quote:

---

Seventy-one percent of those interviewed said their view of Royal, who confirmed this week that she would probably bid to be France's first female president in 2007, had been boosted by the dispute over a hated youth jobs law . . . Chirac agreed on Monday to scrap the First Job Contract (CPE), aimed at creating jobs by making it easier to hire and fire the under-26s but which critics argued would only create more job insecurity.

---

quote:

---

She has just launched a program dubbed "Operation 10,000 Rainwater Barrels." . . 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.

Royal is an extremely unlikely contender for the country's highest office. She is the unmarried mother of two sons and two daughters. She has been a member of the Socialist Party (PS) since 1978, and yet she has never managed to put together her own team. She has spent years gathering experience in the Ministries of the Environment, Education, Family and Childhood and the Handicapped, and yet she was considered a political lightweight until only recently.

She also happens to have a personal handicap. Her life partner and the father of her children, Socialist Party leader François Hollande, is also a potential candidate to succeed current President Jacques Chirac. But when it comes to popularity, Royal has done more than outdistance her life partner -- in opinion polls she stands ahead of the entire old-guard Socialist competition, including former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, former Minister of Finance Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Minister of Culture Jack Lang. Lionel Jospin, the losing candidate in the 2002 presidential election, looks old next to Royal.

She has won 10 out of 11 elections in 17 years. . .Royal was successful in her later ministerial roles, partly because she was so adept at merging her professional activities with the events of her private life, including pregnancy and giving birth. The approach meant that her political ascendancy was accompanied by a never-ending flood of public images from her family album -- Ségolène with her baby, Ségolène having breakfast, and so on.

Royal's pragmatism -- her "we have to see what works and what doesn't" approach -- is effective, if only as a provocation, with those comrades who still have trouble burying their utopias.

Royal owes part of her surge in popularity to the malicious macho posturing of her jealous rivals.

---

Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister and her Socialist rival, provoked furious allegations of sexism by mocking the notion of a female president, and asking "who will look after her kids?"

In 1988 she and her partner were both elected to Parliament; she was 34. She was parachuted by François Mitterrand into Deux-Sèvres, where she won by 552 votes. «A successful landing.»

In 1992 she had her fourth child Flora, and took the opportunity to take the bar exams, becoming a lawyer in 1994.

On Thursday, she was on the cover of four French weekly magazines:

quote:

---

"The Mystery Royal," announced Le Point. Le Nouvel Observateur asked "What Is in Her Head?"

The news and entertainment weekly VSD wondered, "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."

She annoyed the Socialist Party old guard in January when she skipped the memorial marking the 10th anniversary of the death of President François Mitterrand and jetted off to Chile instead, where she seized headlines by campaigning with the Socialist presidential candidate, Michelle Bachelet, who won the election.

In poll after poll she is by far the most popular potential Socialist candidate for president.

On Thursday she was the featured guest on TF1's television news program and the first chapter of "Desires for the Future," her new online book intended to open a dialogue with the French people, appeared on her new Web site.

"I am globalizing myself," she laughed about her back-to-back interviews with foreign journalists in recent months.

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 working women, creating facilities for 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.

Royal announced a region-wide picnic of chicken-eating. "We absolutely have to increase our consumption to eradicate the fear," she said.

She also called on her constituents to eat two chickens a week in solidarity with farmers. And not only chicken. "Guinea fowl! Duck! Pigeon! Quail" she exclaimed.

A fierce party infighter with a sharp tongue, she is not universally loved at home, especially by men.

"The presidential race is not a beauty contest," said Jack Lang, another prominent Socialist.

"If I am the best-placed to win, I will be ready," she said in the interview. "If I am not the best-placed, I will not be a candidate. I have asked for nothing. But I am ready."

"What pleases the French people is my independence," she says.

Royal, who was born in Senegal and whose father was a military officer, may have to overcome her reputation as imperious, a quality often admired in French male politicians. (Les Guignols, the satirical TV puppet show, presents her as a sword-wielding warrior á la Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill.")

When asked whether her lack of experience and narrow base of issues hampers her potential candidacy, she turns against her critics. "Men who pretend to be experts in everything," she says, "aren't telling the truth."

---

She stocked French schools with the "morning-after pill" in 2000:

quote:

---

Since last Thursday, high school nurses have been authorised to hand out the pill, which works by preventing the fertilised ovum from implanting itself in the wall of the womb, to young girls who fear they might become pregnant.

The move was announced by Schools Minister Segolene Royal at the end of last November, to howls of protest from Catholic organisations, in a bid to cut back on a hike in adolescent pregnancies and abortions.

---

quote:

---

Ségolène Royal's determined bid to represent the French left at next year's presidential election appears to be causing public and private strains after her partner and leader of the Socialist party, François Hollande, yesterday criticised her controversial stance on law and order.

Mr Hollande, himself a potential presidential candidate, told Le Journal du Dimanche he was opposed to to Ms Royal's suggestion that the military should be used to help reinsert young delinquents into society.

"Certain of Ségolène's ideas go in the right direction," he said. "On the other hand I don't agree with her view on the use of the army . . . That is neither its role nor its function."

In a separate interview he insisted that Ms Royal's proposals would "not be included" in the Socialist platform for the presidential election, which is being hammered out now by party members and is due to be adopted in July.

---

Rising star of the French left hits out at 35-hour work week

quote:

---

Ségolène Royal, the rising star of France’s opposition Socialists, on Monday caused renewed turmoil on the left when she broke one of the party’s taboos by criticising the country’s mandatory 35-hour working week.

Following hard on the heels of her explosive comments last week calling for a tougher stance on law and order, Ms Royal accused the 35-hour week of eroding the rights of the country’s weakest workers.

---

Like Blair, Royal is seductive but dangerous and hollow.

Ségolène's iconoclasm

quote:

---

At all events, Ms Royal is becoming increasingly hard to categorise on the traditional left-right spectrum. For in response to a recent flare-up of social trouble in the Paris suburbs, she suggested that incipient hooligans should be inducted into the army and taught a trade. This suggestion, born presumably of her own experience as an officer's daughter, brought a rebuke from Francois Hollande, her partner and the father of her four children, who happens to be the top official of the Socialist party. Ms Royal has also incurred the wrath of some party leftwingers for her praise of Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, for his view on youth employment and public services. Yesterday's policy statement also included a "Blairite" rebuke of Prime minister Dominique de Villepin's "economic patriotism" - but again, not because it was protectionist, but because it was being used as a smokescreen to privatise Gaz de France.

---

quote:

---

Ségolène Royal's rivals in the French Socialist party have tried to undermine the rising star of the left by branding her "a second Sarkozy". But the plot is backfiring.

Not only does Ms Royal's popularity remain as high as ever despite the comparison with Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-talking rightwing interior minister and potential presidential rival, but analysts say the tensions she is causing in the Socialist party could trigger a modernisation of the French left just as Tony Blair did with the Labour party in the UK.

Ms Royal, president of the Poitou-Charentes region, exposed herself to the criticism by speaking out in favour of stricter treatment of young criminals and by criticising the 35-hour working week. These are two of Mr Sarkozy's favourite subjects. And her comments provoked howls of outrage from other Socialist leaders who are vying with her to become the party's candidate for next year's presidential elections. Ms Royal has even been rebuked by François Hollande, the party's leader, who is also her partner and father of her four children.

---

How globalisation is shifting France's political fault

quote:

---

The French right, which has always been exotically odd by European standards, is becoming more conventional. On the other hand, the French left, which for so long defined the European socialist mainstream, is now veering towards national exceptionalism.

That, at least, is a crude summary of the views held by parliamentary deputies – from the ruling UMP party and the opposition Socialist party – reflected in a report published today.* The study, conducted by Telos, an online think-tank, and Sciences Po university in Paris, suggests that in next year's presidential and parliamentary elections French voters are likely to be presented with a stark ideological choice.

Will French voters endorse the promise of market reform and the opportunities thrown up by globalisation or will they defend the singularity of the French social model, with its reliance on a strong public sector and an extensive welfare state? The outcome could have enormous significance for the French economy and society and for the European project as a whole.

For understandable reasons, the French media has recently been obsessed with the clashes between the country's leading political personalities. The ferocious battle between Dominique de Villepin, prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and president of the governing UMP party, for mastery of the French right has dominated the headlines. The recent Clearstream scandal in which Mr de Villepin stands accused of ordering a corruption investigation into his rival Mr Sarkozy – a charge furiously denied by the prime minister – has only added to the Parisian "psychodrama". On the left, Ségolène Royal, the popular Socialist president of the Poitou Charentes region, has emerged as a media darling, gracing the front covers of the country's glossy magazines and distracting attention from the party's internal policy battles (see below).

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the looming electoral contest will not centre simply on colourful personalities but also on sharply contrasting political outlooks. As the accompanying table shows, parliamentary deputies from the two big parties appear to view the world through different prisms. Whereas 70 per cent of UMP deputies attribute France's high unemployment rate to the inflexibility of its labour market, 71 per cent of Socialist MPs blame it on the direct or indirect impact of global competition. Whereas 43 per cent of UMP deputies say that globalisation is mostly a positive phenomenon, only 5 per cent of Socialists agree.

According to Zaki Laïdi, the founder of Telos who conducted the study, the centre of gravity in the UMP party has shifted markedly towards the "liberal" right under the leadership of Mr Sarkozy, while that of the Socialist party has veered towards the "anti-liberal" left following the rejection of Europe's constitutional treaty in a national referendum exactly a year ago today. The depth of popular discontent in France was highlighted by that ballot as 55 per cent of voters rejected the advice of most of their political leaders and said No to the constitution.

France's two big parties, it seems, have since drawn very different lessons from that explosion of electoral anger. Whereas the right has concluded that the French social model does not work and needs to be overhauled, the left thinks that the French social model does not work well enough and must be reinforced.

---

She carried almost every region of France, convincingly. Remarkable.

As French Socialist Deputies go, she's almost a youth. The youngest woman in the lot is 44-year-old Sylvie Andrieux from Marseilles, first elected to the Assembly at age 35, first elected to the regional council at age 30.

[ 17 November 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Geneva in another thread:
I dunno, she blows hot and cold on many issues

really, an unknown quantity, despite being in the Cabinet and/or upper reaches of the Socialist party her entire professional life

---

Segolene was seen in France as the farthest right choice for PS presidential candidate. Her husband had wanted to run, but due to lack of public support didn't. That recent poll is encouraging. Perhaps the PS can finally get their act together and win this next election.

[ 19 November 2006: Message edited by: V. Jara ]

- broadly Blairite, but talks of "insurrection"
- in favour of boot camps for juvenile delinquents
- strongly supportive of "values" discourse in fight against riots and disruptions
- no clear policy on the biggest govt spending issue, Education, in which the No.1 Socialist Party support group, teachers, has killed the reform plans of numerous consecutive Socialist ministers
- et ainsi de suite

biggest asset: the image of new blood vs Sarkozy's similar appeal

quote:

---

Mme Royal had just offered her support to unionists from Aubade, a brand of luxury lingerie, who are fighting plans to close a local factory and move production to Tunisia. “We have to prevent this wildcat outsourcing,” she said. “The workers have no power. We need to tax businesses who want to move out jobs and tax their products when they re-import them.”

Such talk may be anathema to the business world and pro-market reformers, but it is music to voters who see Mme Royal as a Joan of Arc who will bring new moral leadership to France while shoring up the old protective state.

Mme Royal has won favour with Blair-style tough-on-crime rhetoric. She says that she admires some of the British leader’s policies, on youth employment and life-long training for example, but she remains wedded to French leftist doctrines of strong job protection and a firm state hand on the economy.

Mme Royal, 53, was chatting in the corridor of the Poitou-Charentes council, in Poitiers, a pretty medieval city. She has presided there since 2004 when she became the first woman elected to run one of France’s 22 regions.

Mme Royal’s ideas are on display in Poitou-Charentes. She has been using her region as a test-bed for the policies that she will take to the Elysée Palace if she wins next May.

Her creed is what she calls participative democracy — initiatives to give citizens more say in running schools, local government and other services. This has won her admiration since her election victory ended 18 years of Conservative control, much of it under the presidency of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the last Prime Minister.

Elisabeth Morin, a conservative who inherited the regional presidency from M Raffarin in 2002, believes that Mme Royal is unqualified to manage France: “A lot of people are discovering that behind Mme Royal’s fluttering eyelashes and angelic smile lies a person who is violent, hard and sectarian,” said Mme Morin.

La Méthode Royal, and the ruffled feathers that it causes, were showcased in a council session this week. She hustled the 55 members through an agenda loaded with typical initiatives — the creation of a life-long learning agency, subsidies for a centre of excellence in health services, the promotion of culture in high schools and funding for digital networks.

Never dropping her smile, Madame la Presidente silenced those who interrupted. She admonished chattering councillors with a brisk “No talking during the session!”. She put down Henri de Richemont, the Conservative leader, who attacked her for failing to invite the opposition to a council luncheon. “From your energy, I see that you did not come here hungry,” she said.

Mme Royal’s defenders say that the anti-Royalists are those who have been shaken by her whirlwind administration. “She is an extremely dynamic woman and she is very demanding of herself and others,” he added.

The Royalists admire the way that she has made the most of the limited powers of a regional council to advance youth employment, education, transport and the environment and involve people in community schemes. Mme Royal runs the council part-time, making day trips on the high-speed train from the Paris home which she shares with François Hollande, her partner and Socialist Party leader.

Marie Legrand, a Greens party vice-president on the council, says: “At the beginning she was inexperienced. She had never run an elected body. She had trouble delegating and she tried to control everything for a few months. But she has totally changed and I would like her to do nationally as she is doing here.”

---

quote:

---

"The world needs Europe, the only peaceful power able to represent an alternative to the American hyperpower," she said, adding Europe should take initiatives such as proposing an international Middle East peace conference.

The European Union needs to become more transparent, socially conscious and environmentally friendly if it wants to move forward, French Socialist presidential frontrunner Segolene Royal said.

Royal laid out a series of proposals, saying the bloc should devote more money to research, encourage renewable energies and reform the Stability and Growth Pact.

"It isn't healthy that the (European) central bank has inflation control as its only objective, and not growth."

---

quote:

---

Mme Royal has a pedigree as a minister in François Mitterrand’s government and as a tough-minded leader in Poitou-Charentes, where she was elected regional president two years ago.

Should she win the presidency next year, something remarkable will have happened at the top in European politics. Continental Europe’s two most important economies, and the FrancoGerman axis that has run the European Union for the past 50 years, will be under the command of women.

French politicians are instinctively protectionist but she, more than most, wants to hold back the tide of globalisation. She says firms that outsource jobs should be forced to hand back any state aid they have received. One of France’s problems, she argues, is that too few workers are members of trade unions and she favours more worker representation on company boards.

---

quote:

---

Miss Royal has been the MP for the area around Melle since 1988, winning the affection of local farmers and factory workers as she used her powerful connections in Paris to channel public funds to the region.

Melle, a town of just 4,500 people, is so loyal it has been dubbed "Segoland" by the French press. It is picture-book France. The local estate agent's window is filled with English-language advertisements for restored barns and stone farmhouses. Miss Royal's constituency office is a handsome house off the market square.

The town and surrounding regions bear the marks of 18 years of state-funded interventions by Miss Royal.

Locals talked of her work to alter the route of a motorway which threatened wetlands and of her efforts to secure protected origin status for a prized variety of goats cheese, the chabichou.

Yves Dedien, a deputy mayor, expressed pride at her record. "There is a political tradition in France that allows an MP with a national profile to obtain certain funds for their constituency," she said.

"But Ségolène did not stop there. Her work to get protected status for the chabichou was a question of hard work, not funding."

Since winning office two years ago as the head of the regional government of Poitou-Charentes, Miss Royal has maintained an intensely local focus, spending yesterday on such events as laying the foundation stone of a new high school, named the "Lycée Kyoto" after the treaty on carbon emissions.

Critics of Miss Royal have asked whether such works, in a tranquil if impoverished corner of rural France, can fit her for the task of running a nation whose grimmest urban housing estates are near no-go zones for the police, where cars are set on fire every night, and youth unemployment can reach 50 per cent.

Pierre Redien, a party activist, warned her critics not to underestimate her. "Those people in Paris don't know her well," he said.

"She's a fighter, she's got courage, and she can be very tough when needed. She knows what she wants and she gets it."

---

quote:

---

The development has given rise to a ghastly neologism which is weaselling its way into the French tongue: "la pipolisation".

Le pipol is a misspelling of le people, a word which in French refers not to the man or woman in the street but to the people in the magazines: the stars, the footballers, the royals, the celebs.

According to critics of the way things are going, French politics is pipol-ising: in other words, it is becoming obsessed with the image of individuals, rather than the substance of policy.

It is hard not to see some truth in this, though the process is probably inevitable.

Laurence Piau, editor of Closer magazine, put it succinctly if ungrammatically: "Today Segolene Royal is un people."

---

The 55 members of her Regional Council were elected by List PR from four districts.

DEUX-SEVRES (11 seats): 5 Socialists (including Ségolène), 1 independent left (Marie-Andrée Ruault, sits with Socialists), 1 Green, 1 Communist, 3 UMP/UDF or Dynamisme Régional.

CHARENTE (12 seats): 5 Socialists, 2 Greens, 1 Communist, 3 UMP/UDF or Dynamisme Régional, 1 National Front.

CHARENTE-MARITIME (18 seats): 6 Socialists, 2 Parti Radical de Gauche (left-liberals, sit with Socialists), 2 Greens, 2 Communists, 5 UMP/UDF or Dynamisme Régional, 1 National Front.

VIENNE (14 seats): 4 Socialists, 1 independent Left (Martine Daban, sits with Socialists), 2 Greens, 2 Communists, 4 UMP/UDF or Dynamisme Régional, 1 National Front.

(Of the 15 conservatives elected under the Dynamisme Régional label, 9 now sit as UMP/UDF, while the other 6 sit as "Non Inscrits de la Dynamique Régionale.")

[ 19 November 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]