Paris - Lille Mayor Martine Aubry was on Tuesday officially
named the new head of the French Socialist Party after a bitter
election that badly split the party.
The party's national council officially named the 58-year-old
Aubry the first-ever female party head after a party commission
investigating claims of election irregularities had determined that
she won Friday's election over former presidential candidate Segolene
Royal by 102 votes out of nearly 135,000 cast.
Originally Aubry had been credited with a winning margin of only
42 votes, or 0.04 per cent. The closeness of the contest and reports
of irregularities in several voting districts, including in Lille,
had moved Royal supporters to charge that the election had been
stolen.
The daughter of former EU Commission president Jacques Delors,
Aubry was the candidate of the Socialist old guard, such as former
French prime ministers Lionel Jospin and Laurent Fabius.
Royal had campaigned on a pledge to renovate the Socialist Party
and was supported by many new-generation politicians who saw
themselves as European social democrats in the cast of the British
Labour Party or the German Social Democrats.
It was unclear what Royal's reaction to the setback would be.
After the result of the official recount was announced, some of her
supporters continued to demand another round of voting.
Earlier on Tuesday, the online edition of the daily Le Monde
reported that representatives of Royal on the vote-count commission
had demanded that Friday's election be annulled because of the
numerous irregularities.
'The way the election was carried out provoked a deep indignation
considering the number of irregularities certified and the small
number of votes separating the two candidates,' they wrote in a
letter to the commission.
Some aides to Royal have said they would go to court if Aubry's
election is made official.
The setback will probably put an end to Royal's ambition to face
off against President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential
election. Sarkozy beat her by a substantial margin in the 2007 vote.
However, the bitter dispute has caused such bad blood within the
party, and caused it to lose so much credibility, that Sarkozy may
have little trouble defeating any Socialist candidate, if he chooses
to stand again in 2012.
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