THEY made strange bedfellows, but Ségolene Royal, the Socialist candidate in
France’s presidential election, went campaigning for the first time
yesterday with one of the so-called “elephants” she felled in the battle for
her party’s nomination last year.
Such a partnership would have seemed unthinkable only a few months ago, but
Laurent Fabius, a former Socialist prime minister who had famously dismissed
Royal as an unworthy contender in the presidential contest, found himself
introducing the popular mother of four to his supporters as the next leader
of France.
An exhibition centre near Rouen erupted in cries of “Ségolene, présidente” as
she walked onto the stage and kissed Fabius on both cheeks.
She told the crowd of 7,000 flag-waving supporters she had “a vision to get
France back on its feet”. “Things will turn around,” she declared.
Royal, 53, overcame bitter opposition from Fabius and other party grandees,
the so-called “elephants” who include the father of her children, to win the
Socialist nomination in November. But since that triumph, her fortunes have
changed amid charges of amateurism in her campaign and questions about her
competence to govern the country.
Last week, in an effort to invigorate her faltering quest for power, she
invited the “elephants” into her team, finding a place for all of the most
important — and mostly male — figures in her party, including
Lionel Jospin, the former prime minister who led them to a humiliating
defeat in the last presidential election in 2002.
The idea was to put paid to bitter squabbling around her, but she was
ridiculed this weekend by opponents for bringing back yesterday’s men.
“Only two months ago she said she wanted renewal,” said Laurent Wauquiez,
national secretary of the ruling party of Nico-las Sarkozy, her chief rival
for the presidency. “They have some young talent in the Socialists. Why not
give them a chance?”
The return of the old guard followed a dramatic lurch to the left by Royal two
weeks ago, when the candidate known for an unorthodox blend of social
conservatism and left-wing economics, unveiled a 100-point programme of
old-fashioned socialist policies that have been abandoned virtually
everywhere else in the world.
This Royal in red appeared to be following François Mitter-rand’s rules: the
former Socialist president, who was a mentor to Royal, always maintained
that in France’s two-round election system a candidate must secure the
political base before trying to conquer the centre. In this case, the base
meant the socialist left.
There was little sign of it working, however, and as polls showed her up to 10
points behind Sarkozy, she turned for help to luminaries of the Socialist
clan, among them Martine Aubry, the architect of the widely discredited
35-hour working week and daughter of Jacques Delors, the former European
Commission president.
The phalanx of familiar faces was enlisted to rally the left to vote not for
Communists or Trotskyists — still a force to reckon with in the
quaintly antiquated French political landscape — but for “Ségo”, as her
fans call her.
Will it work? Or will the prominence of old-style, tax-and-spend politicians —
including her partner and party boss François Hollande, who once said on
television: “I don’t like the rich” — alienate Royal
from the centre, ending her dream of becoming France’s first female
president?
At yesterday’s rally, the balding Fabius suggested that his differences with
Royal were a thing of the past, quoting the famous slogan from The Three
Musketeers: “From now on, dear Ségolãne, it’s one for all and all for one.”
For her part, Royal appeared to have forgiven Fabius his “machismo”, as she
called it, when he reportedly asked, after hearing about her plans to run
for president: “Who will look after the children?”
She was evidently eager to harness the tried and tested ability of this scion
of the ruling elite to rope in voters on the far left: Fabius led the
successful campaign in 2005 against the European constitution.
Royal will hit the campaign trail in the next few days with other socialist
luminaries such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister and
defeated rival, who had poured as much vitriol as Fabius on her presidential
ambitions.
At some point she will also pose for a photograph with Jospin, the former
Trotskyist school-teacher who, after his defeat five years ago, was enraged
to find his efforts at a comeback thwarted by Royal.
He has been one of her most vocal critics, once claiming that she was
synonymous with “futility” and mocking her emphasis on listening to what the
French people had to say. “When I hear a Socialist say that the French
people are the best experts and are better than the experts, I say it is
pure demagoguery,” he said.
Jospin has studiously snubbed her big campaign events, and did nothing to stop
Eric Besson, his protégé, from resigning as the Royal team’s senior economic
policy adviser. Besson cited disagreements with other advisers, a hugely
embarrassing setback for the campaign.
Hollande, the Socialist first secretary and Royal’s partner, has, on occasion,
seemed no more supportive. His own presidential ambitions were trampled by a
self-styled “gazelle” who coquettishly answers criticisms from leading men
in her party with the rejoinder that: “Gazelles run faster than elephants.”
Hollande has been chastised for announcing a tax policy without consulting the
candidate and for being publicly unsupportive — and even unpleasant —
towards the woman he has lived with for three decades.
Evidence of continuing tensions between them surfaced when it emerged that she
had not invited him to a key strategy meeting before her gruelling
tele-vision question-and-answer session at the beginning of the week. He was
furious.
The venom coursing through the veins of this fractious political clan has
sapped the Royal campaign more effectively than attacks from Sarkozy, the
combative centre-right frontrunner. The poor relationship between Royal and
her party was the biggest weakness identified in a recent study conducted by
the Sofres polling institute for the Socialists, even if her defiance of
Socialist orthodoxy was what initially brought her to prominence.
“She had to do something to bring the family together,” saida source in the
Royal camp. “She had to get the elephants involved on her side to change the
damaging impression that they were against her. She had to show a united
front.”
This became ever more imperative after suggestions that François Bayrou, a
centrist candidate who has been advancing at Royal’s expense, might have
been trying to recruit the disgruntled Strauss-Kahn as a future prime
minister in a government of national unity.
Bernard Kouchner, a former health minister who often tops polls as the most
popular politician in France, was cited as another possible recruit.
Kouchner and Strauss-Kahn were both on the list of 13 strategic council
members that Royal read out on Thursday night.
There was a spring in her step the next morning as she alighted in her mauve
velvet pumps on the railway station platform at Poitiers after the journey
from Paris.
Wrapped in a pashmina shawl, she greeted wellwishers with handshakes and
smiles. Her restructured campaign, she said, was designed to put in place
“the best team that was possible”.
However, not everyone in Poitiers, capital of the central western
Poitou-Charentes region of which she has been president since 2004, seemed
so certain about that.
“Jospin is going to weigh her down terribly,” said David Vil-liers, a
35-year-old engineer. “He’s the one who brought in the 35-hour week and I’ve
always been against that.”
There was also the risk that the attempt to show unity might backfire. Only
two women were among the 13 figures Royal called on to invigorate her team:
Aubry and Yvette Roudy, a well-known feminist. “What about equality in
politics that she has supported among men and women?” asked Virginie Charin,
a Poitiers office worker watching Royal’s arrival at Poitiers station. “Why
has she let all these men take over the campaign?”
Royal’s aides made clear that there was no question of Jospin getting his
hands on the campaign levers, and his role would be limited to making the
odd speech to Socialist supporters. In this campaign cauldron of giant egos,
however, the risk of even greater conflict in the Socialist family has risen
steeply since the Royal restructuring.
“There will be permanent tensions,” said Frédéric Sawicki, a political
analyst, “which could boil over at any moment.” There were already signs
this weekend that it would be difficult to get the “elephants” trumpeting
the same tune.
When asked about Bayrou’s plans for a national unity government on Friday,
Kouchner said: “He is right . . . I hope that Ségolãne Royal will understand
the need for enlargement.” This heresy prompted a response from a Royal
spokesman: “Any kindness to Bayrou would weaken our candidate.”
Royal has made it clear she will not be pushed around by anyone in the
campaign team, and her exclusion of Hollande from her strategy meeting last
weekend was an example of that. “She’s very stubborn,” said an aide. “She
will carry on doing things her way.”
The daughter of a strict army colonel, she has made a virtue of how different
she is from other Socialist politicians: her military “boot camp” proposal
for unruly teenagers horrified figures such as Jospin and Fabius, who
dismissed it last year as not worthy of consideration.
Having long been the star of the opinion polls — either ahead of Sarkozy or
even with him — she began to fall behind, as the well-oiled Sarkozy election
machine got into gear.
The slide accelerated with a series of gaffes on international affairs that
were seized on by opponents as evidence that she was unfit to be president.
But then came an impressive performance on television, and by Tuesday, polls
were showing that she had bounced back to within two points of Sarkozy.
Royal is convinced, say aides, that she will prevail in the first round on
April 22 and the run-off two weeks later. Being a woman, she believes, has
forced her to prove herself more than any male, strengthening her as a
candidate.
“I knew that they would try to make me pay for my place [as a presidential
candidate] 100 times more dearly than any other,” she has been telling her
entourage recently in response to press stories about her blunders. “I told
you that it would be tough.” And she was right.
