Martine Aubry is named head of French Socialist Party (Roundup)

Nov 25, 2008, 18:44 GMT

Paris - Lille Mayor Martine Aubry was on Tuesday officially named the new head of the French Socialist Party after a bitter election that badly split the party.

The party's national council officially named the 58-year-old Aubry the first-ever female party head after a party commission investigating claims of election irregularities had determined that she won Friday's election over former presidential candidate Segolene Royal by 102 votes out of nearly 135,000 cast.

Originally Aubry had been credited with a winning margin of only 42 votes, or 0.04 per cent. The closeness of the contest and reports of irregularities in several voting districts, including in Lille, had moved Royal supporters to charge that the election had been stolen.

The daughter of former EU Commission president Jacques Delors, Aubry was the candidate of the Socialist old guard, such as former French prime ministers Lionel Jospin and Laurent Fabius.

Royal had campaigned on a pledge to renovate the Socialist Party and was supported by many new-generation politicians who saw themselves as European social democrats in the cast of the British Labour Party or the German Social Democrats.

It was unclear what Royal's reaction to the setback would be. After the result of the official recount was announced, some of her supporters continued to demand another round of voting.

Earlier on Tuesday, the online edition of the daily Le Monde reported that representatives of Royal on the vote-count commission had demanded that Friday's election be annulled because of the numerous irregularities.

'The way the election was carried out provoked a deep indignation considering the number of irregularities certified and the small number of votes separating the two candidates,' they wrote in a letter to the commission.

Some aides to Royal have said they would go to court if Aubry's election is made official.

The setback will probably put an end to Royal's ambition to face off against President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election. Sarkozy beat her by a substantial margin in the 2007 vote.

However, the bitter dispute has caused such bad blood within the party, and caused it to lose so much credibility, that Sarkozy may have little trouble defeating any Socialist candidate, if he chooses to stand again in 2012.