must not hide the fact that the knives have been drawn for the presidential race and a fierce battle can be expected to start next fall.

Will it be possible for "cohabitation's" two main actors to maintain a common line on important issues like the "enlargement" of Europe or the relationship with the new administration of U.S. President George W. Bush? It would be a miracle if France, which often finds itself isolated on these issues, could avoid losing some of its authority and weight.

For the time being, the revelations of Jospin's lies reduce his electoral chances, which were already limited, paradoxically, by the weakness of the extreme right.

In 1997, National Front leader Jean-Marie le Pen deliberately contributed to the "plural left's" victory by keeping a number of his candidates in the second round, thus depriving the conservatives of ballots necessary to win. In a presidential election, two candidates only remain in the second round, and it's doubtful, for the good reason that very few would follow him, that he would advise his electors to vote for Jospin.

But it will be the opposite on the other side: The extreme left, which has benefited from the Communist Party's loss of popularity and stands to get about 6 percent of the vote, is determined not to help the Socialists in the second round, both in the presidential and general elections.

The economic situation must also be taken into account. Jospin has taken advantage of years of growth and reduction of unemployment. The fiscal returns they generated allowed the government to reduce taxes and create tens of thousands of public jobs. But the American slowdown is beginning to affect Europe, at a time when more and more French employees are demonstrating for better working conditions and against the closing of firms facing structural difficulties.

There is no reason to assume this agitation will stop. And it will be no wonder if some discordant voices begin to be heard in the "majority," and if former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, presently Economy and Finance minister and in the past a determined rival of Jospin, no longer tries to restrain his criticism of various steps taken by the government to calm growing social unrest.