Segolene-Headlines

The Guardian : The woman who would be president

2006-10-08T13:12:21+02:00

Royal is an outsider who has bucked the system of the hierarchical, male-dominated French left: rather than bide her time as an apprentice of the ageing men dubbed "les éléphants" who run the Parti Socialiste, she has won herself cult status and an army of devoted supporters. Her fans believe that she alone can rescue France from the gloom, depression and glaring social inequalities of 12 years under President Jacques Chirac.

France certainly has problems. Youth unemployment is among the worst in western Europe, violent crime is rising and many fear that last year's riots in the run-down, immigrant suburbs - where teenagers say daily racism plagues their lives - could erupt again with the slightest spark. In the last presidential election in 2002, France was horrified when the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked the socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin from the race in the first round. This time, Nicolas Sarkozy, the charismatic and demagogic interior minister and centre-right presidential hopeful, is making no secret of trying to appeal to far-right sympathisers with his tough stance on immigration.

With her huge popular support, Royal has imposed herself on the Socialist party as the only one capable of rousing electors. This weekend, she is expected to finally formally declare her intention to be the Socialist presidential candidate. But the elephants will not go down without a fight. Her rivals for the nomination are likely to include two former prime ministers and two other grands hommes of government. They say she is inexperienced and a ratings bubble waiting to burst. "It is going to be nasty," admits one Royal supporter.

Royal says her most important weapon in the struggle to take the Socialist nomination in November, and the Elysée next May, are her "treasures", the growing band of followers in her movement, Désirs d'Avenir - "Wishes for the Future". Thousands of these followers work for free for Royal, canvassing support, hosting barbecues, leading meetings, blogging and emailing suggestions on policy. Such has been her success that of the 185,000 Socialist party members eligible to vote in November, at least 85,000 of them have joined over the past year in an online recruitment drive. Wishes for the Future claim that most of these recruits have joined to vote Ségolène.

Royal's use of the internet to rally support has earned her the title of the "electronic Messiah". More than 34,000 people have so far contributed to her site, Desirsdavenir.org, where she invites them to shape her policies and co-write her forthcoming book. Numerous supporters run chatrooms devoted to her, including her eldest son, Thomas, who runs the official blog for young Royal supporters, the Ségosphère.

"I want you all to spend 15 minutes a day on my website, it will give you a boost for the day and you'll learn a lot," she preached from a wooden platform in Bondy town hall in the troubled northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis last week, after summoning 200 leaders of her regional support groups to a rally. "Ségolène President!" they chanted. One supporter, Medhi Benhabri, who works for Paris city hall, said Royal's website made possible the "utopian dream of the citizen shaping the politician's ideas". How many hours a day did he devote to her cause? He couldn't say exactly, but, "a lot".

Like the last socialist president, the wily and deeply enigmatic François Mitterrand, to whom she was once adviser, Royal is playing the provincial card, touring la France profonde - the country's regions - promising to shift power away from the Paris elite.

Over the past months she has perfected the "new look" which she used in the sports hall in Martignas-sur-Jalle near Bordeaux - stepping off the stage, taking the mic to the centre of the audience, declaring "The Right must go!", then speaking without notes on her idea of a "Republic of Respect", a new France that is "moral and fair". Before she arrived at the sports hall that night, I followed her on a typically gruelling 12-hour day of campaigning around the Bordeaux region. At the village of Mesterieux, she glided smiling into a crowd of more than 200 wine-makers who face having to tear up their vines as Europe battles to drain its surplus wine-lake. She so charmed them that the old ladies lined up to kiss her and have their photographs taken with her. Then, on an industrial site, she sympathised with aviation workers whose jobs were under threat.

"I like her because she has suffered," said one Gironde cheese-maker after seeing her for the first time. "Because she has been through hard times, I feel she understands me."

Allusions to Royal's troubled childhood seem to follow her wherever she goes, and are repeated in the latest array of books about her. She was the fourth of eight children of an army colonel named Jacques Royal. He wore a monocle, played Gregorian chants around the house and insisted his children went to mass and vespers every day. Ségolène was born in Dakar, Senegal, where he was stationed at the time, but the family then settled in rural Lorraine in north-east France. There, Col Royal meted out draconian punishments to his children, reportedly shaving his sons' heads if he caught them misbehaving. He believed women should stay at home and produce children as his wife had done. He once said: "I have five children ... and three daughters." It was not a place where girls were encouraged to have a voice and Royal immediately began striving to be better than the rest. "I realised I had to be financially independent to avoid humiliation," she has said.

Carl Meeus, co-author of a recent book about Royal and her partner, the Socialist Party leader François Hollande, who has trailed the couple for a decade, says: "We found it very difficult to get her to talk about her childhood; she doesn't like speaking about the past. She prefers the future." He says Royal was particularly scarred by the family crisis that erupted just after she went to university on a scholarship, when her mother finally left her father. With Col Royal refusing to pay any maintenance, her mother took cleaning jobs and relied on Ségolène, who urged the brothers and sisters to bring a court case against their father, which they won.

At the exclusive Ecole National d'Administration, training ground of the French ruling class, Royal was in the same class as the current prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. It was also there that she met Hollande, a doctor's son. He was awed by her steely determination and steered it into politics. She would later hold ministerial positions for education, environment, family and childhood while he took the reins of the Socialist party in 2002. They have four children, now in their teens and twenties, but have never married. The fact that Hollande may step aside and forfeit his own chance of running for president to support her bid astonishes her opponents on the left, who perhaps overlook his slack ratings in the opinion polls. They feel that Royal should be like Hillary Clinton and wait until her husband has had his go. Some of the elephants and others in France's unreconstructed political classes are, in fact, half hoping that he will take over from her at the last minute this weekend.

Royal's carefully constructed image seems built to withstand whatever is thrown at it. Her cousin Anne-Christine Royal recently announced she is to run as a candidate for Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front in municipal elections next month. Her older brother, working for the French secret services, was reportedly involved in the operation which blew up the Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985. But stories like these do not seem to put off the public - they just endear her further to them as a smiling survivor.

She is popular for refusing a police escort, and this summer, when her Paris flat was mysteriously ransacked - nothing was stolen - she protested about the way the incident was made public by the interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, her likely rival for the Elysée. But she is sternly able to play the law-and-order card as well: when she was recently hit with a custard pie while addressing crowds in La Rochelle, she ensured a complaint was made and the culprit, a leftwing protester, appeared in court.

"The more her opponents attack her, the more people like her," says Jean Guérard, of Aquitaine regional council. "When Laurent Fabius [the former prime minister and rival socialist presidential candidate] asked, 'Who will look after the children?' if she ran, the public rallied to her. She won't reply to the criticisms in public, she won't join the slanging matches and that just lifts her higher in people's estimation, it sets her apart."

MEP Gilles Savary, who defected from Fabius to join Royal's inner circle, says: "She's very difficult to destabilise. In public, she doesn't show hurt. She said to me the other day, 'I must not cry. Men can cry, like Lionel Jospin [who recently shed tears at a socialist rally]. It's in fashion for men. But if I cry, I'm finished, I would never be a candidate again. Look at what they would do to me in public, they would talk of nothing but my fragility.'"

"It's all about the people," she smiled between meetings in Bordeaux. "The people are at the heart of my project." Later, chasing her down a stairwell at Bondy town-hall after her meeting with the faithful, I asked her what was the one thing that kept her going: "The desire to live up to the hopes and expectations that all these people have placed in me. My need to rise to the challenge of the trust that the people, the country, has given me."

Royal, who for months was lampooned for not defining her political ideas but promoting a woolly notion of family values and public morals, has begun using her journeys around the country to clarify her vision to modernise France. An admirer of Tony Blair, within a party which was always suspicious of him, Royal, like Mitterrand, somehow manages to be both of the right and of the left. She outraged those on the party's left by suggesting a form of military service for unruly teenagers on riot-torn estates and criticised the Socialists' cherished 35-hour working week. Yet she is hugely pro-trade union and has promised to ban genetically modified food. Although pro-Blair, she is not pro the war in Iraq. "My diplomatic policy would not consist of going and kneeling in front of George Bush," she has said.

"I don't think she always wanted to be president. I think she stood up because she had another message to give," Savary says. "The Socialist party in France has been a closed-off, sealed-off clique of men, cut off from the population. She's not afraid to confront the taboos that the party once left alone, like security and crime, and France's ghettoes."

Dominique Bertinotti, one of the few female mayors of a Paris arrondissement, says Royal's very existence is in itself revolutionary. She is the only woman head of a region in France, a country where women only got the vote in 1944 and where political parties prefer to pay fines rather than meet quotas for female representation. "To see the very macho reactions to her, even among our own comrades, shows how she is breaking taboos," she says.

Royal's big promise is to give the people a voice in a society where those in power have stopped listening to the street. "The citizen is the expert, let's have a dialogue," is her refrain. But rivals in the party have laid into her for ducking difficult questions. On the platform in Bondy last week, she asked for questions from the floor, adding,"We are a democracy, after all." One man stood up and said, "What is the first measure you'll take if you're elected?" She neatly sidestepped answering.

Before she left, Royal promised the crowd, "Power won't change me." But many outside the Ségosphère still wonder who she really is, and what won't be changing.

Angelique Chrisafis
Thursday September 28, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1882612,00.html

Time: Faudrait-il être triste, laid et ennuyeux pour faire de la politique ?

2006-10-06T16:54:57+02:00

L'hebdomadaire américain Time consacre sa couverture à celle "qui secoue la France", ne serait-ce que par "sa féminité".
En effet, demande Time en la citant, "pourquoi faudrait-il être triste, laid et ennuyeux pour faire de la politique ?"
Time semble adhérer à cette opinion et critique ses rivaux "mâles et gris" au sein du PS.

L'hebdo : Elle surprend. Pas seulement par son look... Mais aussi par le contenu de son propos.

2006-10-06T17:09:25+02:00

Vu de loin, il semble que la gauche et la droite s'étripent autour de leurs vieilles postures idéologiques. L'une défendra d'abord l'égalité. L'autre la liberté. Les candidats martèlent sans relâche ces antiennes", écrit L'Hebdo pour commenter la précampagne pour l'élection présidentielle en France. Avant de nuancer son propos : "Mais c'est bien plus compliqué."

Face à la droite, "les éléphants socialistes cultivent les mêmes ambiguïtés. Ils en rajoutent sur leurs convictions de gauche en sachant très bien qu'une fois élus, ils n'échapperont pas à la nécessité de réformes désagréables. Mais là, pas un mot. Il s'agit de glaner des voix jusqu'à l'extrême gauche."

Reste Ségolène Royal. Elle "surprend", estime L'Hebdo. "Pas seulement par son look, comme on le dit partout. Mais aussi par le contenu de son propos. Encore faut-il le connaître. Tous les médias répètent, avec ses adversaires, particulièrement venimeux dans son propre camp, qu'‘elle ne dit rien'. Or lorsqu'on lit son discours, qualifié partout de ‘vide et décevant', on découvre des idées."

Excellent dossier dans Courrier International : Ségolène est-elle de gauche ?

2006-10-06T17:18:47+02:00

Au sommaire :
Du neuf avec du vieux
Entre valeurs de gauche et blairisme, le dilemme socialiste
“Público” n’a rien compris
Une cible mouvante, donc difficile à abattre
Etrange phénomène
Sémantique : Dans ségolisme, il y a bien gaullisme, non ?
http://www.courrierinternational.com

Financial Times : L'étoile montante de l'opposition socialiste

2006-10-06T17:09:53+02:00

."L'étoile montante de l'opposition socialiste" a provoqué un tollé à gauche en brisant le tabou des 35 heures obligatoires, qui, selon elle, ont miné les droits des travailleurs les plus faibles. Pour le quotidien londonien, Ségolène Royal, qui est "très photogénique", fait preuve d'un éclectisme politique que les éléphants du PS français auront du mal à contourner

L'actualité.com : la voie Royal

2006-05-18T02:00:00+02:00

Brillante, élégante, charismatique, Ségolène Royal la socialiste deviendra-t-elle en 2007 la première présidente de la République française? Notre reporter l'a suivie pendant une journée.

10 h 47 Le TGV entre en gare de Poitiers, à une heure 37 minutes de Paris. En descendant, je repère une passagère d’une indéniable beauté. Je finis par la reconnaître: c’est Ségolène Royal, la femme politique la plus populaire de France, celle que je suis venu «couvrir» dans son fief, la région dont elle est présidente, le Poitou-Charentes. Je me présente. Son sourire est franc, sa poignée de main aussi. Je lui explique que je la retrouverai sur le campus universitaire, où elle participe aujourd’hui à un forum sur les éco-industries.

«Est-ce qu’une voiture vous attend? me demande-t-elle.

— Non, j’allais prendre un taxi.

— Si vous voulez, je vous emmène.»

La suite

No one has thought to call Ségolène Royal an elephant.

2006-05-15T18:05:00+02:00

Le magazine Newsweek se demandait en février dernier « Who’s that girl ? ». Et rappelait que « cette génération de Français n’a pas vu de grand leader féminin ; il n’y en a peut-être pas eu depuis Jeanne d’Arc ».

Les journaux américains, dans leur ensemble, s’intéressent plus au couple Royal-Hollande qu’à la femme seule : « Le couple français pourrait se battre pour la candidature » titre un article de l’Associated Press.

They are France's power couple: He is the Socialist Party boss, and she is the party's most popular politician. Now, Francois Hollande and Segolene Royal might end up competing against each other in the 2007 presidential race.
While Hollande is bespectacled and somewhat bland, Royal is the darling of the polls, with a disarming smile and crisp, chic suits. In a country where women make up only 12 percent of parliament, she seems the more unlikely candidate for president.
And that's exactly why people like her.
Royal, 52, campaigns for some of the traditional family values that are usually the terrain of the right. She has not unveiled a platform and is untested on economic and international affairs. She has often seemed on the Socialist fringe.
Yet France is looking for fresh ideas, especially after three weeks of rioting swept the country last fall, exposing deep problems of unemployment, disenfranchisement and racism faced by youths in poor neighborhoods. Many think Royal might be the left's best weapon against Nicolas Sarkozy, the law-and-order interior minister who is a strong potential candidate for the right

Cette semaine, c'est le New York Times qui consacre un dossier complet à Ségoléne Royal : La Femme

There's a reason that the leaders of France's Socialist Party are called "elephants": They live forever. Among the elephants now vying to become the party's candidate for president in next year's election are Laurent Fabius, who served as prime minister 22 years ago, and Lionel Jospin, who served as Socialist Party leader a quarter-century ago and suffered a defeat in the last presidential election so devastating, both for himself and for the party, that you would have thought prudence alone would dictate political retirement. But in France, politics is a profession; once you arrive, you stay.

No one has thought to call Ségolène Royal an elephant. For one thing, it would be unbecoming, since she is a woman — and a woman who, when she works her smile up into her eyes, bears a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. Royal is, remarkably enough, the first truly présidentiable woman in French history. But what is most striking about her candidacy, which so far consists of a highly orchestrated media seduction, is not the fact that she is a woman but rather that she has positioned herself as a nonelephant, indeed, almost an antielephant. She is, in effect, running against France's political culture, which is to say against remoteness and abstraction, ideological entrenchment and male domination itself. And that culture, which is embodied by her own party, has struck back, ridiculing her as a soap bubble borne aloft by a momentary gust of public infatuation.

La suite ici

The Independent : il ne faut surtout pas prendre Ségolène Royal à la légère

2006-10-06T17:17:59+02:00

The Independent a consacré trois pages, lundi 15 mai, à la saga médiatico-politique de Ségolène Royal.

Selon John Lichfield, le correspondant en France du quotidien londonien, "Ségolène Royal s'en tient à sa stratégie : garder ses distances avec les autres candidats mêlés à la candidature socialiste".

Pour tenter de mieux cerner le personnage, John Lichfield a suivi la "candidate putative" sur ses terres, en Poitou-Charentes.

"Mme Royal a servi un intéressant discours à une centaine de ses administrés, ainsi qu'à un petit groupe de journalistes français et étrangers. Il s'agissait essentiellement d'un discours sur la splendeur du Marais poitevin, mais elle a su, assez intelligemment, glisser à la fin quelques mots sur l'avenir de la France et sur la personne qui sera amenée à diriger le pays. Selon Ségolène, [ce futur leader devra] être attaché à la lente sédimentation de l'histoire de France (sous-entendu : n'écoutez pas tous ces commentateurs étrangers, ainsi que Sarkozy, qui veulent que la France ressemble un peu à la Grande-Bretagne ou aux Etats-Unis. Non, non, non ! Il est possible de réformer la France et de rester français).

John Lichfield a remarqué que, pour sa précampagne, Ségolène Royal a décidé de tout miser sur Internet. "Les sujets qu'elle aborde sur son site sont ceux qui lui sont chers : les enfants, l'éducation, la santé, l'environnement."

Aussi, "la plus grande force de Ségolène réside-t-elle dans sa plus grande faiblesse : le fait d'être une femme. Elle est différente des autres parce qu'elle n'est pas un homme et qu'elle ne menace pas de tout changer. Quelque chose de différent qui, sur le fond, ne changera rien. Un positionnement qui colle parfaitement au sentiment d'exaspération – un rien retors – de l'électorat français."

"Les ennemis de Ségolène Royal au sein de son propre parti disent en persiflant qu'elle n'a pas d'idées concrètes à proposer. C'est en partie vrai, mais c'est aussi vrai pour les autres candidats et même pour Nicolas Sarkozy. Le 'royalisme' ou le 'ségolénisme' - comme en son temps le blairisme ou le clintonisme – est moins un programme qu'un style politique du genre : je comprends vos peines. Et c'est pour cette raison qu'il ne faut surtout pas prendre Ségolène Royal à la légère."

Financial Times : French presidential candidate's ratings surge

2006-04-21T18:35:00+02:00

The big story these days on the left is that Segolène Royal's bid to be the socialist candidate is becoming more realistic by the day - and has reached some kind of critical mass.

Ségolène Royal's opinion poll ratings have surged ahead of all the other likely candidates for next year's French presidential elections partly thanks to her innovative campaigning style on the internet and in magazine interviews.
In to the latest poll, published in Le Figaro newspaper on Thursday, a year ahead of the first round of elections, Ms Royal won the backing of 34 per cent of respondents.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of the ruling UMP party and most probable standard bearer for the French right, was the second most popular politician, with 30 per cent.
The prospect of a "Sarko-Ségo" battle between two such contrasting and colourful personalities has already captivated the French media. (...)
Ms Royal's popularity appears partly due to her novelty as a serious female candidate - the former environment minister appeared on the cover of five magazines last week - as well as her maverick campaigning style. Ms Royal has launched a website called desirsdavenir.org (desires for the future), encouraging the public to contribute to a "participative forum" and promising to adopt the best ideas.
Her critics have argued that her "wiki-programme" has only exposed the hollowness of her ideology but it has certainly aroused the interest of France's internet users.
(...)
However, he added: "Her ideas, which she has largely borrowed from Tony Blair, do not seem to me to be compatible with the Socialist party's increasing drift to the left."
That last theme is being replayed all over the place (there was an article in Libé yesterday purporting to show that she was "borrowing" lots of her programme from the center-right), but let's all remember what she actually said about Blair: he should not be demonised because he actually increased spending on helathcare and education massively... 

https://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/4/21/0391/39214&location=http%3A//news.ft.com/cms/s/8cdcced4-d091-11da-b160-0000779e2340.html

Elle ne ressemble à aucun des caciques de la classe politique française

2006-04-18T19:10:00+02:00

Le blog de Basile, la France vue d'ailleurs, revient sur l'écho que reçoit la pré-candidature de Ségolène Royal dans la presse britannique.

Principal atout de Ségolène Royal: elle ne ressemble à aucun des caciques de la classe politique française, au propre et au figuré. «Ses yeux bleus et son sourire à la blancheur éclatante font penser à une charmante présentatrice de télévision». Puis son style de vie, ajoute le Times, plait aux Françaises soucieuses de relever le «double défi de leur carrière professionnelle et celui d’élever leurs enfants, tout en étant capables d’apprécier fromage et vin… sans prendre du poids».
“Her glossy hair, blue eyes and blinding white teeth make her look more like a glamorous television anchorwoman than a politician.”

Pour autant, note le Sunday Times qui a de la mémoire, la tâche de «Sarko» face à «Ségo» sur ce terrain de la féminisation n’est pas des plus faciles dans un pays machiste dont le président, Jacques Chirac, avait commis une indélicatesse, rappelle-t-il, à l’égard de Margaret Thatcher lors d’un sommet européen il y a dix-huit ans avec son non-authentifié mais célèbre «que me veut cette mégère, mes couilles sur un plateau?» Pour les Françaises, il n’y a pas photo. Ségolène Royal reste un booster de carrière dont le succès les aiderait «personnellement à progresser» dans la hiérarchie au sein des entreprises, selon un sondeur interrogé par quotidien de Londres.

Chercher la femme

Der Spiegel : Son heure a sonné

2006-04-15T19:25:00+02:00

Le Spiegel dans son édition internationale évique la «Walkyrie des Deux-Sèvres». Le magazine allemand qui tout en notant qu’elle ne s’est pas encore prononcée sur les problèmes de fond concernant le chômage, la retraite, l’immigration ou le déficit budgétaire de la France, salue son pragmatisme qui tranche avec «l’incapacité de ses camarades à enterrer leurs utopies». L’«heure de la princesse a sonné» estime le Spiegel.

Ségolène Royal Could Soon Become France's Next President

By Stefan Simons in Paris

For the first time in the history of France, a woman stands a chance of moving into the Elysée Palace. Socialist politician Ségolène Royal is benefiting from the weaknesses of her rivals, who have been handicapped by a controversial labor law that brought millions of students to the streets in protest.

With its neat side streets, sidewalks lined with flower pots, a bakery, two bistros and a hair salon, the town square of Neuville-de-Poitou, an hour's drive from the southwestern city of Poitiers, conveys an air of carefully tended tranquility. Stacks of fruit and vegetables, sheep cheese and links of sausages on the market square complete the picture.

Socialist Royal: "Ségolène is currently unbeatable."

On the outskirts of this bucolic little town, Ségolène Royal holds court in a building supply warehouse. Water drips into a 200-liter rain barrel next to a sale rack of rubber boots and winter coats.
In the presence of the mayor, local officials and a dozen skeptical farmers, Royal, the president of the Poitou-Charentes region, is calling on her constituents to conserve water. She has just launched a program dubbed "Operation 10,000 Rainwater Barrels," and now she's promoting the program with what would seem a rather traditional argument: "In the past, everyone had a pond or a cistern. Now we need collection barrels to help protect the environment."

At first glance, the appearance may seem a bit small potatoes for a woman with ambitions to capture the country's highest office. But it's just one example of what people here have dubbed the "Methode Royal," or Royal method, the candidate's skillful way of establishing connections between seemingly small issues and the big picture, in this case, the local drought and global climate change.

C’est la presse britannique qui exprime le plus d’enthousiasme

2006-04-15T18:45:00+02:00

C’est la presse britannique qui exprime le plus d’enthousiasme pour Ségolène Royal, et ceci même les propos qu'elle avait tenus à l'encontre du Premier ministre anglais.

Le Financial Times laisse transparaître une admiration pour la femme politique : « Elle a fait preuve de son indépendance d’esprit le mois dernier en allant au Chili pour soutenir la candidature à la présidence de Michelle Bachelet, au lieu d’assister aux commémorations des dix ans de la mort de Mitterrand. Un comportement qui ne lui a pas fait beaucoup d’amis au sein de son parti ».

L’hebdomadaire The Economist a également publié un portrait positif de Ségolène Royal le 12 janvier 2006.

Le quotidien The Guardian la décrit comme « élégante, assurée, compétente sur tout ce qui l’intéresse — la famille, l’école, l’environnement. Elle est sensibly vague (« intelligemment vague ») sur le reste — la politique étrangère, l’économie (...). Mince, joyeuse, elle présente impeccablement. Elle mène une campagne populaire, sans l’aide des grands chefs du parti ».

The Observer, lui, estime que l’élection d’une femme en France pourrait inciter à des réformes au sein de la monarchie britannique, et notamment la suppression de la règle qui fait que la couronne doit être transmise en priorité à un héritier mâle : « Le monde évolue, non seulement au Libéria et au Chili, mais plus près de chez nous. En France, la femme politique centre-gauche Ségolène Royal vise la présidence... En même temps, en Grande Bretagne, nous faisons marche arrière en ce qui concerne l’émancipation des femmes ».

Dans une interview de Ségolène Royal pour la BBC, la journaliste Caroline Wyatt s’étonne du traitement médiatique de la candidate en France : « Comme exemple des difficultés auxquelles serait confrontée une femme qui poserait sa candidature au poste de chef d’Etat en France, les médias français ne parlent que d’une seule chose : si elle devait porter ou pas des talons aiguilles lors de son voyage au Chili ».

Darling of the Left leads polls in French presidential race

2006-04-13T19:15:00+02:00

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

New York Times : Can this woman save France?

2006-04-05T02:00:00+02:00

Can Ségolène Royal, the politician with the elegant profile and stratospheric poll ratings, lead the Socialists to victory in next year's presidential election?

In the confusion that has gripped France in recent months, with immigrant youth riots followed by huge protests turned violent, Ms. Royal, 52, is the only politician who looks good.
On Thursday, she graced the cover of four French magazines. "The Mystery Royal," announced Le Point, while Le Nouvel Observateur explored "What Is in Her Head?" VSD, which covers entertainment and news, asked, "President Ségolène: Is She Ready?"

"For the first time, the French say they are ready to vote for a woman; this is a historic event," she told Paris Match in its cover story that proclaimed, "The Irresistible Ascension."
The media's interest is not accidental. Voters are disillusioned with President Jacques Chirac, who has held office since 1995, and less than enthusiastic about the gray-haired white men who have long run the opposition Socialist Party.

With the government in disarray over protests against a youth jobs law and the Socialists doing little more than scoring points, Ms. Royal — a member of Parliament, regional president and former minister — has moved quickly to fill the vacuum.
She is the most popular potential Socialist presidential candidate by far in poll after poll. She even edged past Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the front-runner on the right, in a hypothetical runoff for the presidency in two recent polls.
She calls the jobs law, intended to encourage employers to hire young workers by making it easier to fire them, "a scandal" and "a form of violence." Asked in an interview late last month what she would do differently if she were in Mr. Chirac's shoes, she exclaimed: "I would be intelligent! Between the revolt in the suburbs last fall and the youth in the streets today, what a beautiful image of France we are giving to the world!"

Projecting a beautiful image is something that Ms. Royal does well. In addition to the magazine covers, she was the featured guest on TF1's television news program on Thursday. The first chapter of "Desires for the Future," her new online book intended to open a dialogue with the French people, appeared Thursday on her new Web site.
Ms. Royal also has helped cement her political standing at home by making a name for herself abroad. "I am globalizing myself," she said, laughing, about her interviews with foreign journalists in recent months. She annoyed the Socialist Party's old guard when she skipped the memorial for the 10th anniversary of the death of President François Mitterrand in January, jetting off to Chile instead, where she seized headlines by campaigning with the Socialist presidential candidate, Michelle Bachelet, who won.

A longtime admirer of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, Ms. Royal said she tentatively planned to appear with Mrs. Clinton at a conference in Washington in June.

Ms. Royal's domestic political strategy has been to carve out home-and-hearth issues that she promotes from her home base of Poitiers, where she presides over the Poitou-Charentes region of western France: saving the environment, improving schools, promoting opportunities for women, helping the disabled.
In late March, one of the items on the council's agenda was how to combat bad publicity about the bird flu virus in France. She announced a regionwide picnic featuring chicken, "to eradicate fear." And not only chicken. "Guinea fowl! Duck! Pigeon! Quail!" she said.

A fierce party infighter with a sharp tongue, she is not universally loved back home, especially by the men. "She is a pretty woman who tries to project a modern and open image," said Dominique Clément, the center-right mayor of the town of Saint Benoit. "But it's all an act. The packaging is beautiful. The marketing is slick. But the bottle is empty."
Ms. Royal seems to have little patience with open-ended debate in her council. When Henri de Richemont, a center-right council member and a lawyer, interrupted one time too many during the recent session, she lost her smile, crossed her arms and cut him off. "Very well, thank you for your intervention," she said curtly. "Anyone else?"

"She is the queen — who listens to no one and decides by herself," Mr. de Richemont said afterward.
But criticism can backfire. As soon as she said last September that she might run in the May 2007 presidential election, she rose sharply in the polls, even though some of her party brothers dismissed her declaration as outlandish.
"Who will look after the children?" Laurent Fabius, the former prime minister, joked. Another prominent Socialist, Jack Lang, declared, "The presidential race is not a beauty contest."

Since then, Ms. Royal has asserted her right to run. "I was attacked violently — by men," she said. "They said, 'She's a passing fad.' 'She's the cherry on the cake.' 'This shows that politics is zero.' 'She has nothing to say.' 'She's not tough enough.' All this criticism feeds my popularity. Besides, the politicians who attacked me were unpopular themselves."
Asked whether she considered herself arrogant, she replied: "Oh, no, surely not. Authoritarian. There is a demand for authority. I do not cultivate authority for pleasure."

Even the first lady, Bernadette Chirac, has rallied around her. "She can be a serious candidate and can even win," Mrs. Chirac said in February. "She has a look."

The strategy of leaders on the right has been to welcome Ms. Royal onto the battlefield, perhaps because they do not believe she poses a threat. Mr. Sarkozy has said she would be a "respectable opponent." Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has said he and Ms. Royal have gotten along "very well" since their days as classmates at the elite École Nationale d'Administration.
Despite her enshrinement by the news media, French voters are not used to new faces: Mr. Chirac and his predecessor, Mr. Mitterrand, reached the presidency after several tries.
It is by no means even sure that she will win the party's nomination when it chooses a candidate in November. Others seek the nomination, including, awkwardly, Francois Hollande, Ms. Royal's partner of 25 years who also happens to be the leader of the Socialist Party and with whom she has four children.

"If I am the best-placed to win, I will be ready," she said.

That they never married has not hurt either of them politically, and she has said that she and Mr. Hollande will decide together which one of them will try to run. Still, she struggles to maintain her independence, saying in the interview, "We are not a couple."

Her detractors fault her for a lack of experience in economic and national security matters. (She has led three second-tier ministries: Environment, School Education and Family and Childhood.) With the spotlight now on her, her views are being closely examined, and like other Socialists she has yet to say what she would do about unemployment, the burden of France's generous social welfare system or the country's fear of globalization. But when asked whether her lack of experience and her narrow base of issues were liabilities, she said, "Men who pretend to be experts in everything, aren't telling the truth."

Elaine Sciolino

The Guardian : Despite her country's macho politics, Ségolène Royal is increasingly seen as a future leader

2006-03-05T02:04:16+01:00

"Il faut avoir la capacité à regarder ce qui est positif dans l'ensemble des autres pays et dire en même temps que l'on ne partage pas tout. Il y a des options que je ne partage pas sur les politiques pénales, sur la guerre en Irak (...) Ce n'est pas une question d'admiration, c'est une question de reconnaître qu'il (Tony Blair) a donné à son pays un formidable coup d'accélérateur et de dynamique (...), il a poussé en avant son pays....

Si un homme avait été sept ans conseiller du président de la République comme je l'ai été pour le président Mitterrand, s'il avait été ministre trois fois et député sans discontinuer à l'Assemblée nationale depuis quatre mandats (...) s'il avait battu lors des dernières élections régionales le Premier ministre par candidat interposé dans sa région, verrait-il sa légitimité contestée à être éventuellement prêt à une investiture et sa capacité à gouverner" mise en cause ?

In the fusty and unrelentingly chauvinistic gentlemen's club of French politics Ségolène Royal is a one-woman revolution. Little more than a year from polling day in France and the phénomène Ségo is gathering strength. She is up against centuries of ingrained sexism, but there is a growing sense that this elegant luminary of the Socialist party could become France's first Madame la Présidente.

Opinion polls suggest the 2007 presidential elections will pit two of the country's brightest rising stars against one another: Ségo versus Sarko, the ambitious rightwing interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr Sarkozy has had the good grace to say he respects his rival, and even President Jacques Chirac's wife Bernadette said she was a serious candidate "who might even win".

Such testimonials merely add to the air of confidence around Ms Royal, 52. "I am feeling rational and serene," she told the Guardian this week. "I am working to be ready should the moment eventually come."

Anything can happen in a year, but a Royal ascent looks a good bet. A survey in Le Figaro has put her ahead of Mr Sarkozy, while a survey for Elle magazine found that six out of 10 people said they would consider voting for her. Newsweek magazine went as far as to hail her as the "sexy socialist", a double-edged label for a politician anxious to emphasise substance over style.

Ms Royal laughs and says she is happy to take compliments where she finds them. "I don't try to explain them, I just accept them," she said.

In fact just about everyone has something nice to say about Ségolène Royal - apart from the so-called "dinosaurs" in her own party. The very suggestion that Ms Royal, a mother of four, might be clack-clacking her way to the Elysée Palace in stilettos and Chanel-style suits has clearly stoked the machismo rooted in Gallic public life. "Who will look after the children?" her Socialist rival Laurent Fabius was reported to have asked when Ms Royal was tipped to run. It was supposedly a joke.

Mention the in-party squabbling and Ms Royal's eyes lose their twinkle, even if she keeps on smiling. "Listen, it would be very monotonous if one only had admirers," she said, a trace of steel in the voice. "It's pretty simple. If a man had been an adviser to the president of the republic as I was to President Mitterrand for seven years, if he had been a minister three times and elected as an MP four times consecutively as I have been, if he had beaten the then prime minister in the last regional elections as I did, would he find his legitimacy contested and his capacity to govern questioned? No."

She added that the example of Angela Merkel, who remains popular in Germany after 100 days as chancellor, proves it is time for primitive attitudes to change. "We have seen in other countries, such as Germany with Angela Merkel, this deep-seated idea of some intrinsic incompatibility between being a woman and being in charge. That I cannot accept."

Charm
In person Ségolène Royal is charm personified - far from the cold authoritarian her detractors portray. Born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1953, she was the fourth of eight children of a Catholic, conservative French army colonel who held strident rightwing and anti-feminist views. In his book Madame Royal, the journalist Daniel Bernard describes her father Jacques as a "colonel with a monocle and a shaved head". A stickler for discipline, he imposed on his tribe of children "a harsh life of deprivations and punishments in the middle of which mass and vespers were almost distractions", according to Bernard. Ségolène was the rebel who knew all about toughness and intransigence.

Ms Royal said she became interested in politics around the age of 16 when she was "passionate about political debates on the television". She was an exceptional student and gained a place at the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration - the hothouse for France's political elite. Here she met her partner, François Hollande, the leader of the Socialist party and father of her four children, aged 14-22.

After graduating in 1980 both were appointed advisers to the Socialist president François Mitterrand. Ms Royal was later education minister, environment minister, and family and childhood minister.

Having worked through pregnancies and motherhood, Ms Royal says she understands the juggling involved in maintaining a high-profile career and a family. "It's difficult but it's enriching. Today my children have grown up but I am vigilant with my 14-year-old daughter because she's the one who is under the most pressure," she said. "But the others have passed their baccalauréat, are happy and haven't been damaged by my political engagement.

"If anyone has suffered it's me. I wasn't always there at the school entrance or when needed but the children tell me that I'm the one who has suffered and they're fine. They support me and that's a great comfort."

What her partner of 25 years - sometimes jokingly called Monsieur Royal - thinks of her presidential chances is anyone's guess. Last year Mr Hollande had ambitions of his own to lead the country before being left trailing in the polls. As a result the subject is reportedly avoided in the family home.

Politically Ms Royal, who must wait until a poll of party members in November before finding out if she will be the Socialist party presidential candidate, describes herself as a "social democrat" who believes "we have to propose new solutions that reconcile social progress, the reduction of inequality and economic efficiency". She has bravely called for a more "supple" approach to the Socialists' sacred cow, the 35-hour working week, and even praised Tony Blair in an interview with the Financial Times, giving the dinosaurs another chance to maul her. "I was heavily criticised for saying what I did about Tony Blair, but I stand by it. My political backbone is not formed by caricaturing others," she said. "There are things I don't agree with, such as the war in Iraq, but I recognise that he has given his country a wonderful boost."

When it comes to values, there is something of the younger Blair in her convictions as well. "I am a socialist and at the same time clear about a certain number of values ... family values, environmental values, the value of succeeding at school, the value of merit and respect for work. To me these are not incompatible with being of the left."

The big question is whether, when push comes to polling day, France is ready for a Royal presidency. This is after all a country where women got the vote only in 1944, where only 71 of the 577 MPs are women and where political parties prefer to pay fines than adhere to legal quotas for women candidates.

"It depends on her conviction, qualities, those around her ... and her courage. But the opinion polls suggest France is ready," said Ms Royal.

"If someone better than me steps forward then I have no problem with that. If I'm the best candidate, then those who think that I won't go all the way just because I'm a woman are very much mistaken."

Kim Willsher in Paris
Friday March 3, 2006
The Guardian

Is this the face of France's first Madame la Présidente?

The Guardian : French grandees face the unthinkable: a female in charge

2006-02-21T02:30:00+01:00

Le Guardian estime qu’elle est « désormais favorite pour affronter Nicolas Sarkozy l’année prochaine »... « Elle est élégante, écrit le Guardian, elle est sûre d’elle, elle est ferme sur les sujets qui l’intéressent comme la famille l’école et l’environnement, et elle est judicieusement beaucoup plus vague sur le reste sur les affaires internationales et l’économie ».

Former minister favourite to mount presidential challenge to Sarkozy

She is elegant, self-assured, strong on what interests her (families, schools, the environment), sensibly vague on the rest (foreign affairs, the economy). And according to three polls this month, she could be France's first female president. (...)

The polls look unambiguous. Surveys by Louis Harris, TNS-Sofres and Ifop show that up to 53% of the French think Ms Royal, a 52-year-old mother of four, has "the stature of a president of the Republic". In two polls her ratings pipped those of the thrusting interior minister Mr Sarkozy, and in all three she finished far ahead of veteran Socialist rivals; untainted by the row over the EU constitution last year, Ms Royal has the backing of 76% of leftist sympathisers.

(She is also benefiting from the sexism of some leading Socialists. When rumours that she might run began circulating, a former prime minister, Laurent Fabius, asked "But who will look after the children?", while a senator, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, protested that presidential campaigns were "not beauty contests".)

(...)

Her detractors, of whom there are plenty in the Socialist ranks, decry her lack of experience, and pronouncements, on the key big-picture issues. But her supporters insist the electorate can no longer be bought by empty generalisations from arrogant, ageing politicians uninterested in voters' day-to-day lives. One man is impressed. "I've always said she'd be by far the most interesting Socialist candidate, worth a dozen of all the others," Mr Sarkozy said last week. "She says a lot worth listening to. I'd welcome the chance to discuss things with her next year."

French grandees face the unthinkable: a female in charge

Les journaux chiliens ont raconté les moindres détails de sa visite au Chili

2006-02-15T18:25:00+01:00

El Mostrador : La ''Bachelet francesa'' visitó tumba ex presidente Salvador Allende

Ségolene Royal llegó hasta el lugar acompañada de la hija del extinto mandatario, la diputada Isabel Allende.

La diputada socialista y precandidata presidencial francesa Segolene Royal visitó este martes la tumba del ex presidente Salvador Allende (1970-1973) en el cementerio General de Santiago.

Royal, en visita en Chile desde el pasado domingo para apoyar la campaña presidencial de la postulante de la Concertación, Michelle Bachelet, llegó hasta el lugar acompañada de la hija del extinto mandatario, la diputada Isabel Allende.

La aspirante presidencial francesa no quiso hacer declaraciones y se limitó a señalar que "es suficientemente simbólico el hecho de haber depositado las flores".

Isabel Allende, en tanto, agradeció la visita de Royal y de la delegación del Partido Socialista francés a la tumba de su padre.

En una conferencia de prensa antes de su visita al recinto, Royal había señalado que el triunfo de la abanderada de la Concertación, coalición que gobierna desde 1990, significaría "una profundización de una nueva etapa democrática en Chile".

Bachelet, favorita en las encuestas, enfrentará en una segunda vuelta electoral, prevista para el próximo domingo 15, al candidato derechista Sebastián Piñera.

La Nacion : Candidata presidencial francesa favorita llega a Chile para apoyar a Bachelet

La ex ministra de Francia y una de las favoritas para llegar a la presidencia de ese país, Segolene Royal, llegó hoy a Chile para apoyar la postulación de la candidata de la Concertación, Michelle Bachelet.

Royal viajó hacia Chile la noche del sábado, a pesar de que hoy se realizan las conmemoraciones del décimo aniversario de la muerte del que fuera presidente francés, Francois Mitterrand, instancia que reúne a toda la familia socialista en Jarnac, lugar donde nació y está enterrado el ex mandatario.

“Estaré en Jarnac con el corazón y el pensamiento. Pienso que Francois Mitterrand habría tomado la misma decisión” de apoyar a Bachelet “una mujer combatiente y valiente que encarna la lucha contra la dictadura en Chile”, afirmó al iniciar su viaje.

El dominical Journal du Dimanche destaca que la visita de Royal a Chile para apoyar a la candidata de la Concertación, podría ser un “viaje fundador” en la campaña que se ha acelerado en Francia, tanto en la izquierda como en la derecha, frente a las próximas elecciones presidenciales del año 2007.

De acuerdo a una encuesta reciente, Royal cuenta con un 42 por ciento de preferencia entre los franceses, lo que la convierte en la candidata del partido socialista preferida por los galos para encarar las elecciones de 2007.

Le journal argentin La Nacion annonce que la montée en popularité de Ségolène Royal confirme que « l’époque des femmes » est enfin arrivée.

Newsweek : Who's That Girl?

2006-02-13T00:30:00+01:00

Could a rising star of the French Socialist Party become the first woman president of France?
By Eric Pape
Newsweek International

"C'est qui cette fille ?" demande Newsweek.

Dans l'éventuel destin présidentiel de Ségolène Royal, le fait qu'elle soit une femme semble être un facteur qui joue autant contre elle que pour elle. Après tout, "la politique française a toujours été un monde d'hommes, et l'Elysée plus encore", observe Newsweek. Malgré cela, le magazine américain veut y croire : "Bien qu'elle ne soit pas un homme, cette version tout en élégance de la mère de famille exemplaire pourrait bien devenir la prochaine présidente française. Les Français en ont assez des hommes politiques affectant de diriger le pays selon de savantes orientations qui n'améliorent pas le quotidien des gens. Ils désirent majoritairement ce qu'ils appellent une 'cure de jouvence nationale'. Ils veulent un président honnête et comprenant leur vie quotidienne", explique Newsweek, pour qui Royal est "ce rare exemple de figure politique parisienne dotée d'un talent naturel capable de dépasser le clivage gauche-droite et de toucher le cœur des villes de province". Seulement, "nous sommes à quatorze mois de l'élection présidentielle – presque une éternité, dans un pays connu pour son climat politique capricieux".

French politics has always been a manly world, no place more so than the Elysee Palace. Almost forever, it seems, France's presidents have been cut from similar cloth, distinguished by a shared hauteur if not grandeur, self-imagined or otherwise. De Gaulle comes immediately to mind. So do Mitterrand and Chirac. Yet as the latter's star continues to wane among the French populace, a new figure has burst upon the scene. Her name: Segolene Royal. Though very much not a man, this elegant version of the sensible soccer mom could well become France's next president.

We are 14 months from France's presidential election—almost an eternity in a nation notorious for its fickle politics. But make no mistake: something is afoot in France, and it bears watching. With due caveats, you might even think of it as revolution. Consider: a disillusioned electorate, recent surveys show, is profoundly fed up with politicians who speak eloquently but say little. They are tired of leaders who affect to lead by doctoring policies that seldom improve people's lives. A large majority of the French hope for what they call national rejuvenation.

They want a new-generation president who is honest and in touch with their daily lives, not some grand international visionary. And while it might be impossible for a single person to embody all these inchoate yearnings, it's clear that these days Royal—a rising star of the French Socialist Party—comes closer than any. A Feb. 3 poll for the first time showed her defeating longtime conservative front runner Nicolas Sarkozy in a presidential runoff, 51 percent to 49 percent. (Just weeks earlier, Sarkozy was 10 points ahead.) French marketing consultant Clotaire Rappaille sums up the euphoria: "She can help France live up to its history. We need politics to advance and to be sexy again. This is the return of the great French woman!"

Never mind, again, that France hasn't had a great female leader in living memory, and perhaps not since Joan of Arc. Yet scarcely a day passes without some new sign of Royal's growing cachet. It isn't customary for politicians of any stripe to make the covers of the conservative Le Figaro, the lefty Liberation and the glossy women's magazine Elle within a matter of weeks—but last month Royal did just that. Last week the annual political Who's Who of France, Trombinoscope, named her the "political revelation of the year." Among bickering fellow Socialists, party standard-bearer Lionel Jospin comes closest to her in popularity—and he trails by 20 percentage points. As for opposition-party rivals, the anointed favorite of President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, scores a meager 38 percent, while Chirac himself enjoys the confidence of only 21 percent of French voters.

Royal's CV offers a checklist of what France seems to want. Born in Dakar, Senegal, into a French military family, she studied at the prestigious ENA finishing school, where she met her life partner, Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande. After graduating in 1980, as the Socialists' fortunes rose, both were named as young advisers to incoming President Francois Mitterrand. Royal later served in Parliament and headed three government ministries—School Education, Environment, and Family and Childhood—tasked with the daily concerns of ordinary people. As the daughter of a military man, Royal is that rare Socialist who sounds credible when talking about law and order, while retaining the compassion of a good Socialist.

As a working mother of four in a country of working mothers, she also speaks from the heart against television violence, pornography, pedophilia and teen pregnancy. (Perhaps her most famous action as minister involved introducing day-after abortion pills into junior high and high schools.) She is that rare Parisian politician with a natural talent for crossing France's traditional left-right ideological divide and connecting to outlying cities and towns. She convincingly demonstrated the latter appeal in 2004 when she dealt a crushing blow to sitting Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on his conservative agricultural home turf, in Poitou-Charentes, where she was elected regional president. Coming soon after the surprise election of Spanish Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Spain, supporters began referring to Royal as "la Zapatera." For the Socialists, she is a surprising, even astonishing tonic. Beaten decisively by Chirac a decade ago, and again in 2002 (when even far-right fringe parties outpolled the Socialists), France's party of the left has, until Royal's rise, seemed lost in a political wilderness. But recent events have helped change the landscape. The bitter split with the United States over Iraq, rising fears of globalization, the divisive referendum on the European Union constitution and this fall's fiery race riots appear to have sparked a hunger for fresh faces, new directions and, perhaps above all, new national priorities. In contrast to the men fighting tooth and nail to succeed Chirac, Royal is the very embodiment of something new. "Mothers don't care about ideology, but they feed you," says Rappaille. "They respond to everyday needs—social protection, medical care. It's all implied."

Who's That Girl?

Daily Telegraph : Liberté, Égalité, Sororité

2006-02-12T03:40:00+01:00

In a place as desperate for renewal as modern France - its voice in the world diminished, its economy depleted, its social landscape fractured by ethnic discord - the rise of Mme Royal has caused a sensation.

Although, like her rival, she has yet to declare her candidacy formally, the dark and smoky political salons of Paris were buzzing last week with excited talk of "le phénomène Sego". "If she believes she can win - and she does - she will certainly stand," said Daniel Bernard, a journalist whose sympathetic biography Madame Royal has become a runaway bestseller.

With her glossy coiffure and natural elegance, Mme Royal is the first Frenchwoman to earn a sniff of real power since the disastrous prime ministerial interlude of Edith Cresson in the early 1990s.

Such ignominy did Mme Cresson heap upon the office - achieving, in the process, a staggering disapproval rating of 87 per cent - that many analysts doubted whether the country would allow another woman in a top job for generations.

But although Mme Royal comes from the same over-educated, administrative class background that produced Mme Cresson, she is a far more engaging, sophisticated, and, therefore, plausible prospect for the Elysée Palace than any woman before her.

Disdainful of the boutique Leftism and Anglophobia that pervades the elite of the French Socialist Party, she speaks up for social conservatism, with its focus on family and community values, and has praised the achievements of Tony Blair's Britain. "I think Blair has been unfairly caricatured in France," she said recently.

"It doesn't bother me to adhere to some of his ideas."

Polls show her to be streets ahead of all other Socialist candidates - including her long-time (and, many say, long-suffering) live-in boyfriend, François Hollande, the party chairman.(...)
By contrast, M Sarkozy is speeding along with all wagons loaded. The wildly ambitious interior minister has made no secret of where he stands on the key issues - a mending of relations with Britain and the United States, a reform of France's over-regulated, sclerotic economy, and "the immigration we want to have, not the immigration that is imposed upon us". It is a package that may prove hard to beat.

The polls, while fickle, already show the Right-wing candidate with a consistent edge - yet an edge narrow enough to make commentators confident that Sego v Sarko will be the most absorbing and significant political showdown in modern French history. "Opinion polls do not make an election," Mme Royal says. "What people recognise in me is the work I have done. I am a fighter."

The fight will be tough and ugly, but in 1972 only half of French voters believed that a woman would ever become president and now nine out of 10 do. Now that is "le phénomène Sego".

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/12/wsego12.xml

The New Statesman : Can they seize their golden chance?

2006-02-06T01:00:00+01:00

"Les socialistes vont-ils saisir cette chance en or ?" s'interroge le New Statesman.

L'hebdomadaire britannique de gauche le New Statesman trouve de nombreuses qualités à la candidate Royal. Mais son parti n'arrive pas, selon l'hebdomadaire, à tirer profit d'un climat politique qui devrait lui être favorable. "Loin de se délecter des difficultés traversées par le gouvernement, les socialistes sont inquiets, déplore le New Statesman. Le Parti socialiste serait en fait trop occupé par une autre question, fondamentale celle-là pour son orientation : "Faut-il combattre le capitalisme à la manière de l'extrême gauche ou le réformer à l'instar de Blair ?

The prospect of a woman being elected President of France next spring has moved from curiosity to distinct possibility, according to a poll published today.

Could that woman also be, something virtually unheard of on the French Left, a Blairiste?
The Socialist former health and education minister Ségolène Royal is now the favourite among French voters as the main candidate of the centre left.
A poll published today by the news magazine Marianne also suggests, for
the first time, that she is capable of beating the centre right favourite, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the second round of the election proper in May next year.
The half-declared presidential candidacy of Mme Royal, 52, has irritated other would-be Socialist nominees, not least because she is the partner of the party’s leader, François Hollande. The couple have four children but have never married, by the choice of Mme Royal.
In recent days, other would-be Socialist presidential candidates have found a new, and possibly more effective, reason to throw stones at Ségolène Royal. She has declared herself an admirer of some of the policies of Tony Blair - a heretical admission for anyone on the French left, even the centre left.
On Friday, Mme Royal, president of the Poitou-Charente region in western France, said that Mr Blair and his pro-market policies were unfairly « caricatured » by the French left. She reminded Blair-bashers in her own party that « Tony Blair won the Olympic Games and we didn’t. »
This amounted to a direct criticism of her fellow leading Socialist, Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, who led the capital’s bid for the 2012 Olympics. M. Delanoe backs a third presidential bid by the retired former prime minister, Lionel Jospin. By attacking M. Delanoe’s Olympic bid as « dated », Mme Royal was indirectly dismissing M. Jospin as a man of the past.
A couple of days earlier, in an interview with the Financial Times, Mme Royal praised New Labour policies on youth employment and public services. « It does not bother me to state my support for some of (Tony Blair’s) ideas. He re-invested in public services. In dealing with youth unemployment, he has had real success by linking greater flexibility with greater security. »
Until now, Mme Royal has avoided making detailed policy pronouncements.
She is to publish a book on her vision of France’s future in April. Some Socialist figures see her pro-Blair remarks as her « first blunder ». Voices close to M. Jospin and another former premier and would-be presidential candidate, Laurent Fabius, say she is trying to position herself as a moderniser. If so, they say, she has misread the anti-market mood on the French left.
A CSA poll today suggests that Mme Royal would beat M. Sarkozy in the second-round run-off of a presidential poll by 51 per cent to 49 per cent.
The prospect of a woman being elected President of France next spring has moved from curiosity to distinct possibility, according to a poll published today.
Could that woman also be, something virtually unheard of on the French Left, a Blairiste?
The Socialist former health and education minister Ségolène Royal is now the favourite among French voters as the main candidate of the centre left.
A poll published today by the news magazine Marianne also suggests, for the first time, that she is capable of beating the centre right favourite, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the second round of the election proper in May next year.

Could French voters put a woman in the Élysée Palace?

Adam Sage

Can they seize their golden chance?