FRANCE: The socialist front-runner continues to exasperate her comrades, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal is probably the only politician to have been called Maoist, Stalinist, fascist, Soviet and Jacobin all in a week.
When the socialist party held the second televised debate before its November 16th primary on Tuesday night, Ms Royal's call for "citizens' juries" to keep watch on politicians again forced her rivals for the socialist nomination to discuss her ideas rather than their own.
Since he opposed the European constitutional treaty last year, Mr Fabius has staked out the role of furthest left socialist candidate. He denounced Royal's proposal as "a kind of populism that would be extremely dangerous and would make the bed for the extreme right".
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, running a distant second to Royal in the polls, said: "I'm not one of those who thinks you can build a society on generalised suspicion", adding: "Honestly, the word 'jury' is ill-chosen."
When Ms Royal dropped her latest little bomb in a symposium at the Sorbonne on October 22th, she quoted an opinion poll by the CEVIPOF research centre which found that 60 per cent of French people believe their leaders are corrupt. There was a need for "popular surveillance", she said.
Continuous evaluation over time was "a profound demand" on the part of the French people, Ms Royal explained. "That is why I think we should clarify the way in which elected officials explain themselves, at regular intervals, with citizens' juries chosen by lottery."
Asked whether these "citizens' juries" would have the power to punish politicians, she said, "not necessarily", and repeated one of her favourite maxims: "I don't have all the answers."
Ms Royal's proposal may have been inspired by Counter-Democracy, published last month by the Collège de France professor Pierre Rosanvallon, who has in the past accused Ms Royal of "borrowing" his ideas. His latest book evokes "citizens' grading agencies to evaluate" government actions, "citizens' observer groups" and "citizens chosen by lottery to comprise a commission of inquiry". This is not the first time Ms Royal's ideas have created controversy. Her criticism of the 35-hour working week, a proposal to use the army to reform juvenile delinquents, and her call to do away with the "scholastic map" that dictates where children are educated all raised an outcry.
"Ségolène Royal watches opinion rising on a precise subject," an anonymous pollster told Libération newspaper. "She attacks the socialist line, and is attacked in turn by her own camp. Then she waits for the poll that shows she has the support of public opinion." The spokeswoman for the right-wing UMP, Valérie Pécresse, said "citizens' juries" reminded her of Mao's cultural revolution. Others on the right evoked Lenin, Pol Pot and Marshal Pétain.
The budget minister, Jean-François Copé, told deputies to debate the finance law "because if by misfortune Ségolène Royal became president, popular tribunals, not parliamentarians, would study the efficiency of ministries. They'd put heads on the end of pikes."
French bloggers argued the merits of "representative democracy" - what they have at present - versus the "participative democracy" advocated by Ms Royal. One blog foresaw the formation of "Ségolutionary tribunals".
Ms Royal's advisers were alarmed enough by the backlash to distribute seven pages of notes explaining that the presidential candidate first spoke of "citizens' jury" four years ago and that the concept has been tested in Paris, Dijon and Strasbourg as well as in Germany, Spain and Denmark.
"On the European level," the explanatory note continues, "these juries are part of a broader movement that mixes the tradition of urban social movements of the 1970s and Anglo-Saxon theories of empowerment."