FRANCE: Candidates for the Socialist presidential ballot ticket prepare for the election that will take place on Thursday

France's Socialist party holds a primary ballot on Thursday to (16 November) to select their candidate for next year's presidential election. Segolene Royal leads polls to win the primary over her rivals Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister. Born in 1953, Royal was environment, family and schools minister under previous Socialist governments. She shot to prominence in 2004 when she was elected president of the Poitou-Charentes region which was long the stronghold of the then conservative prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Opinion polls have consistently predicted she would win the party primary and have also tipped her as the only Socialist able to beat conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy. She would be France's first female president. Royal has repeatedly said she embodies the change France has hungered for after almost 12 years of rule by conservative President Jacques Chirac. "I am a candidate in order to make the left win and then make of France a success. I am a candidate because I believe in political will and in the economy", she said during one of the televised debates among the three candidates. Rivals had accused Royal of avoiding meaningful debate during the Socialists' campaign, blaming her for the rigid debate format that avoided direct clashes between candidates. Royal said the debates had proven she had the right stuff. Former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius is also battling for the ticket against frontrunner Royal and former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Fabius became modern France's youngest prime minister in 1984 at the age of 37. In office, he advocated a new French Socialism, speaking out in favour of spending cuts, jettisoning Socialist dogma in favour of a stark austerity programme. He introduced tax cuts when he was finance minister from 2000 until 2002. After the Socialists' defeat in the 2002 presidential poll, Fabius moved to the party's left wing, raising many eyebrows. He was excluded from the executive when he defied the party line and campaigned against the European Union Constitution in a 2005 referendum. He claimed victory when the French rejected the charter and calls himself the "candidate of the small people". "I am a candidate essentially because there are situations, irregularities and injustices that I cannot accept", Fabius said during one of the televised debate. He is in favour of creating a new European constitution that will be "shorter, readable and with a strong focus on values and institutions", and of offering Turkey privileged EU partnership rather than full membership. Candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in turn, has worked as economics professor before and during his political career. He was labelled the architect of France's economic recovery in the late 1990s. As finance minister from 1997 till 1999, he plugged the public deficit to qualify France for the euro and saw economic growth surge and unemployment fall. Strauss-Kahn opened the way for the privatisation of France Telecom and many other state-owned enterprises, winning him plaudits in the market but suspicion in some Socialist circles. He has repeatedly described himself as a "Social Democrat" and as a candidate of the middle ground. "We should ask ourselves what the Germans want. What are the rules of decision-making? What is the role of Europe and of its states? We want great projects, of course. Europe could be allowed to struggle against modernisation, have laws for public service, a common economy that works not simply as just one currency, and we could have a minister of growth and of employment in Europe", he said during one of the pre-election debates. Even if Royal avoids a run-off ballot on Nov. 23, the Socialists still face a tough battle to unseat the right, notwithstanding the government's unpopularity. Various leftists, Greens and far-left candidates took 20 percent of the vote in 2002, ensuring Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin came third to a far-right candidate and so missed out on the run-off ballot won by Chirac. Communists have decided to back their leader Marie-George Buffet as a contender for an anti-globalisation coalition in next year's poll, which aims to build on the "No" campaign's victory in a 2005 referendum on the EU Constitution.

ITN Source | November 16, 2006

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