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 the least expected 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 hopes to win its first majority in ten years, Valérie Trierweiler, French ‘First Lady’ but who refutes the term, embarassed the Socialist Party with a public attack via Twitter against a consituency bid by the president’s former companion Ségolène Royal. The unseemly controversy may have dented the party's chances of gaining an absolute parliamentary majority on its own in the June 17th polling, and raises further questions about the ambiguous role played by Trierweiler. Valentine Oberti and Lénaïg Bredoux report.
Twitter users made the French presidential election a war of green Hungarian wine and red Dutch cheese to thwart laws banning early result predictions.
