[lbo-talk] Socialists Back Woman in Race to Lead France

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 11/18/06, Michael Givel <mgivel at earthlink.net> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/europe/17france.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print
>
> November 17, 2006
> Socialists Back Woman in Race to Lead France
>
> By ELAINE
> SCIOLINO
>
> PARIS, Friday, Nov. 17 - Ségolène Royal moved a step closer to becoming
> the first female president of France early Friday, crushing her two male
> rivals for the Socialist Party nomination in next April's election.
>
> With most of the vote in, Ms. Royal, 53, a regional president and former
> minister, won 60.6 percent of the vote of the party's nearly 219,000
> members in an unusual primary.
>
> Her closest rival, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 57, a former finance
> minister, received 20.8 percent of the vote, and Laurent Fabius, 60, a
> former prime minister, 18.5 percent.
<snip>
> Her inexperience in foreign policy issues surfaced last week when she
> said during the last campaign debate that Iran should never be allowed
> to have a civilian nuclear energy program. As her opponents quickly
> pointed out, Iran enjoys that right as a signatory to the Nuclear
> Nonproliferation Treaty.

<blockquote>Over the past week, however, Ms Royal has kicked up a
stink among the Socialist old guard. First, this daughter of an army
colonel argued for a clamp-down on teenage criminals, calling for
first-time offenders to be sent to boot camp, and for parents of
delinquents to be dispatched to parenting school and have their
benefits reviewed. Hardly had the outcry died away before she broke
another taboo, the 35-hour week, introduced by a previous Socialist
government. This time, she veered leftwards. Her criticism was not
that it stifled the work ethic or burdened companies, but that it had
bred too much insecurity: bosses had won flexible working practices in
return for reducing the working week with no loss of pay. "Managers
have benefited from extra days off and workers have had to work on
Saturdays," she wrote on her website (she is compiling a book based on
online contributions).  ("The Irresistible Rise of Ségolène Royal," 8
June 2006,
<http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7037010>)</blockquote>

It looks like Ms. Royal will be the French female version of Tony
Blair, whom it is said she admires.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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