Segolene Royal

Read Segolene Royal's manifesto

Read The Presidential Pact by Segolene Royal (219Kb pdf)

Jacket text for Segolene Royal

This book is the story of a tough, clever girl from a village in Lorraine who grew up in the traditional world of a French Catholic family with a proud military and bourgeois heritage. It tells how she turned away from that and became the Socialist candidate and the first woman to represent a major party in the French Presidential election.

To put Segolene's political career in context, there are two unique features that are particularly worth noting.
The first oddity of the current French political scene is that normally the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party is its leader, the Secretary-General; but in this case the leader happens to be Segolene's lifetime companion and father of her four children, Francois Hollande. The result of the adoption of Segolene as candidate is that, bizarrely, the Socialist Party is run by what is effectively a husband and wife team. The comparison with the Clintons is obvious. Francois and Segolene have leap-frogged each other up the Socialist political ladder from the day they met, and they now share the top table.

The other unusual circumstance is that the last twenty-five years has witnessed only two Presidents of France, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, yet this superficial stability conceals great instability in government. In the same twenty-five year period there have been eleven Prime Ministers.

To complicate things further the French electorate have been consulted in two important referenda during this period. Both were about Europe, and as in Britain, the European Union does not bring peace and tranquillity to domestic politics.

This is the turbulent political background to Segolene Royal's rise to the top in French politics. A background in which reputations are made and broken overnight and to which her acute political antennae and her courage are particularly well suited.

Segolene Royal is France's first key female politician. This book puts her in the context of the France she grew up in and the France in which she now operates as a politician. It covers:

- her early life
- her start in politics
- her career as a deputy and a minister
- her relationship with Francois Mitterand
- her defeat of her more famous rivals in a male orientated party for the right to be the candidate
- the beginning of the campaign

The book also includes appendices covering details of the main political institutions in France, a full bibliography and filmography and the full translated transcript of her Presidential Pact.

Chapter headings for Segolene Royal

1. Early Years
2. First steps in government
3. Elected deputy - a successful parachutist
4. Junior ministrer ecology
5. Junior minister family
6. Poitou charente
7. Presidential elections - the rout of the elephants
8. The campaign

About Robert Harneis

Robert Harneis is a bilingual journalist working for 'French News', the English language newspaper published in Perigueux. He has been writing about France and French politics since 1993, and also edits a column on the North East of France. He also broadcasts from time to time and contributes articles to websites. Robert recently translated, fully annotated and introduced 'Testimony', the bestseller by Nicolas Sarkozy (originally published in France as Temoignage). He is currently writing another book, a study of the Free French in the early part of World War II. Robert has a degree in Modern French and European History, and has had a home in France since 1968. He lives and works in Alsace with his French wife.

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