France's Socialists in Disarray

...Martine Aubry, a former labor minister and now the mayor of Lille, France's third biggest city, was elected to the post of secretary general...

...and sees the 35-hour work week that she designed and implemented while Jospin’s labor minister as a means of fighting unemployment and enabling workers to have more time for their families...

...A few of its prominent figures were so mesmerized by the president's energy and convictions that they joined his government after his May 2007 election...

...On economic issues the Modem is close to the UMP, but it is closer to the Socialists on issues such as civil rights, freedom of the press, and the independence of institutions like the judiciary...

...But it has proved depressingly self-centered unable to galvanize opposition to Sarkozy on social matters, and inaudible on such key issues as the present economic crisis...

...Excluded too are the aging, hitherto unmovable PS barons, known as the “elephants...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes regularly for the NL on French and Spanish affairs...

...Though Aubry is hardly glamorous, standing beside the taller, slimmer Royal, she radiates a comfortable, solid look of authority that is reassuring in a period of crisis...

...The PS is France's second largest party, after Sarkozy's governing CenterRight Union for a Popular Movement (UMP...

...On December 6, Aubry introduced the team that will assist her over the next three years...

...Besancenot also made himself popular this fall by opposing the municipal police force’s use of electric guns to briefly immobilize their targets...

...Aubry is no Marxist, but her principles, like her manner and appearance, are reassuring in a world thrown into a vortex of uncertainty by the current financial crisis and recession...

...She obtained 46.9 per cent of votes in the second round, prompting commentators and her entourage to contend that she might have won had she been wholeheartedly supported by the party's leadership...

...Yet attuned as she seems to be to a large section of the French population, and despite her being backed this fall by virtually half of the PS, she may be underestimating the country's changing mood which is decidedly morose...

...advocates strong public services in fields such as education, health and care for the elderly, financed by income tax plus a wealth tax on the highest earners...

...At a recent meeting, for example, perfectly groomed in evidently costly clothes, she talked about the growing number of single mothers who do not have enough money to feed their children adequately...

...Bayrou, a former minister, was leader of the Union for French Democracy, traditionally an ally of the neo-Gaullist UMP...

...Martine Aubry France's Socialists in Disarray By Janice Valls-Russell Paris A recent cartoon in the Center-Left weekly Le Nouvel Observateur showed President Nicolas Sarkozy reading a newspaper headlined "The Socialist Party Tears Itself Apart," and asking his wife, "Caria chérie, how do you fancy being France's First Lady for life...

...Reading the last sentence in the program, which refers to a “Party solidly positioned on its traditional values and presenting a deeply innovative project,” a supporter of Royal quipped: “This reads more like back to the past than forward to the future...

...It also insists on the need to “turn toward our traditional partners”—the Communist Party (PC), Greens and radicals—in preparation for the European elections in 2009 and regional elections in 2010...

...He came in third behind the far Right's Jean-Marie Le Pen...

...In fact, until this autumn she conveyed the impression that she was intent on running her city and uninterested in a national career...

...Time will tell whether Aubry or Royal is more in touch with the mood of the country...

...In 2005 Bayrou broke with the UMP and refused to support Sarkozy...

...are worried about the popularity of the 34year-old Leftist leader Olivier Besancenot...

...Instead, Aubry’s team has more women and is more representative of France’s ethnic diversity...

...In contrast, Aubry, Hamon et al...

...She also introduced social measures that make life less harsh in the poorer, high-rise urban areas...

...The cartoonist summed up the feeling of many here that the inability of the Socialist Party (whose French initials are PS) to agree on a clear political line and stable leadership is detrimental to the country's balance of power...

...The Centrist party was founded last year by François Bayrou, who came in third in the presidential election...

...He is revamping his Communist Revolutionary League into a broaderbased New Anticapitalist Party, scheduled to hold its first congress at the end of January...

...But Royal has a knack for irritating some people as much as she stimulates others...

...The manager of the company importing the guns, he revealed, paid private detectives to spy on him, his partner and their young child...

...After her impressive results in the municipal elections, however, Aubry joined with the Socialists bent on barring Royal’s way to the secretary general’s post...

...It includes no one from her rival’s camp...

...And unlike Royal, who detractors claim has little time for her Poitou-Charentes region, Aubry has devoted much time and energy to Lille...

...More could follow in the reshuffle expected to take place before the European Parliament elections in June 2009...

...Healing the wounds of this French Socialist replay of the Florida tragicomedy will not be easy...

...The program Aubry put before the PS National Council on December 6 reaffirms the need to “clearly mark differences between Left and Right,” while stressing that “our strategy is to gather the Left, and we reject all forms of alliance with the Modem...

...AMAJOR difference between Royal and Aubry concerns whether or not the PS should form a working alliance with the Modem (short for Democratic Movement...

...A public debate between Royal and Bayrou before the second presidential round showed that there were many areas where they agreed, fueling speculation that she might appoint him prime minister if she prevailed...

...Two years later, Royal was elected head of the Poitou-Charentes region...

...Not surprisingly, the program was warmly greeted by PC leader Marie-Georges Buffet, who dreams of the late 1970s and early ’80s, when Mitterrand cobbled together an alliance with the Communists and a small radical party that ushered him to victory in 1982...

...She says she was unable to reach an agreement with Royal, who claims to have called her several times and “offered to serve the party”: “I represent half the Socialist Party’s militants, so I wish to work for the party, just as in the United States Barack Obama invited Hillary Clinton to work with him...

...She believes in government support of essential economic sectors...

...The last puts her in radical opposition to Sarkozy’s “work more to earn more” credo, which is proving rather hollow as growing numbers of workers worry about losing their jobs...

...the rift runs deep...

...Criticized as "social democratic" and opportunistic by PS Left-wingers, and as inexperienced on economic and financial issues by its more centrist members, Royal was nevertheless chosen to be the PS candidate for last year's presidential contest...

...He then pulled out and backed Aubry, thus contributing to her victory...

...She soon began to expand her following in other regions by untiringly touring the country and through her Web site, desirsdavenir.org—literally "wishes for the future," it could translate as "forward to the future...

...The Royal camp is convinced that any future presidential election can only be won by attracting Centrist voters...

...Dressed mostly in white at her campaign rallies, she generated a quasimystical, cultish atmosphere, as if she were a Catholic Madonna or Evita Peron...

...It embraces the party’s social democrats by including JeanChristophe Cambadélis...

...Re-elected with 66.5 per cent of vote in the 2008 municipal elections, she has revamped the city both architecturally and culturally, making it one of the hubs of northern France, with highspeed train connections to Britain, Belgium, Holland, and Germany...

...Her numerous public meetings attracted support well beyond Socialist ranks as she forthrightly addressed such issues as education, women's rights, law and order, and a more flexible approach to controversial Jospin reforms like the 35-hour work week...

...Speaking of the bank bailouts, for instance, he asked: “How is it that Western governments can suddenly find billions of pounds or euros to bail out banks after telling us they have no money to prevent factories from being closed down...

...In the first round of the PS balloting she came in second, behind Royal and ahead of Left-leaning Benoît Hamon...

...Since then she has continued to cultivate her public image and carefully stage her appearances: Undeniably goodlooking, invariably smiling, at times she resembles a pop star rather than a political leader...

...Such incongruities could explain why she did not become the Socialist secretary general...

...It takes in as well Bruno Julliard, leader of the student action against Chirac’s government two years ago, and the scientist Bertrand Monthubert of Save Research, a prominent leader of an active academic movement that has been fighting Sarkozy’s reorganization of French research institutions...

...She won by only 102 votes in the runoff against Ségolène Royal, the party's failed 2007 presidential candidate...

...Royal was a minister under François Mitterrand and in the Center-Left government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who suffered a humiliating defeat in his 2002 bid to oustneoGaullist President Jacques Chirac...

...In this she clearly belongs to the same era as Sarkozy, an era that seems to prefer the Stardust and glitz (here termed "bling-bling") of politics to the nitty-gritty stuff...

...Above all, it reflects Aubry’s alliance with Hamon, who becomes the PS spokesman and a leading figure in the new team...

...The PS leadership believes it must not allow him to be the sole voice of discontent, particularly given his glib, catchy slogans and comments...

...At the end of November, the PS further disoriented the public by splitting almost evenly into two camps...

...Some fashion observers have noted that she has lately been imitating the dressing style of Caria Bruni-Sarkozy, a pop singer and former fashion model...