And, finally, she was there. To thumping techno, walking through a passage lined by crush barriers that kept the crowds metres either side of her, white skirt and jacket reflecting the beaming lights of the exhibition hall, and flanked by security guards, Ségolène Royal made her way to the stage.
”Together we will rebuild our country,” she told 15 000 supporters waving flags — of the Socialist Party, of the European Union, of France, or bearing her portrait. ”What brings us together is stronger than what divides us.”
Yet, despite the warmth of the welcome in Lyon, the video message of support from Italian leader Romano Prodi and the iron will of the candidate herself, something was missing. Though the gap between Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate and favourite, has narrowed by a percentage point or two, Sarkozy has preserved his lead.
Most polls show him winning the vote next Sunday, winning about 51% to Royal’s 47%. Even supporters have the sense this weekend that Royal’s campaign is losing momentum.
”It is so important for France that we make it, so important, but it’s hard to be optimistic,” said Nathalie Charpentier (26), watching the Socialist candidate’s speech from the side of the hall. ”We need something spectacular.”
Debate
On Saturday, Socialist supporters were hoping they had found it. Royal used a hastily arranged and highly controversial TV debate with Francois Bayrou, the centre-right candidate eliminated in the first round of voting seven days ago, to launch a call for massive constitutional reform that would create a Sixth Republic to succeed the one created by Charles de Gaulle in 1958.
At the Lyon rally she had contrasted her own vision of government with that of Sarkozy, who has made his desire to concentrate further powers in the office of president very clear.
”His project is him and him alone; mine is you,” she told the crowd. And on Saturday, she said she had gone far beyond ”the boundaries of political parties” and described a new ”participative democracy” in which citizens had a major role, explaining that ”political leaders don’t know everything”.
”I am not a woman of dogma; I am a free woman,” she said.
The debate, which had been cancelled and rescheduled half a dozen times, was key for Royal in the pursuit of the seven million who voted for Bayrou, the head of the small centre-right UDF party, in the first round. These votes are critical.
”With the whole left wing unified behind us we have 36%, so if we are going to win we have to go out and get more than half [Bayrou’s] votes,” said Frederic Piriou, a senior Socialist official in Lyon.
Through the week, though Bayrou avoided explicitly calling on supporters to vote for Royal, he repeatedly attacked Sarkozy. The debate on Saturday was one of a number of signs of an increasingly solid bloc forming against the conservative former interior minister, whose campaign has won votes from the powerful French extreme right but lost many moderates.
But Royal’s unifying message is not just directed at the floating voters who rejected the old left at the first round of voting; it is directed at the left itself.
Though some left-wingers within the Socialist party are backing Royal — Henri Emmanuelli, a well-known MP and former minister, called on Saturday for ”a grand progressive alliance” against ”neoconservatism and neoliberalism” — many others are profoundly uneasy with the shift to the centre that Royal is trying to accomplish.
”She is going too far,” said one activist in Lyon. ”We shouldn’t abandon France to a soft centre. We need to stick with the traditions of the left, the traditions for which so many have fought over the years. Only that will beat the right.”
Large scale
Though the extreme left performed very poorly in last week’s first-round poll, such views are widespread among rank and file Socialists. Senior Royal loyalists are well aware of the scale of the task that the candidate has taken on.
”Ségolène is trying to do in a few months, even a few weeks, the work of reform that took the British Labour party a decade to achieve,” said one party strategist at the campaign headquarters in Paris. ”She’s fighting a series of battles at once: against Sarkozy; to occupy the new centre ground that has emerged in France; and to revolutionise the left.”
Nor is the loyalty of the Socialist party’s senior leadership assured. The only major figure to appear at the rally on Friday night was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a popular MP with a strong support base among moderates. Earlier in the week he had publicly signalled his loyalty to Royal in lunching with her in front of scores of photographers in a Paris restaurant. His office made it known he had paid the bill.
However, other major figures, who have barely concealed their jealousy since Royal won the Socialist presidential nomination last year, have been sidelined. Royal, who has never been part of the almost feudal power politics of the Socialist party, has humiliated men such as former presidential candidate Lionel Jospin by first banishing them from her campaign, then inviting them back, only to ignore them.
The first secretary of the party, Royal’s partner Francois Hollande, has tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to maintain a semblance of party discipline. ”Ségolène Royal has never been entirely integrated by the Socialist leadership,” admitted one senior party official last week.
Swing votes
This weekend, Socialist activists across the country were focusing on areas, such as traditionally centrist Lyon, where the crucial million or so ”swing voters” are concentrated. Within the city, a minute analysis of results from the first round of the election sent local party workers to the city’s seventh arrondissement, where Royal and Bayrou both won exactly 29% of the vote.
”Every vote we can win here counts twice,” said Roman Blachier, a campaigner, as he handed out leaflets in the Place de Pavillons, a shopping plaza in the working-class southern part of the arrondissement. ”One more for us, one less for them.”
Blachier has been working the pavements all week. He believes France is polarised. ”I got hit in the face this morning for the first time in 10 years of doing this,” he said.
Reactions to Blachier’s leaflets were mixed. Though many said they would vote Royal, others explained they preferred Sarkozy, underlining why the right-winger remains favourite. Gerald Dupont, boss of a small packaging firm, said he was worried that the left would be ”soft” on immigration and that he liked Sarkozy’s sense of purpose.
”We need someone who knows what he wants and can get things done,” said the 48-year-old, who voted for Bayrou in the first round of the election. ”It’s a question of getting things in this country back on track. At least with Sarkozy you know where you are going.”
On Friday night, Royal contrasted her vision of France with that of Sarkozy, who has repeatedly spoken of France’s ”Christian roots”.
”I believe in a France that is rich in its cultural diversity, multicoloured, tolerant and humanist,” she said. ”I want to rebuild a France that is dynamic and strong but that looks after the weak. I want to reconcile France with business, but with business that respects the law and the environment and creates jobs.”
The crowd cheered. ”We’ve got all the right values. The right are just recycling nasty petty nationalism and fear,” said Charpentier. ”But will it be enough?”
All agree the race to the Elysee is still wide open. ”Nothing is settled,” said Brice Teinturier of pollsters TNS Sofres. A televised debate between the two candidates on Wednesday night is expected to draw an audience of 23-million.
”Mitterrand rightly used to say that everything happened in the last week of a campaign,” said Jean-Louis Touraine, the Socialist assistant mayor of Lyon. ”The last week starts now.” — Guardian Unlimited Â