March 14, 2007
Addressing an enthusiastic crowd of 7,000 supporters in the Burgundy city of Dijon, appearing radiant, confident, chic, and, well, very pretty, Ségolène Royal hit hard on a constant theme in her race to win the French Presidency. “I am not asking you vote for me because I am a woman,” she said. “But I am a woman. And with me politics (in France) will never be the same,” she added.”A woman is a political animal, like a man.” The date was March 7, and to the nation she was also addressing the constant, exaggerated, nasty attacks on her in public and private. Some focused on recent gaffs related to foreign policy, vagueness on financing proposed Socialist reforms, her personal life and personality. Most of her admiring advisers are convinced she can continue coping, because of her determination to make it to the Elyseé Palace. “She doesn’t change,” said one. “ And that is her strength.” That day yet another national poll again confirmed her strong position for the first-round of voting scheduled for April 22, giving her 25% of the vote. . That came very close to the conservative, hard-driving, front-runner, Nicolas Sarkozy, with 26%, who was trailed by the sudden, surprise surge of the softer-spoken centrist candidate, Francois Bayrou (24%) and aggressive, extreme rightist , Jean-Marie Le Pen, (14%) the two latter known as the “third men” in the campaign.. A central issue, for the first time in France’s modern history, is: can a woman who is also a mother of four children, pretty and unmarried, be elected head of state in this male-dominated, conservative-centrist, traditionalist and divided country? Only once did France back a woman as prime minister – Socialist Edith Cresson in 1991 yet who, amid constant controversy and attacks on her ability to govern, lasted barely a year. And even if elected, could Royal govern following legislative elections that will determine the composition of the National Assembly? That second national vote, following the two-round presidential election that will end May 6, will take place June 10 and 17. Many French voters, including rank-and-file Socialists, expressing scepticism, or hostility, often privately, argue she isn’t up to being president, doesn’t look the part being female, lacks international experience, particularly on defense issues. Some observers say Royal, in some ways, resembles Senator Hillary Clinton and her determined campaign to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination and then the White House. Urging that “everyone should get behind me, instead of trying to destroy me,” and fully aware that many males, as one of her staffers told Time, “are all waiting for her to crack up and start sobbing,” the 53-year-old Royal, is making sure no one forgets that she is experienced, tough, and capable of making decisions. She has held influential legislative, executive and ministerial-level posts in previous Socialist governments dating from her days at the Elysée Palace as an influential adviser to Socialist President Francois Mitterrand whose staff she joined , dealing with health, environment and youth issues, shortly after Mitterrand’s election in 1981. Author and banker Jacques Attali, who for years was one of Mitterrand’s closest advisers and sherpa for summit meetings, recalls introducing Royal and her partner, Francois Hollande, to the president. That was before the campaign began, and barely a year after graduating from France’s prestigious graduate school for civil servants, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in 1980, and where they met. Earlier this year, Hollande was also in the running for Socialist presidential nomination, but he bowed out when it became clear she had overwhelming support, remaining the highly-popular chairman of the Socialist Party. “She impressed us all with her hard-driving commitment to work…she was not trying to be seen with the president as were some others, but was working. Hard.” Attali recently told the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris. In 1988, Mitterrand encouraged her to run for a seat in the National Assembly; she successfully held the seat in three elections, and served Mitterrand as Socialist cabinet minister several times, including a two-year stint as the nation’s first Minister of the Family, Youth and the Handicapped before scoring her single, most-important electoral victory in 2004: beating conservative, incumbent and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin for the key job of Regional President of Poitou-Charentes, in rural, west-central France. She became the first woman to head one of France’s 26 regions, a region being the rough equivalent of a US state. From there she built a base in the capital of Poitiers – far from Paris and its elitist, urban environment. Thanks to a US-style primary which she won handily last autumn with support from 70,000 new party members, many in their 20s and 30s anxious for change and reform – steadily building support for a presidential campaign. But differently. Winning the primary last November with 61% of the vote - and the same can be said of her highly-popular, arch-rival Sarkozy - was based less on smoke-filled room, elitist maneuvering and the leadership of their respective parties, than on style, personality, symbolism, and heavy media coverage. As The Economist noted recently: “From her endless talk of internet-driven, participatory democracy,” Ms Royal comes across as a novelty in a country disillusioned with its rulers; a listener, in touch with ordinary concerns.” Royal is staying clear of identifying too strongly with heavily-leftist French Socialist ideology. Even former prime minister Lionel Jospin and former foreign minister Hubert Vedrine are emphasizing the need for reform and change calling for a “new France” that really tackles the main concern of millions of French men and women – chronic unemployment, currently at around 9.5% . She is seen by many observers as a modern leftist leader, resembling north-European, Social Democratic leaders, particularly in the Nordic countries, where women for decades have occupied top political jobs. Asked by Le Monde, France’s leading, centrist daily whether she was “resolument” a Social Democratic, she obliquely replied: “I do not need a label. I am in the Socialism of the 21st century.” That view contrasts sharply with that of Sarkozy who repeatedly places himself to the right and even extreme right of her positions, affirming his attachment to the conservative, pro-business policies of President Charles de Gaulle. These were carried forward by his successors, reflecting strong, rightist traditions , such as being tough on crime and immigration and standing up to Washington when convenient. (A subsequent article in the series will examine Sarkozy’s candidacy) And while Sarkozy is far closer to the elites of Paris, where he grew up, Royal early on began cultivating , and drawing on, her grass-roots support outside the capital. For example, on recent campaigning visits to Africa and the Caribbean, she reminded everyone she was born and had roots in Dakar, Senegal, daughter of a senior French army officer and was raised in a strict, austere Roman Catholic home environment later in the Lorraine region of France, as the fourth of eight children. She later attended the University of Nancy, before graduating from the elite schools in Paris, the Institute of Political Studies and ENA. She plans to continue meeting with voters around the country, seeking their views and promising to integrate them into her program and policies if elected. She regularly pledges that, if elected president, “every week I will be on the ground, next to the French, those that suffer as well as those who are succeeding” in their daily lives, while “preserving my family life.”. Thus, after other highly-publicized visits to Chile, the Middle East and Germany, she quietly shelved plans for any more foreign trips, notably to the United States, despite earlier planning for visits to Washington, Boston and other cities and high-profile talks with key Democrats such as, for obvious reasons, Hillary Clinton. (The official reason: too many invitations from others in the Western Hemisphere, notably in Latin America and no point in hurting their feelings.) The truth is she has a long way to go, as do her main opponents. Confirming earlier polls and constant talk in political, academic, business and media circles, some 46% of voters have not yet decided how they will vote in the first round of voting April 22, and some 61% are telling pollsters they have no confidence in either the left or the right, according to Le Monde of March 14. Worried that Bayrou (who will also be profiled in this series) and even Le Pen could make it to the second round to confront front-running Sarkozy, her advisers are plotting a new strategy that will reinforce her position as a leader of the left by relying heavily on one of the strongest Socialist leaders, who has been sidelined until recently – Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former powerful minister of the economy and finance under Jospin. He regularly tells media interviewers that Bayrou’s determination to create a German-style, left-right coalition to govern France was “an illusion” and that only Royal was positioned to unite all the leftist parties in France to beat Sarkozy and govern with a new majority. Yet when she unveiled her campaign platform last month, containing 100 proposals that included raising pensions, the minimum wage, guaranteeing youth jobs, reducing the national debt, streamlining the bureaucracy and the controversial, 35-hour work rules, she pledged reforms that seemed rightist, such as placing adult supervisors in unruly school classrooms and juvenile delinquents in re-education centers, if necessary under military supervision. To some of her supporters, the proposals seemed traditional, right-wing ideas, and confusing. What about her so-called gaffes in recent weeks? In China she obliquely defended that regime’s judiciary. Elsewhere, she argued that a second, new-generation aircraft carrier was not needed, and the funds should be used for education. She openly pledged her support for Quebec’s “sovereignty and liberty.” She argued that Iran had no right to develop even civilian nuclear power, a position not even hardliners in Washington support. Hesitating to say whether Turkey should join the EU (Sarkozy is firmly opposed) she said the French people, should decide by referendum. Across the political spectrum on the right and the extreme-left, and in varying degrees, Royal was accused of being incompetent, badly-advised, wobbly and naïve on foreign policy and defense issues. Attali, who is not particularly close to her, but supportive, recalls that just before the 1981 presidential elections, Francois Mitterrand was in a similar situation – trailing front-running and centrist Valery Giscard d’Estaing, with much of the left hesitant or opposed to his becoming president and governing with Communists. Why did he win? “Then like now, the situation was very volatile. But in the end, people voted for Mitterrand because of his integrity, they trusted him and I believe for that reason, she too can win,” he said.
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