After what appeared to be a remarkably successful first month, the presidency of newly-elected François Hollande was this week rocked by its first crisis, and one which came from a most unexpected quarter.
For just days before France goes to the polls in the final round of voting in the two-round parliamentary elections, in which the Left has been forecast to win its first majority in ten years, French ‘First Lady’ Valérie Trierweiler has embarassed the Socialist Party with a public attack via Twitter against the president’s former companion, and mother of his four children, Ségolène Royal.
Royal, who was the unsuccessful presidential candidate for the Socialist Party in the 2007 presidential elections, is standing with Hollande's endorsement as the party’s official candidate for the constituency of La Rochelle, a town in south-west France. Trierweiler’s salvo on Twitter was a public message of support, at odds with the public stance of both Hollande and the Socialist Party, for Royal’s principle opponent in the forthcoming second-round vote in La Rochelle, where Royal is fighting for her political survival.
Royal, who has no previous political connection with the town, was chosen as candidate by the party’s Paris headquarters above the heads of the local branch, whose preferred candidate was the town’s deputy mayor and long-serving party official, Olivier Forlani. Royal, who has publicly stated her ambition of becoming speaker of the National Assembly, the French lower house, was seen as being rewarded for her high-profile support for Hollande during his election campaign.
Forlani subsequently decided to stand as an independent candidate, for which he was excluded from the Socialist Party, and next Sunday’s second and final round vote for the constituency sees he and Royal fighting the seat neck and neck, with Forlani’s first round score at 28.91% against Royal’s 32.03%.
“Courage to Olivier Falorni who has not faulted, who has been battling alongside the people of La Rochelle for so many years in a disinterested political action,” Trierweiler wrote on her Twitter account on Tuesday.
The tweet came as a bombshell, commented all day Tuesday and Wednesday by the media, fed upon by the socialist's political rivals and forcing embarassed claims by Socialist party officials that her personal opinions did not engage Hollande. It reignited media reports of how Trierweiler, 47, a divorced mother of three and a political journalist with weekly magazine Paris Match, is locked in a bitter personal feud with Royal, 58, who was Hollande’s companion for more than 25 years. Royal announced her separation from Hollande, 57, shortly after her presidential election defeat in 2007, when he had already begun an affair with Trierweiler. The French press has given numerous accounts of continued tension between the two women, reportedly fuelled by Trierweiler's intense dislike of the media's regular references to the former couple formed by Royal and Hollande.
The outburst caused disarray and dismay among the socialists, with an unseemly and damaging washing of private linen in public just as the party hoped to win an absolute majority of its own in the June 17th poll, doing away with the need to form a coalition with other parties of the Left. It threatened to shatter the credibility of the promise by Hollande and his interim government that it had broken with the practices of the past administration under Nicolas Sarkozy, when the borderline between private and public interests was often blurred.
“It’s a way of losing 0.5% to 1%, which could be equivalent to the loss of 20 or so MPs in the tightest constituencies,” commented one Socialist Party official, referring to socialist candidates in constituencies where the final round result next Sunday will be played out within a few percentage points.
“It is a private affair that has political consequences,” commented a close advisor to Hollande, who did not want to be named. “It’s embarrassing for the president.”
Another advisor, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told French daily Le Monde: “I am completely flabbergasted. I was ready for a government crisis, not a conjugal one. It is gobsmacking.”
Falorni: 'I'm not surprised, I'm happy, flattered'
It was hard to believe that the timing of Trierweiler’s message was spontaneous, for at the very moment she sent it Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry and outgoing Green party leader Cécile Duflot, a minister in Hollande’s interim government, were in La Rochelle campaigning for Ségolène Royal. The same morning, speaking on BFM TV, Royal spoke of the support she had received from François Hollande, with whom she had spoken “for a long time on the phone” and who had told her she was “the only candidate who could claim his support and representation of the presidential majority”.
Indeed, the words she used on BFM-TV were identical to a message of support from Hollande contained on Royal’s election campaign flyers and which the presidential office confirmed was validated by him.
“I have no comment to make,” Royal curtly told reporters after the tweeted message was revealed. “I am concerned with the people of La Rochelle, with the electorate of this constituency.”
Socialist Party First Secretary Martine Aubry, meanwhile, declared: “We are here in a battle against the Right. We are here to rally all the forces of the Left and all [democrats] who want to change things. I am a political woman, Ségolène Royal also. Cécile Duflot too. The only thing that is important for us is the support of François Hollande for Ségolène Royal. It is clear, it is limpid.”
Questioned by Mediapart, Olivier Falorni, who has a longstanding friendship with Trierweiler, denied that her tweet was a political manoeuvre. Asked if he had been taken by surprise by the message, he commented: “I don’t have much to say to you about that. If you want me to say that it was a concerted move, organized, [the answer is] no. It is a message she wanted to send me. I am not surprised. I am happy, flattered.”
Falorni’s wife, who is also communications manager for his election campaign, revealed that Trierweiler had “cordially” forewarned him by a mobile phone text message before sending the tweet.
“The timing is certainly clever,” said local Socialist Party branch official who did not want to be named. “There are two theories. Either she decided on her own to send this message, which is her style. Or it was a means for François Hollande to show his friendship for Olivier, and that’s also his style.” Falorni, was for eight years leader of the Socialist Party branch for the Charentes-Maritime département (county), in south-west France, until he was excluded in January for defying the party’s choice of Royal as candidate. He is a long-term political ally of the new president, having loyally supported him when Hollande was struggling with his political career, after giving up leadership of the Socialist Party and before launching his bid for the presidential candidature for the party. At a time when “there weren’t ten people around him, Olivier was there,” said the official.
“Valérie expresses herself in her own name and [that] engages only herself,” said a presidential advisor, speaking on condition of anonymity. “She has known the dissident candidate for a long time. The position of the Elysée is that of a declared and totally assumed support for Ségolène Royal, as for all the official candidates of the presidential majority.”
“At this stage, I don’t see a political consequence,” commented another, who also asked not to be named. “Valérie Trierweiler’s position is not the same as that of the Elysée. Thus, it is not a crisis. After that, we must see the results next Sunday. It’s certain that it comes at a complicated moment.”
Ambiguous role
For the French conservative UMP party, the controversy came at a timely moment. It has helped to divert attention away from its own embarrassment over the deal-making this week between some of its candidates and the far-right Front National party in order to block the route of socialist candidates in several constituencies where the three parties were due to fight the second round. “Vaudevill has come to the Elysée,” commented UMP Member of Parliament Éric Ciotti, writing on his own Twitter account, while Front National leader Marine Le Pen, also on Twitter, described the events as “pitiful”.
The controversy has brought to the fore the ambiguous role played by Trierweiler, who also presents a TV show on cultural affairs on the French channel Direct 8. During his election campaign, Hollande declared that “I will present myself alone before the French, alone. This is not a couple presenting itself but one person who must convince with his ideas, his approach.” Yet while she has no official position in the Socialist Party, Trierweiler was given an office and the services of a press manager at Hollande's campaign headquarters.
She has long insisted that she would remain a working journalist after Hollande's election, adding that she did not wish to assume the image of ‘French First Lady', and explaining in interviews that she was engaged in a lengthy reflection about her role alongside the new French president.
Just after Hollande's election on May 6th, she discussed her future role in an interview with French daily Le Figaro. “There is no precise definition," she said. "I need to think about it. It will be easier once the swearing-in [of Hollande] has passed, once I will have realized that all of that will become concrete, including in a practical manner, and notably when I will have an agenda, an office."
Following Hollande's investiture on May 15th, access to the webpage dedicated to the French ‘First Lady’ (pictured below) was soon made inaccessible on the official website of the Elysée Palace, although it can be reached via a Google search. The page was reportedly removed from the site on Trierweiler’s behest, wishing to to distance herself from the traditional image the title projects.
Enlargement : Illustration 4
“This role makes me a little uncomfortable but I will manage very well if it is not limited just to that," she told British daily The Times in an interview published on May 9th, shortly after Hollande's election. "I want to represent the image of France, do the necessary smiling, be well dressed, but it shouldn’t stop there. I will not be une potiche (1).”
Despite her reticence, Trierweiler has already, at least partially, begun adopting the position of 'First Lady'. During Hollande’s official visit to the United States last month, where he attended a G8 and NATO summit, she was at the French president’s side at a Camp David dinner in honour of the spouses of the G8 heads of state and accompanied Barak Obama’s wife Michelle on a visit to a school in Chicago.
Trierweiler now has a personal team at the Elysée Palace, where she has hired former RFI radio journalist Patrice Biancone as her head of communications, and has an official chauffeur and a protection squad.
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1: 'Une potiche' is a term to describe a woman who is a wallflower, a subservient figure who serves only by her presence.
English version: Graham Tearse