François Hollande and Martine Aubry have emerged as the finalists in the first round of voting in the French Socialist Party primaries held to choose a candidate in next year's presidential elections. As the showdown between the two approaches in a final poll next weekend, the major upset for both was the unexpectedly high score reached by the party's radical candidate Arnaud Montebourg. Both candidates must reach out to his supporters, and the testing task promises some lively debate in the coming days. Stéphane Alliès and Lénaïg Bredouxreport.
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François Hollande's principle campaign aide and advisor, Stéphane Le Foll, could not hide his disappointment as the results came in Sunday night. "It's closer than expected," he commented as Hollande, with 39% of votes cast, had just an 8% lead over Martine Aubry, at 31%, a gap well short of opinion poll predictions.
Above all other surprises, the results left Arnaud Montebourg in third place at 17% of the vote. The anti-globalisation candidate, who campaigned on a more radically left platform than any of the other candidates, is now the principle arbiter for next Sunday's final poll between Hollande and Aubry; he has yet to recommend to his supporters to which candidate they transfer their votes, and hard negotiations with both lie ahead.
"I have come in with a score well in the lead, so I must gather [forces of opinion] together," said Hollande. "It is my duty."
Ségolène Royal, who was the Socialist Party's unsuccessful candidate against Nicolas Sarkozy in the last presidential elections in 2007, polled just 7%, way below the expectations of her supporters. She came just two points ahead of outsider Manuel Vals, who immediately recommended support in the second round vote for François Hollande.
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The results have left the competition wide open and promise a more muscular debate in the days ahead between Hollande, 57, and Aubry, 61. Both are long-serving senior Socialist Party figures who, in comparison to Montebourg, carry the baggage of the party's old guard.
Aubry, mayor of Lille and who was, until the primary campaign began, the party's first secretary, is a former labour minister under former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. She was the architect of the 35-hour week, and is the daughter of Jacques Delors, former European Commission chairman. Hollande, who was also party leader, between 1997 and 2008, has never occupied a ministerial role. A graduate of the elite ENA school, he entered public political service as an economics advisor to former French President François Mitterrand, and later served as a principle private secretary to ministers in Socialist governments.
"We were told everything was already decided, in fact everything is up for play," said Martine Aubry's senior aide and chief speech writer, Guillaume Bachelay, speaking after the results were announced. "A majority of voters, those who voted Aubry, Royal and Montebourg, are for a profound change. That's to say [for] the candidates of transformation, and not continuity, of the system," he added.
There was more gravity than joy in the atmosphere at Hollande's campaign party reception at the Maison de l'Amérique latine, a Paris Left-bank cultural exhibition and meeting centre close to Socialist Party headquarters. "We must hear what was said in the first round, but while keeping [intact] our coherence," said Le Foll.
"What must not happen above all is that the dynamism [Editor's note: momentum behind Hollande] change camps, but it is what is in danger of happening," said one party official close to Hollande's spokesman Pierre Moscivici, and whose name is withheld. "François has nevertheless reached a very good score, one that could not have been imagined before the opinion polls got carried away."
Euro MP and senior Socialist Party official Vincent Peillon, close to François Hollande, claimed that certain themes in Hollande's campaign, "like institutional issues, the localisation of employment, a renewal of politics", had been adopted by Montebourg.
Martine Aubry set the tone of the campaign for the second round deciding vote, depicting herself as the radical candidate. "In face of a hard right, there must be a hard left," she trumpeted Sunday evening. One party militant who backed Aubry, and whose name is withheld, expressed amusement at the effect of Montebourg's higher than expected support. "He has managed from the outside to make Aubry lean to the left, there where we had difficulty in getting her from the inside," he commented.
Hollande and Aubry will confront their programmes in a televised debate on Wednesday. Many of her supporters speaking on Sunday expressed the hope that she would now adopt a clearly more radical left line, including themes developed by Montebourg.
Socialist Party spokesman and Aubry supporter Benoît Hamon, referring to Montebourg's protectionist arguments, noted: "I see that these ideas are prospering and are becoming unavoidable, notably concerning European entry taxes [on goods], the fight against lay-offs and a European reorientation [of EU economic policies]".
Montebourg held his Sunday evening campaign reception well away from the cosseted surrounds of the Left bank, at the former workers' cooperative La Bellevilloise, founded just after the Paris Commune (now an exhibition and meeting centre). "The PS [Socialist Party] can no longer, without the support of the population, win a presidential election," he declared Sunday. "Those who for 20 years have occupied the same posts will now have to listen to us."
His spokesman, Géraud Guibert, sent a warning to Aubry and Hollande. "The electors voted for ideas of renovation, for transformation, we'll see what the two leading candidates have retained from all that," he said. "There must be signals given about the basics. For in a poll like that, voters won't be convinced by bargaining deals."
But among Montebourg's supporters gathered on sunday, there was a shade of pragmatism regarding the choice of he or she who is to lead the Socialist bid to reclaim the presidency for the first time since 1995. "Aubry would undoubtedly make a better president, Hollande would undoubtedly be a better candidate" said one.
"To win a presidential election, you need 50.01% of the vote," said another, Paris councilor Jean-Pierre Guis. "To get there, you must necessarily make a wide turn and go and find other voters. Mitterrand succeeded. This time who is the best? Hollande or Aubry?"
While several among Montebourg's supporters at the Bellevilloise, in off-the-record comments, suggested a preference for Hollande, there were others who loudly jeered TV pictures of Manuel Valls calling upon his supporters to vote next Sunday for Hollande. Indeed, if Montebourg was to join Valls in supporting Hollande, many of his supporters, alienated from the party old guard, would clearly find such a position difficult to accept.
All of which may encourage Montebourg to simply avoid any recommendation. However he plays his cards, it would appear likely that, to make the most political capital of his crucial score, he would wait for the Aubry-Hollande debate on Wednesday before making an announcement.
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English version: Graham Tearse