THE leader of the French Socialist party and father of Ségolène Royal’s
children has expressed ambivalence towards her presidential quest by saying
that he would have had “greater legitimacy” as a candidate, even if she had
more chance of winning.
François Hollande’s remarks were the latest in a series of blows to the Royal
campaign, revealing a deep malaise in the Socialist camp just as the party
was meant to have buried its differences.
Hollande, 52, suggested he had sacrificed his own presidential ambitions to
help his more popular lover. But in an interview with The Sunday Times he
sounded far from comfortable with the role of second fiddle.
“I considered she had more chances [of winning], even if I had greater
legitimacy as party secretary-general,” he said.
With her unorthodox brand of social conservatism and old- fashioned socialism,
Royal, a glamorous mother of four, easily defeated two male rivals last year
for the party’s nomination as a candidate to replace President Jacques
Chirac.
Her face has since been splashed across the world’s magazine covers. While
Hollande, a squat figure with thinning hair, thick spectacles and a loathing
of what he calls “political marketing”, has stayed in the shadows, she has
progressed from politician to style icon.
Complaining recently about “machismo”, Royal said she was not supported enough
by the “elephants”, as the Socialist party elders are known. Some have
publicly questioned whether she is up to the job.
But instead of sympathising with her, Hollande said he understood the
“reserve” of former Socialist ministers Laurent Fabius and Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, Royal’s defeated rivals.
“It is not easy to accept not to be a candidate when you think you have all
the qualities to be one,” he explained over a cup of tea in the party
headquarters at Argentan, Normandy, before a speech in the town hall.
“What is more, Ségolène wanted to campaign with the strength she got from the
nomination and it was only afterwards that she called on all those who could
constitute her team to join her,” he said. “Now that question is resolved.
She is supported by all the leaders of the party.”
Perhaps, but try as he might to sound supportive, Hollande, whose enemies call
him “Flanby” after a wobbly caramel pudding, could not help exuding unease
at the spectacle of his life’s ambition being usurped by the woman he once
considered his political pupil.
They met in the 1970s at the National Administration School, a nursery for
politicians. According to sources close to Hollande, the then apolitical
Royal used to hang on his every word. She said recently that she had been
“seduced” by his “humour, his character, his intelligence”.
As for the decision about who would be the candidate, she said that “a family
life is a life of concessions and compromises”. Asked how Hollande was
coping with his role, she said: “He’s okay with it. We’ll see what happens
next.”
However, according to Hollande’s friends, things are not that comfortable.
What makes it all the more painful is Royal’s embrace of a campaigning style
that is anathema to him.
Hollande denied having any reservations about her abilities. “If I had thought
she could not be a candidate . . . I would have entered the contest myself,”
he said.
Through clenched teeth he supported her proposals to make parliament stronger
and the presidency more accountable under a “sixth republic”. This was an
idea to win back voters from “third man” François Bayrou, who has made
institutional reform the heart of his centrist campaign. Polls have shown
him snapping at the heels of Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right
candidate and former interior minister.
Hollande had previously opposed this type of constitutional reform, however,
and Royal’s embrace of it was a slap in the face: it is closely associated
with Arnaud Montebourg, a Royal spokesman who has attacked Hollande as the
biggest “defect” of her campaign.
There could be worse humiliations: Hollande acknowledged that he was worried
about a repeat of 2002, when Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister,
lost in the first round of voting to Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right
National Front.
The two leading candidates in the first round of the election on April 22 will
go through to a run-off on May 6. Failure to win a place in the run-off
twice in a row would spell doom for the Socialist party and its
secretary-general. “We must do everything to make sure we get through this
time,” he said.
Royal might have seemed the party’s best hope for achieving that but it was
not the first time that Hollande had sounded less than supportive. When one
of Royal’s aides declared, after she was crowned party candidate, that she
was now “the general” leading the campaign, Hollande snapped: “I’m the
general.”
And in January he was heard to comment: “Kings always take back power. Queens
last only a certain time.”
The curious relationship of this unmarried couple fascinates France. Royal
says they almost tied the knot in Polynesia last year but that Hollande
feared ridicule.
“It would have been wildly romantic, a marriage in a canoe at the other end of
the world,” she said in a book of interviews that appeared last week. She
added: “We don’t need this to love each other.”
The partnership is no bed of roses, however. There have been rumours of
affairs and suggestions that the Socialist party hierarchy led by Hollande
is at war with the Royal entourage.
The impression of discord was intensified earlier this month by the appearance
of a vitriolic book by Eric Besson, a former Socialist party economist who
resigned in despair at what he called Royal’s “incompetence”.
“I don’t say it because she’s a woman,” said Besson. “I say it because she
doesn’t know her stuff. Particularly when it comes to economics.”
He described himself as a friend of Hollande but wrote: “He has an
extraordinary confidence that can end up blinding him . . . He’s the sort of
bloke who thinks that if his 747 were going down over the Atlantic he would
probably be the only survivor.”
Besson said Hollande was being “sidelined”: he does not attend key meetings
and when Royal moved into her campaign headquarters, one of his staff was
told the phone number was secret.
Although she has asked for their help, the “elephants” were also being cold
shouldered. Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister, attended an event with
Royal recently in which she did not address a word to him.
Fabius, a former prime minister, keeps calling her office to offer help but
gets no reply. Royal is unlikely to forgive him for having asked, upon
hearing that she was running for president: “Who’s going to look after the
children?”
Even Hollande, or “Monsieur Royal”, as he is sometimes called, did not seem to
be counting on winning a ministry if Royal is elected.
Having been rebuked for making policy without consulting her — he announced a
few months ago the Socialists would put up taxes if the party won power — he
was at pains to emphasise that he would not try to get his hands on the
levers if Royal won.
“We can share tasks during the presidential election campaign,” he said. “But
not afterwards . . . He who thinks Ségolène Royal could not fully exercise
her responsibilities does not know her very well.”
