France's Socialist party soap opera - explained - sort of

The Socialist party leadership "fiasco" is dominating the news in France at the moment, and is unlikely to be a story that goes away any time soon.

Martine Aubry says she's the new leader. Ségolène Royal refuses to accept the result.

So I thought, in the interests of trying to make the whole saga a little more understandable to readers outside of the country (and who knows perhaps some inside it too) I would try to tell the tale as to where (some of) the problems lie, as simply as possible.

The issue under scrutiny at the moment is the election process itself, which has undoubtedly been harmed by accusations from both sides of vote rigging and fraud, and would seem to be flawed.

But to understand how the party has managed to get itself into such a mess, you need to backtrack a little and look at what its leaders have been trying to do.

It's fundamentally about different visions of which direction the party should take politically of course. Move towards the centre or remain a party of the traditional left? A combination of the two would seem to be impossible.

But also involved are personalities - all of whom want to be leader (there's a surprise for politicians) with most finding themselves united mainly on one subject.

None of them (apart from the woman in question) wants a certain Ségolène Royal as either leader, or the party's chosen candidate for the 2012 presidential election

Their motto could well be "2007 was bad enough, and it's not a horror we want to live through again."

The main problem they have with her (apart from her popularity among the party's grass roots) is that she wants to make it more electable by moving it towards the centre ground and at the same time opening up its membership.


Cast of characters

Befitting any drama here's a cast of some of the leading characters involved.

First up there's Martine Aubry. She's the architect of this country's 35-hour working week interpreted as either a costly and disastrous policy or a just and fair opening up of the job market - depending on your political persuasion.

She's the daughter of Jacques Delors (former heavyweight French Socialist politician, and former president of the European Commission) and mayor of the northern city of Lille.

In case it had escaped your notice, Aubry is the newly elected leader of the Socialist party and has already made her "victory" and "acceptance" speech.

Martine Aubry declares victory

Then of course there's Ségolène Royal. She was the defeated Socialist party candidate in last year's presidential election, the bête noire, if you will, of most of the party's old guard and the only reason perhaps that there is a semblance of unity among the leaders.

And they include (along with Aubry) the following:

François Hollande is the outgoing (or now "outgone") leader of the Socialist party. He's the former long-time partner of Ségolène Royal - they split shortly after her electoral defeat last year - and father of their four children. Hollande has backed Delanoë and Aubry at different stages of the leadership battle.

Bertrand Delanoë - mayor of Paris and wannabe presidential candidate - a self declared "liberal Socialist" - he recently redefined the term "liberal".

Lionel Jospin - former Socialist prime minister, and failed presidential candidate in 2002, when the party disastrously failed to make it through to the second round. Fervent supporter of Bertrand Delanoë, Jospin could be termed the "Elton John" of French politics as he has "retired" and made many a comeback..

Benoît Hamon - young European parliamentarian. He was against the European constitution and is to the left of the party.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a former finance minister. He's currently head of the International Monetary Fund, but remains a heavyweight within the party, and would probably like to be its presidential candidate in 2012.

Laurent Fabius, former Socialist prime minister, one-time partner of none other than Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. He campaigned heavily against the European constitution. And most importantly, he really, really wants to lead the party and be its presidential candidate in 2012.

Jack Lang is a former culture minister from way back when, and bears a striking resemblance to Rolling Stone, Keith Richards. A perennial of the French political scene, he changes his support to which ever candidate looks to be the likely winner.

There are of course many other players involved but these are perhaps the most instantly recognisable ones.

They might each have their own egos and many harbour desires to lead the party and perhaps the country, but one thing unites them. They don't want Royal in charge.


Changing the rules

And that is at the heart of the current wrangling that is going on. Indeed, in a sense the problem is all of the party's own creation - and here's how.

Before party members voted last month on whose programme they would prefer, Hollande and all the rest agreed that whichever one came out on top would form the basis of agreement for the others in presenting just one candidate and one platform at last weekend's conference in Rheims.

It was supposed to come up with one name for party members to vote for on Thursday.

Well we all know what happened. Royal's programme came first - against all the odds.

Suddenly the party decided to "change the rules" and said that as her programme hadn't won a majority of votes first time around it had no legitimacy and the platform offered by Aubry, Delanoë or Hamon, were the ones on which everyone should be voting. No longer was it enough to be in first place, but a majority was needed to create that much sought after consensus.

Royal followed the original rule to the letter and tried to use her programme (which had come first) as the basis upon which to build agreement with each of the others.

None of them wanted to know and couldn't agree among themselves which of each other's platforms to support.

Hamon said he would stand, Delanoë decided not to (fully expecting Aubry not to) and then at the very last moment, Aubry said she would. The mayor of Lille had outwitted the mayor of Paris in the smartest of political manouevres and now looked the most likely to "save" the party from Royal.

So members were faced with three possible candidates Aubry, Royal and Hamon.

After Hamon was eliminated on Thursday's vote, members were asked to vote again on Friday to choose between the two women - a process which Royal criticised on national television on Saturday evening, saying it had been ridiculous to ask members to vote in a second round a day after the first.

Ségolène Royal

Rigged, fraudulent and flawed

The problem with the vote has been made all the more crucial of course by the closeness of the official result - Aubry receiving just 42 more than her opponent.

Both sides are contesting the way in which votes were counted and there have been accusations of "lost" ballots or mistakes having been made in transmitting the final figures to party HQ in Paris.

Party officials in the overseas territory of New Caledonia for example, say their votes weren"t included at all (Royal 13, Aubry 3).

In one section in eastern France, the figures of 18 votes for Royal and six for Aubry, were muddled and sent the wrong way round for the final count.

In the south west of the country, local party officials have also admitted mistakes in votes being transcribed - this time 41 more votes being registered for Royal than had been cast for her, and Aubry officially receiving 11 fewer than had been cast.

Royal is calling for a rerun of the vote, Aubry still says there's no need for one, and in her "victory acceptance" speech on Saturday evening stressed that the party was bigger than one individual - a non-too heavily disguised attack on Royal.

A special committee of parliamentary members of the party is due to convene after the weekend to check and validate the results.

Is all that clear? As mud perhaps.