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The former Socialist leader François Hollande appeared
to have scored a comfortable victory in France's first "open" presidential primary of the Left yesterday. Early counting last night gave Mr Hollande a 56 to 44 per cent lead in the contest to
become the main challenger to President Nicolas Sarkozy next spring.
After topping the poll with 39.2 per cent in the first round last weekend, Mr Hollande appeared to have defeated his remaining rival, Martine Aubry, after an even higher turnout of voters approaching 3 million.
Ms Aubry, the party leader, was nine points behind Mr Hollande last Sunday and turned what was supposed to be a fraternal election into a Punch and Judy show in its final days. She accused Mr Hollande, 57, of being "soft", "vague" and "insincere" and being "the candidate manufactured by the establishment". Mr Hollande's supporters accused Ms Aubry of "using the language of the far right" and "skidding completely out of control".
The venom between the two moderate left candidates was largely personal. The final TV debate on Wednesday revealed, at most, minimal ideological or policy differences. Mr Hollande has promised to abolish over five years the French state budget deficit without taking an axe to French state spending or reforming the welfare state.
He has campaigned mostly as an anti-Sarkozy candidate and a soothing "antidote to Sarkozy", promising to be a "normal" president who would govern quietly and with decorum in the best interests of ordinary French people.
He won at least partial endorsements from all four of the candidates eliminated last weekend, including his estranged former partner, Ségolène Royal.
In recent days, an apparently desperate Ms Aubry, 60, has launched a series of attacks on Mr Hollande's most obvious weaknesses. She has criticised his dull personality and the vagueness of many of his policy positions, and pointed out that, in 30 years in politics, Mr Hollande has never held even a junior ministerial position.
Most damaging of all, in a country always keen to lynch its elite, Ms Aubry has suggested that Mr Hollande is the candidate of the media and political "establishment". A Hollande aide retorted by awarding Ms Aubry the "Le Pen prize" for political vituperation.
Socialist leaders fear that the personal attacks made in recent days will be recycled joyfully by Mr Sarkozy's centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) in the coming weeks.
The first round of the primary was remarkable for its absence of personal insults. In almost every other way, the open primary – the first of its kind in French political history – has been an unqualified popular success. Any voter, left, right or centre, willing to pay a minimum of €1 and to sign a short statement of allegiance to "left wing and republican values" was invited to take part.
The intention was to build popular momentum behind a candidate who could appeal to both the left and centre of the electorate before the presidential election proper next April and May. Only one Socialist, Francois Mitterrand (in 1981 and 1988), has captured the Elyseé Palace since the presidency became the dominant position in French politics in 1958.
More than 2.6 million people turned out last weekend – far more than expected and more than a dozen times the membership of the Parti Socialiste. The turn-out for yesterday's second round was estimated at 3 million.
To the fury of Mr Sarkozy's centre-right party, the primary has dominated the news agenda in France for the past fortnight, revealing both a hunger for direct democracy and a thirst for a change of leadership.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hollande-set-to-win-vote-to-take-on-sarkozy-2371618.html