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Selon le Daily Telegraph, la véritable notoriété internationale Ségolène Royal,est due à son statut de «première femme en France qui pèse réellement sur la scène politique depuis la désastreuse parenthèse d’Edith Cresson dans les années 90» et à son «impressionnante percée dans les sondages».


Darling of the Left leads polls in French presidential race


Ségolène Royal has emerged from France's job law crisis better placed than ever to become the country's first female president, polls published yesterday showed.

She is not only the Left's most popular candidate but would beat Nicolas Sarkozy, the Right's strongest prospect, in the race to succeed Jacques Chirac, a survey found for the first time.

Miss Royal, 52, whose early career was championed by the late François Mitterrand, would win 51 per cent of the vote compared with 49 per cent for Mr Sarkozy, the interior minister, on the basis of the poll for Paris Match.

Her ascendancy was reinforced by a poll for Le Point which, based on preferences for personalities, put her five points ahead of Mr Sarkozy, a reversal of their fortunes only four months ago.

The findings, which assume that the highly unpopular Mr Chirac will stand down in 2007, confirm Miss Royal's impressive rise. She has eclipsed all other prominent socialists, including the party leader François Hollande, the father of her four children.

Miss Royal, elegant and confident, is seen by many French, previously considered unprepared for a woman president, as a breath of fresh air. She made no false moves during protests that led to Monday's surrender by Mr Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, and withdrawal of the contentious "first job contracts" law (CPE).

Early in the crisis Miss Royal, as president of the Poitou-Charentes regional council, declared that funding would be denied to any company that took on staff using CPEs, which would have made firing young employees easier.

Miss Royal's critics, who include the Left's so-called "elephants", question her experience and qualities as a potential head of state. Alluding to Mr Hollande's own possible bid for the job, the former prime minister Laurent Fabius, who also wants to be president, has joked: "But who will look after the children?"

But the sniping, and the suspicions of the far Left that her qualified admiration for Tony Blair is dangerous heresy, have not damaged Miss Royal's standing in the polls. Allies of Mr Sarkozy believe she has profited from a rash of positive publicity and hope that her appeal will wane as the debate over policy develops in the run-up to the elections.

Despite slipping behind Miss Royal in the ratings, the interior minister has avoided serious personal fall-out from the job law crisis as the government staggered from one failure to another in its bid to save the CPE.

Mr Sarkozy pleased his own supporters with strident backing for riot police caught up in violent demonstrations and kept his options open by clearly distinguishing between genuine protesters and rioters. He also expressed persistent doubts about what he recognised as a deeply unpopular law.

This was a high-risk strategy given his commitment to a "rupture" with France's failed social and economic model. But in an interview with Le Figaro, he said that while the country was in need of change, it would accept only reforms it viewed as just.

By Colin Randall in Paris