Hollande takes on tough challenge

When François Hollande strode out in front of Socialist party headquarters in Paris on Sunday night to enjoy the cheers of his supporters, it was the culmination of a long career at the heart of French politics that until now was never quite in the limelight.

That has now changed utterly for a man who has never sat in a government minister’s seat. His success in the opposition’s primary campaign thrusts on to his hitherto modest shoulders the task of defeating Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential election and ending what will be 17 years of Socialist absence from the Elysée palace.

Mr Hollande has spent the last year carefully plotting his way to Sunday’s victory, keeping an eye on the ultimate contest next April and May, not just on his immediate rivals for the Socialist candidature, whom he eventually beat with some room to spare. In the second and final round, he defeated Martine Aubry, daughter of former European Commission president Jacques Delors, by a margin of 56.6 to 43.4 per cent.

A natural inhabitant of the centre left, Mr Hollande held to a line on the need for tough action to combat France’s high debt levels that was not much different from that of Mr Sarkozy’s centre-right government. He promised to hire 60,000 new teachers and is committed to party pledges to increase youth employment, but there were few serious hostages to fortune in his policy stance.

There was also a significant image overhaul: new frameless glasses, immaculate grooming and a tough exercise regime that saw him shed several kilos. The habitual cracks from a man sometimes known as “the little joker” became fewer.

The more serious demeanour was a very deliberate attempt to acquire a presidential aura, playing on the unpopularity suggested by opinion polls of Mr Sarkozy’s combative, hyperactive style. Mr Hollande speaks gravely of restoring a “normal presidency” and “regenerating the dream of France”.

Liberation, the leftist newspaper, described this transformation as Le Hollande 2.0.

“He’s trying to be the exact opposite of Sarkozy – a statesman, sober, low profile, a man who gathers everyone around him,” said one supporter of the president’s UMP party.

The question is whether this will be enough to carry him to victory next year.

The UMP, frustrated by the huge amounts of media attention garnered by the Socialists through their unprecedented open primary contest, lost no time in going on the offensive. The Elysée believes Mr Hollande lacks substance and does not evince much enthusiasm among the public at large.

Jean-François Copé, UMP secretary-general, on Monday called Mr Hollande “the world champion of ambiguity on all the great subjects”. He attacked Socialist proposals to reverse some of Mr Sarkozy’s pension reforms, allowing some people to retire at 60 instead of 62 as enacted by the government, and for favouring tax increases instead of spending cuts to bring down the budget deficit.

But Mr Hollande’s “ambiguity” may be a problem for Mr Sarkozy. His deliberate avoidance of big policy commitments means he is hard to portray as a traditional tax-and-spend socialist.

Mr Hollande has a big challenge in front of him nonetheless, as he acknowledged on Sunday night.

He only became favourite to win the primaries after the implosion of the mooted candidacy of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, undone by his encounter with a New York hotel chamber maid in May.

Mr Hollande’s political record is modest, at best. He is a member of the National Assembly and a local council leader from Corrèze in south central France. He was first secretary of the Socialist party for 11 years up to 2008 – a period which saw it lose two presidential elections, including a disastrous defeat by the far-right National Front in the first round in 2002. Mr Hollande was a prominent campaigner on the losing Yes side in the 2005 referendum on a European constitution.

Commentators, however, credit him with a tenacity that has seen him survive such setbacks – including losing out to his erstwhile partner Ségolène Royal for the socialist presidential candidacy in 2007. Serge Raffy, in a recent biography called François Hollande, a secret itinerary, writes: “His whole career should warn us: he is a reed of steel.”

The writer Denis Tillinac, a political opponent, blogged on the liberal website Atlantico.fr: “He is talented, cunning, devilishly opportunistic. Sarko was wrong to underestimate him on the basis of (early) opinion polls.”