Socialists Investigate Voting Allegations After S?gol?ne Royal's Narrow Defeat

Alleged voting irregularities during an election for leadership of the French Socialists are to be investigated by a special commission set up by the party.Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille, who is seen as the standard bearer of the left, was declared the winner by 42 votes, edging out the former presidential candidate S?gol?ne Royal.The row has exposed deep splits within the party and led political opponents to predict that it could implode.

The razor-thin majority has been challenged by Royal and her camp, who maintain that Aubry's supporters interfered with voting in dozens of districts. They are demanding a new vote.Aubry's supporters claim they have identified abnormalities that if addressed would give her a wider margin of victory. The Lille mayor, a former labor minister, was the architect of France's controversial 35-hour work week.The commission will pass on its conclusions to the party's national council, a sort of internal party parliament. The council is expected to declare a winner tomorrow."In the vast majority of federations, if not virtually all of them, the vote took place in an indisputable way," a commission member, Bruno Le Roux, said after the panel adjourned late yesterday.Royal, who is the head of the regional government in Poitou-Charentes,western France, repeated her demand for a new vote among the rank and file."I hope something good will come out of this crisis, that the socialist party will take the high road out," she said, adding that the contest had meant "some trying moments" for her.

Royal, who was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election, leads the Socialists' reformist wing and is pushing for modernization accompanied by a move towards the center.The infighting has opened the weakened party to public ridicule. "We are witnessing the implosion of the [party]," said Frederic Lefebvre,a spokesman for Sarkozy's conservative Union for a Popular Movement.The conflict underlines the challenge the winner will face in regrouping a party that was once powerful but has lost the last three presidential elections and struggled to challenge Sarkozy.