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France: Socialist Candidate Segolene Royal Wants to Return Confidence to France

by Markus Schlegel | April 22, 2007 at 12:02 pm

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21:50
The Socialist, second place candidate, Socialist Segolene Royal has held the latest , longest and most serious and reflected speech of the three first placed candidates.

In her speech, which bordered on a porgrammatic discourse, Royal underlined that she was not dependent on any pressure group or big business money, being an "independent woman".

She said that she was intending to keep the centres of decision and an industrial network in France, and to redress Europe in a social way to give security to those who were presently living in precareous circumstances. Alluding to Nocolas Sarkozy's plan to ratify a new European constitution without popular vote (after the first proposal of a European constitution had failed in a French referendum in 2006), Royal said that a new project would not be passed "behind the back" of French voters.

Royal said that security had to be possible without a brutalization of society, alluding to Sarkozy's handling of the riots in suburbs as French Interior Minister, and his can-do, zero tolerance policies, percieved as an uneccesary escalation and brutalization by many Frenchmen at the time.

Royal explicitky reached out to voters of candidates who will not reach the second round and said that she planned to make French Parliament a place of reflection and control of government, which can be seen as a clear charming offensive vis a vis the 18% of voters who have voted for Bayrou in the first round.

In all, Royal's speech seemed less emotional, and possibly the fact that it was held more than one hour later than Sarkozy's speech was due to the fact that a careful wording was chosen on the fly to maximize the impact on Bayrou's and other non-LePen (non extremist) voters in the second round of elections, due May 6.