2 jours d'après - tour 2

The first order of business among the morose Socialists -- and a very important bit of business in French politics -- is internecine score-settling, cut a little throat and advance up a rung.

ROYAL PLEDGES TO FIGHT ON
AS CRITICS QUESTION HER RIGHT TO LEAD PARTY

PARIS May 8, 2007 (Times Online) - Knives came out in the beleaguered French Socialist party yesterday as Ségolène Royal, the defeated candidate, made a bid for leadership while rivals on the Left and Right blamed her for dragging them to their third presidential rout in a row.

... She announced plans to stage a rally in her support in Paris next week, prompting mockery from rivals who suggested that she had not understood that she had lost.

Ms Royal’s claims angered senior party figures who believe that she was the wrong choice as candidate and that she had bungled a campaign that she waged at a fatal distance from the party. They faulted her for woolly thinking and focusing too much on her personality.

... The row has alarmed party officials who must fight a general election within weeks. Vincent Peillon, an MP and party spokesman, told his colleagues: “Put your squabbling over egos back into your holsters. Ségolène Royal has reset the meter of the Socialists at zero. Let’s work for new politics.”

Calls to put differences aside come a bit late in the day. Sarko has already beaten the quarreling Socialists, which, not surprisingly, has made them more quarrelsome.

NEED FOR UNITY FAILS TO AVERT SOCIALIST RECRIMINATIONS

PARIS May 8, 2007 (Guardian) - Defeated and in disarray, the French left is set for a period of bitter internal conflict as leading figures blame each other, as well as Ségolène Royal, for the country's decisive rejection of her presidential campaign.

... The so-called "elephants" - Socialist party grandees - who resented Ms Royal's sprint to the presidential candidacy, have already raised questions about the style and content of her campaign. In spite of the need for a show of unity before next month's parliamentary election, an appetite for revenge is evident as the left nurses the wounds of a third successive presidential election defeat.

... But Socialists are not even agreed on what went wrong.

... A split between the moderate and militant wings is not ruled out. "It is going to be pretty nasty," Philippe Roy, professor of politics at Tours University, told Agence-France Presse. "The recriminations will be violent, and then they are going to have to completely refound the party."

And that nastiness begins at home.

ELECTION DEFEAT EXPOSES STRATEGY SPLIT
OF FRANCE'S 'POWER COUPLE'

PARIS May 9, 2007 (Independent) - Defeat in the presidential election threatens to splinter the French Socialist party, starting with its most celebrated "power couple".

The vanquished candidate, Ségolène Royal and her partner, the Socialist leader, François Hollande, are in scarcely veiled conflict over the future of the party. France 2 television snatched telling footage of the couple having a "frank discussion" in the Socialist party headquarters after Sunday's defeat. Mme Royal had just made a concession speech in which she announced that she was "assuming her responsibility" to "deepen the modernisation" of the French left. M. Hollande had just told a television interviewer that his "wife" had made "mistakes" during her campaign and had not been precise enough in her proposals.

... Despite her comprehensive defeat, Mme Royal, 53, believes that she should become a kind of president-in-waiting and leader of the opposition. ... M. Hollande's position [as first secretary of the Parti Socialiste] is under threat from right and left-leaning Socialist barons. He is unconvinced that his partner can unite his notoriously fractious party better than he can. ["I embody the legitimacy of the Socialist party. She has legitimacy as the candidate.", TOL, op. cit.]

What fascinates us about the left is the lack of collegiality and savage abandon they exercise when destroying an opposition candidate, how they visit this same lack and abandon on their own. They do a very thorough job of it, too, blood everywhere. [We turn to look. Pause. Another pause. We cannot look away.] Shark feedings -- at a safe remove -- exert this same hypnotic fascination on us.

PFFT (What is this?): Long knives 3 | Entropy 3 | Party relevance 2 | Rayonnement français 0