FRANCE: While most socialist party supporters want Ségolène Royal as their presidential candidate, old-time party members would rather see her defeated writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
A meeting of the national bureau of the French socialist party promised high drama last night as Ségolène Royal, the leading contender for the presidency of France, faced her jealous rivals from within the party.
In an opinion poll published by Libération newspaper yesterday, 68 per cent of socialist sympathisers said Royal would be the best socialist candidate for the presidency next year. She is at least 40 percentage points ahead of all other socialists.
The party's leader, Francois Hollande, who has been Royal's companion for the past quarter century and is the father of her four children, faces the challenge of reuniting a party riven by competing presidential ambitions.
"We are being suffocated by ridiculous quarrels between party divas," Jack Lang told Libération.
Lang is himself a presidential hopeful and socialist "elephant," as party old-timers are known. "We expect Francois Hollande to blow the whistle that recess is over," Lang continued. "Otherwise, our party will break into pieces."
Royal shocked many socialists over the past week by violating party tradition on two taboo subjects: security and the 35-hour working week.
After her first outburst, on the treatment of delinquent youths and their parents, a poll by Le Monde showed that 50 per cent of the French population and 48 per cent of socialists believed she had "distanced herself from left-wing values".
Visiting the immigrant suburb of Bondy, north of Paris, on May 31st, Royal said that delinquents aged 16 or older should be placed "in establishments with a military framework for . . . humanitarian projects" from the first offence.
She suggested that disruptive students be sent to boarding schools, that parents who fail to discipline their children be required to attend classes and their welfare payments reviewed.
"We already have one Sarkozy," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former finance minister who is a distant second to Royal in the polls.
(He referred to the law-and-order interior minister and right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy.)
"We don't need two of them," Strauss-Kahn added.
The socialist senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon accused Royal of "running after poor whites".
Less affluent voters deserted the party en masse in the 2002 election, and Royal's stand on crime and the 35-hour week appeal to them.
A stunning 81 per cent of Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme right-wing National Front approve of her stand on security.
Royal's father was a colonel. Her partner, Hollande, said: "I don't share her point of view on the use of the army in rehabilitating delinquent youths. "It is neither its role nor its function."
But Royal's strategy of going it alone, of playing "the people" against the party apparatus, seems to be working.
A BVA/Le Figaro opinion poll yesterday showed that 66 per cent of left-wing voters and 67 per cent of right-wing voters approve of her stand on security.
By taking an eclectic, issue-by-issue approach to the campaign, Royal could erode the left-right polarisation of French politics.
"At least she is asking the questions that the French ask themselves," prime minister Dominique de Villepin commented during a visit to Finland on Monday. "She has broken the ideological mould of the left."
Royal this week published a 64-page chapter entitled "Disorder in employment and work" on her website, in which she questioned the wisdom of the 35-hour working week, considered by the socialist party to be the great achievement of the 1997-2002 Jospin government.
The socialist MEP Benoît Hamon warned that Royal should "stop throwing bombs" because "she could do a lot of damage".
Former education minister Claude Allègre, who is close to former prime minister Lionel Jospin and was Royal's boss when she was junior minister for schools, said she has "a huge talent for self-promotion" and accused her of splitting the socialist party.
"I hope she will not be designated [ presidential candidate]," Allègre said. "She doesn't deserve it." For their 2007 programme, debated last night, the socialists are expected to promise a 45 per cent increase in the minimum wage and a 50 per cent reduction in unemployment over five years.
But the "elephants" may prefer a socialist defeat to president Ségolène Royal. She has been anointed in opinion polls. If they attempt to sabotage her candidacy, the public may not forgive them.