Martine Aubry, a former labor minister who brought France the 35-hour work week, was confirmed as the leader of the Socialist Party on Tuesday after a razor-thin contest with her rival.
The result hands Aubry the task of patching up relations within the party — the main opposition to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives — and restoring a public image battered by the fighting with former Socialist presidential nominee Segolene Royal for the leadership.
“Let us rally, let us unite around a line of the left, but also around an upcoming renewal,” Aubry said after the party’s National Council confirmed her victory.
Friday’s election results at first showed Aubry winning by 42 votes from nearly 135,000 cast by party rank-and-file.
Royal’s supporters claimed irregularities and demanded a re-count. The party carried out a two-day review — only to announce Tuesday that Aubry had won by 102 votes.
The next presidential election is not until 2012, but the infighting gives the Socialists an uphill climb to win support. And elections for the European Parliament await next year, along with regional French elections in 2010.
Royal too urged party unity, but also trumpeted her ability to “convince half — and maybe more than half — of the Socialist Party” in the vote, despite having “all the old party apparatus against us.”
But one faction of her supporters said they would take legal action to block Aubry’s victory. Royal’s lawyer and two other representatives made a formal request in writing for the election results to be thrown out, pointing to the “obvious impossibility” of accurately reviewing the voting process.
Conservatives have repeatedly mocked the Socialists’ woes.
“It is carnage on a grand scale,” Nadine Morano, the junior minister for the family, told reporters at the lower house of parliament.
Aubry represents the Socialists’ left wing while Royal wants to open up to centrists. Aubry will replace Francois Hollande, the former companion of Royal and father of her four children, who has been at the party’s helm for nearly a dozen years.
The victory marks the return of Aubry, the 58-year-old mayor of northern Lille, to the national political scene. She made her name as labor minister from 1997 to 2001.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS