Nicolas Sarkozy Marie-Ségolène Royal
It is enough to make Charles de Gaulle turn in his grave and Jacques Chirac run for a third term, even though he is the most unpopular president in the entire 48 years of the French Republic: the prospect not just of a woman running for the presidency on the Socialist ticket but of another woman becoming her Gaullist opponent.
Although some of the political heavyweights on the right dislike the left wing candidate, Marie-Ségolène Royal, as much because of her sex as for her intangible politics, they dislike the prospect of losing even more. A whispering campaign has begun against the leading candidate of the right, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. A second generation immigrant lawyer from Hungary, Sarkozy is a political street fighter whose bruising style, some hint, might not play well with the voters, when offered as an alternative the sexual charisma and charm of Royal. A case, one might say, of the Godfather versus Cinderella.
Chirac has never forgiven Sarkozy for backing a rival during the 2005 campaign and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, ruled out of the presidential stakes, ridicules his size, calling Sarkozy “the dwarf”. In this poisonous atmosphere of briefing and counter briefing, the Gaullists are in agreement only on one point: that the more men attack Royal, the stronger she becomes.
Enter therefore a potential compromise female candidate for the right, Michèle Alliot-Marie, who knows how to stroke the egos of the male politicians. As defence minister from 2002, she showed her willingness to take tough decisions, and to ridicule a parliamentary infrastructure where women had often played a meek, subordinate role. Challenged by an usher for wearing trousers inside the debating chamber, she horrified the official by pretending to take them off.
Alliot-Marie has long cultivated an image of being as good as most men at riding and skiing and can safely be said to be the only female politician to accomplish a particularly difficult rugby skill: the drop kick. She was taught this as a young girl by her father, a former international rugby referee.
Michèle Alliot-Marie
Although such trivia ought not to determine high political office, gossip and scandal are beginning to play a significant part. Chirac’s dislike of Sarkozy is partly attributed to the fact that he once dumped Chirac’s daughter and Sarkozy’s marriage has been placed under intense scrutiny. Last year the Swiss daily, Le Matin, reported that Sarkozy’s second wife, Cecilia, had moved out of the family home, furious at her husband’s antics as an alleged serial adulterer. Cecilia may since be back but she, too, has been romantically linked with a rich advertising executive.
The Royal household is also the subject of much speculation. Royal lives with, but is not married to, François Hollande, the father of her four children. Hollande, leader of the Socialist party, wanted to be president himself but lacked her charisma. A hilarious skit on their pillow talk and subsequent breakfast time conversation appeared recently on an irreverent website.
Yet when it comes to social pedigree, Royal has the better credentials. She is one of eight children, born into a devout French Catholic family in Dakar, when it was a French West African colony. Her parents stayed married whereas Sarkozy’s father had four wives. Her father was a colonel in the French artillery, while Sarkozy’s was a private in the French Foreign Legion, a stateless refugee from Communist Eastern Europe. On State occasions, it has been unkindly observed that Royal looks far more of a potential president.
Royal survived her fiercest test, a series of televised debates, and was elected the candidate of the left last month. The Gaullists’ party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), choose the right wing candidate on 14 January in a ballot of their 300,000 members. Sarkozy should still win the Gaullist nomination but many political commentators believe Royal may have the momentum to carry her into the Elysée Palace.
From our December 2006 e-newsletter
