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PARIS — The architect of France’s 35-hour workweek won a combative race to lead the French Socialist Party by a razor-thin margin, prompting President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives to gloat that the leading opposition party is far from united.
Lille Mayor and former Labor Minister Martine Aubry defeated the Socialists’ 2007 presidential nominee, Segolene Royal, by 42 votes in a runoff in which nearly 135,000 party members cast ballots, the party said.
The vote shows the Socialists have failed to unify after their acrimonious divisions leading to Royal’s presidential-race loss to Sarkozy.
“We’ll have all lost if we aren’t able to unify — very quickly,” Aubry said.
