Martine Aubry – the lady in waiting

She might have been absent from national politics for the past eight years, but now a one-time leading light of the Socialist party, Martine Aubry, appears to be back in favour.

Aubry is being touted – not least by herself – as a figure behind which activists could unite in the tussle for the leadership of the party due in November.

Many within the party are keen to avoid a high profile media brawl between what are considered to be the two main contenders for the post - Ségolène Royal and Bertrand Delanoê.

Royal, who was the party’s defeated candidate in last year’s presidential election has already declared she’s standing. Delanoê, the mayor of Paris, has yet to confirm that he’ll be a contender even if everyone knows his intentions are obvious.

Both apparently want to grab the party by the scruff of the neck and shape it according to their own vision of the future. At the core of Royal’s philosophy is participative democracy and the need to listen to what the grass roots are saying. Delanoê on the other hand has recently embraced liberalism and the need to blend it with socialism according to his own autocratic style.

The fear and the reality for many within the party though is that these two very strong potential leaders are in fact only interested in personal ambition – at the expense of party unity – and are intent on using the position of leader as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2012.

A battle between the two could accentuate the divisions already evident after last year’s electoral defeat and the resulting cherry picking of some of its key figures to governmental posts by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Activists have been desperate to find someone around whom they could rally who would represent traditional Socialist principles and take over the reins of power without any perceived personal ambitions.

And at a weekend meeting at which all strands of the party were represented, Aubry seemed to fit the bill.

She herself outlined the need for a national figure capable of smoothing over differences among party members while remaining true to Socialism. And of course that’s exactly how she defined herself, taking pot shots at both the leading candidates while stressing that she represented what the party had always stood for and should continue to stand for.

Her credentials would appear to back up her arguments to a great extent. Aubry was the architect of the 35-hour working week when she was minister of employment from 1997 until 2000 in the government of Lionel Jospin.

She resigned from the government in 2000 and a year later followed in the footsteps of her mentor and a former Socialist prime minister, Pierre Mauroy, to become mayor of the northern city of Lille. It was seen as part of a strategy to build a base of support ahead of the 2002 presidential elections in which it was widely expected that she would be nominated prime minister in the event of a Jospin win.

History of course can be pretty unforgiving in reminding us of failure as not only did Jospin suffer a humiliating defeat - not even making it to a second-round run off – but Aubry also lost her seat in parliament and basically retired from the national scene.

Now she would appear to be back with a vengeance and there’s no doubting that she has used the last eight years out of the limelight to build up a powerful base of support within the party.

Aubry easily won re-election as mayor of Lille in this year’s local elections and she has an enviable political pedigree – she is after all the daughter of the former president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors.

While she might represent the “old guard” Aubry also enjoys support from diverse elements within the party who are united perhaps most in their desire not to see the party implode under the weight of a Royal-Delanoë duel.

But party members must also be wary. In looking for a candidate who ostensibly does not have presidential ambitions, they may in fact simply be feeding that desire for potential personal gain at the expense of the party itself.

If activists are to look around for a real alternative to Royal and Delanoê, one whose way forward is not a return to the habits of the past, then there are alternatives already available. And perhaps they need look no further than a rising star within its ranks – and one who has already put himself up as a candidate, Manuel Valls.

For the moment though the buzz is all about Martine Aubry, which could signal trouble as her return might be interpreted by the electorate as not a case of a new broom to sweep clean but more of an old one to brush everything under the carpet.

French “virgin obsessed” serial killer gets life

After a high profile trial lasting two months, a court in northeastern France on Wednesday found Michel Fourniret, the country’s most notorious serial killer in decades, guilty on seven counts of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

His wife, Monique Olivier, was sentenced to 28 years behind bars for complicity.

Between 1987 and 2001 Fourniret carried out a series of kidnappings in northern France and Belgium.

His prey were girls and young women aged from 12 to 21 whom he stalked to feed what prosecutors during the trial called his “obsession for virgins". Fourniret lured them into his car with the help of his wife before raping and then stabbing, shooting or strangling them to death.

Belgian police eventually detained the couple in June 2003 after a failed attempt to kidnap a 13-year-old girl. She was able to escape from their vehicle and later identify the car licence number. In 2005 both Fourniret and Olivier were handed over to French authorities for trial.

Fourniret admitted to the murders and offered no real defence as such at his trial, leaving his lawyers floundering somewhat as they tried to defend what even they agreed was the indefensible.

After confessing his guilt Fourniret basically refused to co-operate with the courts apart from offering some incoherent written statements from time to time and insisting that his crimes had been unpardonable. He even went as far as to describe himself as "an extremely dangerous individual.”

The relative silence from the defendant throughout the trial didn’t stop the media though. There were almost daily reports on both television and in the press over the two months the trial lasted detailing some of the most macabre aspects of the crime and the distress of those who had lost family members.

Such coverage of course led many to raise concerns about not so much the purpose of a trial whose outcome was perhaps inevitable from the outset, but the way in which it was reported by the media.

Although the trial undoubtedly gave the families of the victims the chance to face Fourniret directly and to an extent vent their anger and desire for justice, it also left many questions unanswered as he simply refused to allow himself to be defended or offer explanations of any sort.

Several of the families have declared themselves “satisfied” with the verdict, and perhaps after all the trial really was for their benefit, to help them achieve some sort of closure.

But it remains questionable just how effective that will have been given Fourniret’s constant refusal to speak or give any clues as to his motives.

Neither the 66-year-old Fourniret nor his 59-year old wife will appeal their sentences and as he’ll not be eligible for parole for another 30 years the life sentence should be just that – life.

Few – if any – would argue against that being the right decision, nor the fact that not only has justice been done but that it has also been seen to be done.

A Nouvel skyscraper for Paris

The French capital is to get just what it needs to set it apart from the rest of the globe’s major cities - a new 300-metre skyscraper set to challenge the world-famous Eiffel tower’s domination of the city’s skyline.

France’s very own Jean Nouvel fought off competition from four other world class architects to be awarded the commission to construct the new Signal tower.

Strictly speaking it’ll actually be built in the largely business district of La Defense on the outskirts of Paris as there are height restrictions on new buildings within the city limits.

Completion of the concrete glass and steel tower is due by the end of 2013.

It won’t quite match the height of the Eiffel Tower – which stands at 324 metres - and is unlikely to become a major tourist attraction, but it’s early evidence that the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to leave his architectural mark on the capital in much the same way as his predecessors.

In fact the thinking behind the tower’s construction is to spearhead an ambitious plan to breathe new life into the whole of La Defense – now more than 50 years old.

At 71 storeys the tower will almost be a town within a town with shops and restaurants on the ground floor, and above those the inevitable offices and a 300-room hotel, all topped off with a layer of luxury apartments.

Unlike many of the rest of the ageing skyscrapers in the district, it’ll combine those all-important energy saving features that simply weren’t around decades ago, including solar panels and wind turbines on the roof.

But when all is said and done it’ll still be a hulking 300 metres of concrete, glass and steel, probably with lights left on unnecessarily overnight (as is common practice in many office complexes).

And as critics have been quick to point out, without a corresponding update of La Defense’s infrastructure the new tower could signal added congestion for commuters in the future as more businesses and therefore more employees are tempted into the district.

It’s already used by 400,000 people daily and is home to 2,500 company headquarters as well as 20,000 residents.

The new tower won’t be the only mighty construction on the horizon when it’s completed.

There are already two other 300-metre projects under construction, both of which are due to be finished by 2012. And Nouvel’s building is just part of a larger renovation plan for the district under which 17 existing but ageing buildings are scheduled for demolition – and replacement.

Of course the choice of Nouvel has brought an awful lot of patriotic backslapping and congratulations here and there’s no doubting his credentials or international track record.

Earlier this year he won the profession’s top honour, the Pritzker prize, plus to gain the new commission he beat off competition from the likes of Britain’s Norman Foster and US architect Daniel Libeskind.

But there has to be a slight doubt lingering as to whether this latest venture will not simply turn into something of an eyesore – albeit it a very tall one.

Nouvel’s last project to be completed here in Paris, the Quai Branly museum of tribal arts, already looked pretty tatty from the outside when it opened in 2006 and looks set to age quickly.