FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE will lead the French left’s challenge to unseat President Nicolas Sarkozy next year after defeating Martine Aubry in the second round of the Socialist Party’s primary yesterday.
With two-thirds of the 2.7 million ballots counted, Mr Hollande had 56.4 per cent of the votes, putting him comfortably ahead of Ms Aubry on 43.6 per cent.
Mr Hollande, a centrist former party leader, campaigned as the candidate most likely to defeat Mr Sarkozy next April and May – a feat that would make him only the second left-wing head of state in the history of the current French republic.
Conceding defeat, Ms Aubry called for unity behind her rival and said she would invest all her strength in ensuring he won next year’s election.
Mr Hollande held the frontrunner’s mantle since May, when the arrest of longtime favourite Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York ended his presidential ambitions. Promising to cut France’s huge budget deficit quicker than any other candidate and situating himself firmly on the party’s centre ground, Mr Hollande received a late boost last week when all four candidates eliminated in the first round endorsed him.
Among them was Ségolène Royal, the socialists’ defeated candidate in the 2007 election and the mother of his four children, who was knocked out with just 8 per cent of the vote last week.
“Our candidate is clearly ahead, with a strong legitimacy based on a strong turnout,” Ms Royal said last night. “A new force is born,” said Arnaud Montebourg, another of the defeated candidates.
Ms Aubry, party leader since 2008, is a former labour minister and was considered closer to the party’s left-wing grassroots. But her relatively late entry into the race – she and Mr Strauss-Kahn had agreed a pact under which only one of them would stand in the primary – allowed Mr Hollande to gain momentum.
Ms Aubry, daughter of former European Commission president Jacques Delors, had made much of her rival’s lack of experience in government and said he represented the “soft left”. In an attempt to tap into the significant green vote, she proposed that France completely withdraw from nuclear energy – the source of 70 per cent of its electricity.
For Mr Hollande, a genial politician whose base is rural Corrèze, yesterday’s victory completes a remarkable turnaround. Having felt he was denied his chance at the presidency by Ms Royal in 2007, he set about preparing for the primary over a year ago. He travelled across the country and refashioned himself into a solemn, purposeful figure keen to persuade voters he could pose a serious challenge to the unpopular Mr Sarkozy.
Describing himself as “an ordinary president”, in contrast to the flashy incumbent, he promised to scrap tax breaks that went mostly to the wealthy under Mr Sarkozy, using half of the savings to fund state jobs and promote growth, with the rest to cut the deficit.
Recent opinion polls suggest that, if the election were held now, Mr Hollande would become the first left-wing president since François Mitterrand stepped down 17 years ago.