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.
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