Jospin withdraws from election race

FORMER French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin yesterday said he would not seek to become the Socialist Party’s candidate for presidential elections next year.

Mr Jospin’s withdrawal from the already acrimonious race made it only more likely that Segolene Royal will represent the Socialists at the elections next spring.

A darling of opinion polls, Ms Royal could wrap up the nomination as soon as November 16, when Socialists vote to choose their candidate. Should that first round produce no clear winner, a second round is planned for November 23.

Ms Royal is heading voter opinion polls to lead the Socialist party into next year’s race, but it is up to the party’s some 200,000 members to elect their candidate in November and some of the party’s old guard might seek to block her candidacy.

Mr Jospin, aged 69, stirred up his party when he made a tearful comeback this summer after four years of political retirement, indicating he could run for the party’s presidential candidacy.

“I can confirm, it’s ‘No’,” Mr Jospin told RTL radio, saying he had not been able to rally the party behind him.

“I don’t regret it. I have taken the wisest decision,” the former economics professor said. “I have always said that, having been a solution for the Socialist party (in the past), I will not become a problem.”

Mr Jospin had retired from political life following a humiliating defeat in the 2002 presidential election, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen forced him out of the run-off against conservative Jacques Chirac.

Mr Jospin avoided openly attacking Royal in past weeks, but he signalled he did not agree with her questioning of the 35-hour work week and her tough proposals on law-and-order, implying she had moved too far from the traditional Socialist agenda.