Segomania marks Royal progress of France's favourite socialist

PARIS - Excitement over the presidential ambitions of Segolene Royal spilled over into "Segomania" yesterday when 4000 people crushed into a village in Burgundy to see her, in effect, launch a campaign to become France's first woman leader in modern times.

Three people were slightly injured when the crowds surged forward and scuffled with TV crews, as the increasingly popular Socialist politician arrived in Frangy-en-Bresse for a political festival.

Royal, 53, has now established a clear opinion poll lead in the run-up to the two-round presidential election which starts next April. She used the annual festival in Frangy - la Fete de la Rose - to make her fullest declaration so far of her possible programme.

In a 45-minute speech, the former education and health minister promised she would build a new form of socialist politics, founded on individual responsibility and state protections. She also took a swipe at the Middle East policy of President Jacques Chirac, saying France should be prepared to act, not just talk. "I make an appeal, here in Frangy, for the rallying together of all those who want change and want France to stand tall again," she said, to thunderous applause.

Royal, president of the Poitou-Charente region in western France, is accused by Socialist rivals and centre-right opponents of being a lightweight politician with insufficient foreign and economic experience to be President.

Nonetheless, the scenes yesterday in Frangy suggest that she has become the first mainstream politician in France to generate popular fervour since the successful presidential campaign of her mentor, Francois Mitterrand, 25 years ago.

In just under a year since she indicated tentatively that she might run for the presidency, Royal has become the most popular politician in France. For much of the time, she has fought neck-and-neck for that title with the probable candidate of the centre-right, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

But the latest poll suggested Royal would beat him in the second round of the presidential election next May by 55 per cent to 42 per cent.

France is hungry for a different kind of politics but also wary of change. The fact that Royal is a woman, and speaks in a language shorn of most of the usual political cliches, has let her emerge as a "new face", without seeming to threaten abrupt departure from the past.

Officially, she is not yet a candidate. Socialist party members will vote in November. In her speech in Frangy, however, Royal came her closest yet to declaring her ambitions formally. She called for the left to "reappropriate" individual responsibility as a left- wing value. But she also suggested that a new respect for work should begin with a rejection of the "precariousness" of employment, brought by new technologies and globalisation.

- INDEPENDENT