It is fragmented between various contenders

It is the political issue of re-entry. Question posed all staffs on bottom of exacerbation of partisan passions: the Sarkozy-Royal couple, who well out today in leading in the polls, will be that which will be on the starting line, when the official presidential campaign will start next February A glance in the rearview mirror incites caution. If one relied on surveys, Gaston Defferre would have faced the General de Gaulle in 1965, Michel Rocard would have been the challenger of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1981, Michel Rocard (again) have played the position Jacques Chirac in 1988, while the year 1995 would have been dominated by the match Delors-Balladur.

The mere enumeration of this list shows that, if uncertainty sometimes focuses on the right few observers relied on the ability of Jacques Chirac to stand against Edouard Balladur and to win the 1995 presidential match, it is, more often, the left: that same year, Jospin had created the surprise by beating Emmanuelli, who wanted to become a candidateWhile Delors had to declare package. On the eve of nearly all presidential deadlines, the Socialist Party is thus subject to tensions or dramatic reversals, as if there was for him an almost structural difficulty to coincide the candidate supported by outside and desired by the party. In this regard, the most striking example remains the Rocard-Mitterrand duel, prior to the 1981 presidential election: the first was very popular while the second was suffering from fatigue and wear: twice already François Mitterrand had been a candidate and he had been beaten twice. Rumours were also on his State of health. Worn by the polls, Rocard had announced his candidacy in October 1980, to discourage Mitterrand, who had expected November to declare itself, requiring the same time his rival to withdraw.

May Ségolène Royal suffer the same fate as Michel Rocard Obviously Socialist elephants bet, who jostled by the magnitude of a media phenomenon that they had not seen coming, organize resistance with all the more to force that they have very little time for the tide: the beginning of the Socialist primary is expected in a month and November 16, everything will be settled by a vote of the activists. For Lionel Jospin, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jack Lang and Laurent Fabius, there was over a second to lose.

In their counter-offensive, the most experienced are Laurent Fabius and Lionel Jospin. They have to have been first Secretary of the party and to know the springs of the organization. The first plays the card of the ideological confrontation and attempts to resurrect the Mitterrand-Rocard debate as it arose in the 1980s: the rally left against the centrist temptation; the State voluntarism (strong increase of the SMIC, EDF 100 public, State intervention to impose quotas for social housing to the common recalcitrant...) rather than bargaining, the much more random results. The recent dispute that it was opposed to Ségolène Royal upgrading low wages aims to highlight the difference between the first and the second left, who at the time, had been fatal to Michel Rocard.

Lionel Jospin played on another registry that, today, is perhaps more sensitive among activists: he defended the legitimacy of the Party of the opinion, representative democracy and not direct democracy is not not assimilate to populism, or even a lack of ideas: "the pipe does not give the content, the technique does not replace the policy."launched Saturday for Ségolène Royal, who built all his political approach on citizen participation. Its high time, while he was Prime Minister Rocard had suffered the same type of trial: hitting front party, he dared to say in a famous speech (played-lès-Tours, 1990) that today ' hui "our democracy became more and more, a system in which the people are and does anyone that he care to express". His opponents, i.e. the mitterrandiens, had interpreted his remarks as a desire of paste no matter what the opinion and therefore as a cessation to all voluntarism. Some time later, Mitterrand had requested it to leave Matignon alleging him to be too permeable to polls insensitively.

But Ségolène Royal is not Michel Rocard. It is of the same ilk as François Mitterrand. Tenacious, with a line which stick to its it not guns not. Certainly, the favourite in the polls presented the undeniable weaknesses party: it gives the impression of flee the confrontation with his comrades, which is never good, especially in primary period. It is much less affluent than they in the field of ideological games. Its economic and social power is much less well established than they. But 2007 will not necessarily be the repetition of 1981, because the party everything has changed: the legitimacy is more embodied in a single character as in the time of François Mitterrand, who had created the party. It is fragmented between various contenders. It is well the problem of François Hollande, who, as first Secretary should have been the natural candidate for the Socialist Party. It is for the time being relegated to the role of referee of a game in which his companion is involved. On dream more comfortable situation and, if it still hopes to be a remedy, it will be that by default, to avoid the collapse of the Socialist family.

Another notable difference: the ideological games are much less pronounced than twenty-five years ago. Two years before the presidential election of 1981, there was the Metz Congress, marked by intense debate at the end of which Rocard and Mauroy had been relegated to the minority of the party. A year and a half before the presidential election of 2007, there was a Congress of le Mans where all elephants have seen fit to be found in the synthesis. Difficult after that to go dig up the axe of war. And then today truly control the PS The recent influx of new members, in full "ségomania" ( announced 85,000, 70 of the population) may give a decisive candidate advantage, if it not here not there plunging in the polls. Finally and above all there was on 21 April 2002, the massive stall the shock of the popular electorate, the crisis of representation policy that, given the current strength of the national Front, still gaping rest and threatens the two major parties. In 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy has attempted to pick up the pieces between the bottom and the top speaking a single language, in rejecting the major ideological confrontations, rewarding action. Ségolène Royal has undertaken the same approach by ploughing the field in his region with for single creed "policy by the evidence". It may exasperate his comrades, who find its simplistic language, it meets a background pattern. The Royal phenomenon fed the Sarkozy phenomenon. Another way of doing politics emerged, significantly complicating the task of all those who, in PS, went across the road of Ségolène Royal. The defence of the heritage.