Image: Zugaldia
From the hint of historic power to the brink of parliamentary doom. That is the fate of Ségolène Royal, once favourite to win the 2007 presidential elections in France but later soundly beaten by Nicolas Sarkozy. And now, in bizarre circumstances, another crushing defeat looms for the woman who shared the life of François Hollande for 30 years and is the mother of his four children.
Unless there is a remarkable turnaround in voting intentions as declared in a poll* published last night, Ms Royal will lose her straight fight on Sunday with Olivier Falorni, a rebel socialist in her Charente-Maritime constituency.
This is not one of the 34 so-called triangulaires, three-way run-offs which occur when even the third-placed candidate wins a first-round vote of 12.5 per cent of the electorate. But the entry into the Royal-Falorni duel of Valérie Trierweiler, the Mr Hollande's strong-willed lover, amid suggestions - flatly denied - of jealousy at play - makes it a triangulaire of momentous and somehow very French proportions ...
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