Aubry wins French Socialist battle by tiny margin

Martine Aubry, the architect of France's 35-hour work week, has won a ballot for the leadership of the opposition Socialists by the tiny margin of 42 votes, the party said in a statement early this morning.

Supporters of her arch rival Segolene Royal immediately contested the result and demanded a re-run, raising the prospect of prolonged feuding within France's main opposition party.

The Socialists said Aubry won 50.02 percent support in Friday's ballot against 49.98 percent for Royal. Valid votes were cast by only 134,784 of the party's 233,000 members.

Royal's lawyer Jean Pierre Mignard said they result was "contested and questionable", while another senior supporter, Manuel Valls, said the vote should be held again next Thursday.

Aubry's camp did not appear ready to relinquish victory.

"No one can deny the situation is complicated but no one can deny that Martine Aubry is the new first secretary of the Socialist Party," said her close adviser, Francois Lamy.

"Just because you don't like the result doesn't mean you can change the rules," he told Reuters.

The prospect of continued in-fighting and animosity in the ranks of the left ranks is likely to further strengthen the position of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has faced little opposition so far in implementing his domestic reform programme.

Senior Socialist leaders reacted with despair as the closeness of the ballot became clear.

"This is a catastrophic scenario. Neither of them has legitimacy, neither of them will be able to lead," said one leading party figure, who declined to be identified.

Neither Royal, who lost last year's presidential election to Sarkozy, nor Aubry, the daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors, made any immediate comment.

Aubry had trailed Royal badly in the first round vote on Thursday but managed to overhaul her rival after a disparate alliance of party veterans, known as the "elephants", and hard-left supporters rallied to her side.

Royal had presented herself as a force for change and promised to inject fresh blood into the party hierarchy, which has been dominated by an ageing leadership for years.

Her critics accused her of being inconsistent, overbearing and quixotic. Many on the left of the party feared she would drive the Socialists to the political centre in her efforts to dethrone Sarkozy.

Refounded by the late President Francois Mitterrand in 1971, the Socialist Party has been led for the past 11 years by Francois Hollande, Royal's estranged partner and father of her four children.

The left has not won a presidential election for almost two decades and its last national parliamentary victory was in 1997.

If the leadership vote is confirmed, Aubry faces an uphill battle to rebuild party unity after months of bitter campaigning that exposed deep internal divisions and led some political commentators to warn of a possible schism.