Ultimatum du camp Royal qui appelle à manifester rue de Solférino
 
Le camp de Ségolène Royal a posé lundi soir un ultimatum à la commission de récolement chargée de vérifier le vote pour l'élection du chef du PS, menaçant de saisir la justice et d'appeler à une manifestation devant Solférino si ses requêtes n'étaient pas prises en compte. Lire la suite l'article
 
Discussion: Parti socialiste
 
Dans une déclaration à l'AFP, le maire de Dijon et soutien de Ségolène Royal, François Rebsamen, a donné à cette commission jusqu'à mardi 14H00 pour répondre aux partisans de l'ex-candidate à la présidentielle.
 
M. Rebsamen a affirmé, après l'annonce de la suspension des travaux de cette commission (précisément jusqu'à mardi 14H00): "Il ne peut y avoir de passage en force sur un vote dont la sincérité est mise en cause".
 
"Nous avons la preuve que dans trois sections sur 10 à Lille, il y a eu modification des PV transmis par les sections. Nous voulons voir la liste des votants lors des motions (ndlr: le 6 novembre) et la liste des votants au premier tour -le 20 novembre", a accusé M. Rebsamen.
 
"D'autres sections lilloises ont fait l'objet des mêmes manipulations", poursuit-il. "Nous pensons que les noms des adhérents qui ont voté pour le poste de premier secrétaire à Lille ne sont pas les mêmes que ceux qui ont voté lors du vote des motions". "Nous voulons voir les chèques de ces nouveaux adhérents". "Faute de quoi, les résultats de ces sections, conformément à la circulaire édictée par le PS, doivent être annulés".
 
"Si ces travaux ne sont pas effectués par la commission, nous saisirons la justice et appellerons à une manifestation devant les grilles de Solférino", siège du PS, a menacé M. Rebsamen. "Je fais encore crédit jusqu'à demain 14H00 à la commission de récolement pour prendre en compte les remarques que nous avons faites, ainsi que sur la Guadeloupe où nous avons la preuve de modifications écrites en faveur de Martine Aubry. Faute de quoi, nous mettrons en oeuvre ce que nous avons dit", a-t-il insisté.
 
Selon M. Rebsamen, "Martine Aubry ne peut et ne pourra être considérée comme premier secrétaire si les fraudes sont avérées".
 
Selon lui, la suspension des travaux de la commission présidée par l'ex-ministre Daniel Vaillant "a pour seul but de nous amener à l'heure prévue sur un rapport prévu, qui nous mettra à égalité ou qui confortera Martine Aubry, parce que la commission se refusera à examiner les lourds contentieux, pour ne prendre en compte que des modificatins techniques qui ne posent pas de problème". "Il ne faudrait pas que la commmission de récolement se transforme en commission alibi", avertit-il.
 
La commission de 13 membres - dont des mandataires des deux rivales - a suspendu ses travaux vers 17H15 lundi, d'un commun accord, selon la direction du PS.
 
Elle doit remettre au conseil national du parti, convoqué à 18H00 mardi, un rapport sur les litiges électoraux au PS. Celui-ci doit alors trancher entre Mme Aubry et Mme Royal que séparent seulement 42 voix.

PARIS — France’s Socialist Party found itself deeply divided on Sunday and, even worse, harshly mocked. A summer of embarrassing rivalries has culminated in an excruciatingly narrow and disputed vote for a new party leader that is likely to please chiefly the country’s center-right president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
 
The Socialists are known for their intellectual disputes; part of the leadership race involved a vote on political platforms written or supported by the various candidates. But much worse for the party, it is now being ridiculed for its personal enmities and rivalries, making it seem less a serious political alternative than an afternoon soap opera.
 
Jean-Michel Normand, writing for Monday’s Le Monde, a newspaper sympathetic to the party, said bluntly: “You have to believe with the Socialist Party that the worst is always to come.” After a summer marked by open feuding by several candidates for party leader, he wrote, the party “could not imagine a more execrable ending — an unfinished election, followed by accusations of fraud.”
 
The weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche wondered whether the “s” in the party’s acronym stood for “suicidal” rather than “Socialist,” and the front-page headline shouted: “So Much Hatred!” The paper suggested the party could split, while the front page of Le Parisien showed the party’s rose symbol cut in two, with the headline: “The Rift.”
 
The outcome may prove crucial for a party that has lost the past three presidential elections and came close to splitting in 2005. The Socialists, who last held the presidency under François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1995, had a majority in Parliament as recently as 2002 and remain powerful locally in parts of the countryside and some cities.
 
But its presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, lost to Mr. Sarkozy last year, as her early image of glamorous modernity gave way to widespread disappointment in her lackluster campaign.
 
Ms. Royal, 55, did not go away. She split with her longtime partner, François Hollande, the party leader, found a new male companion and surprised the party and the pundits when the platform she supported won the most votes.
 
In the party members’ vote for a successor to Mr. Hollande, Ms. Royal won the most votes in the first round. But she narrowly lost the runoff to Martine Aubry, 58, the mayor of Lille and a more doctrinaire party figure, who was responsible, as labor minister a decade ago, for pushing through the 35-hour workweek. In results made public early Saturday, Ms. Aubry won by 42 votes of 134,784 cast; more than 40 percent of the party’s 233,000 members appeared to show their displeasure by declining to vote at all.
 
As recounts in some party chapters were taking place on Sunday, Ms. Royal called for another ballot, claiming fraud and irregularities and stating, “I’m not going to take this.” She threatened legal action, and on Monday her lawyer, Jean-Pierre Mignard, was to ask Mr. Hollande, the father of Ms. Royal’s four children, to annul the vote. He must rule on the request by midweek, when the party’s executive committee is scheduled to meet to certify the results.
 
Ms. Royal’s victory in the policy platform vote two weeks ago gives her greater say on the executive committee, which could herald more infighting.

Ms. Aubry, the daughter of a former leader of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, campaigned for the party to be “anchored on the left” and stop trying to move to the center in alliance with the Democratic Movement party of François Bayrou. Ms. Aubry, who is supported by powerful party old-timers known as “the elephants,” ruled out a new ballot, saying there was “no reason” to vote again, and her supporters said they suspected fraud in chapters favoring Ms. Royal.
 
In her victory statement Saturday night, Ms. Aubry said, “Everyone knows our party is not in good health.”
 
Meanwhile, Mr. Sarkozy is improving his popularity through proposals to deal with the financial crisis, using some of the anticapitalist language of the left. And the Socialists are being attacked on the left by a telegenic Trotskyite, Olivier Besancenot, 34, who is forming what is called the New Anticapitalist Party and has higher favorability ratings than Ms. Aubry or Ms. Royal.
 
“If we are not able to get our act together,” Ms. Aubry said this month, “it is perhaps the end of the Socialist Party.” On Sunday, she appealed to Ms. Royal and her supporters to “act responsibly or else our party’s situation will only get worse.”
 
Dominique Paillé, spokesman for Mr. Sarkozy’s party, said simply, “I salute the Socialists’ talent for self-destruction.”