Aubry wins French Socialist leadership battle - just

Martine Aubry has won the battle to become the new leader of the French Socialist party by the narrowest of margins.

Just 42 votes separated her from rival Ségolène Royal, and it wasn't until the final votes had been counted in the wee hours of Saturday morning that party officials confirmed Aubry as the winner.

The final result after a night of counting and declarations of victory from both sides at one time or another - 50.02 per cent (or 67,413 votes) for Aubry and 49.98 per cent (or 67,371 votes) for Royal.

If you thought that was the end of the story, and that the party would now unite behind one figure - especially as it has spent so much of its recent past involved in infighting - then you could be in for something of a nasty surprise.

The margin of victory was so narrow that it hardly acts as a ringing endorsement for Aubry as leader, especially as only 137,116 (or 58.87 per cent) of the 233,000 card carrying members actually voted.

And Royal has reacted to the result with claims of "fraud" in the counting, vote rigging throughout the polling, and a call for there to be a rerun of the vote next Thursday.

Her supporters are also demanding that the counting methods in Aubry's strongholds around the country be re-examined.

Although they were unwilling to pin point exactly in which ones, they've stressed that polling was still going on in the North (Aubry is mayor of the northern city of Lille) as results (favouring Royal) were coming in from the south.

Manuel Valls, one of Royal's closest supporters told public television's lunchtime news programme on Saturday that there had obviously been fraud and vote rigging involved, and that the election, rather than being a victory for Aubry had been one snatched from Royal.

He also decried the treatment Royal had received in the run-up to the party's conference in Rheims last weekend and said holding a second sound of voting just one day after the first, had been a ridiculous way for the party to try to elect a new leader.

The outgoing leader of the party François Hollande is expected to convene a committee of parliamentary members of the party to check and validate the results, although as far as Aubry's camp is concerned, she's the winner and "there's no need for further scrutiny."

Anyone who has watched the Socialist party tear itself apart from within over the past decade or so, will perhaps not be at all surprised by this latest twist in the tale.

Many within the French media were already wondering whether the party would be able to recover from internal bickering before the vote and emerge with a result that would present a united front encompassing Royal's wish to take it more to the centre and Aubry's declared intention to "uphold leftist values".

The result - which although a win for Aubry - is to all intents and purposes a tie, with the big question now remaining as to whether the party can continue in its present form.

So perhaps this is just the end of the story "so far" in a saga that looks set to run and run.