Paris - The political future of former French presidential candidate Segolene Royal will be on the line later Thursday when the Socialist Party elects a new leader. In campaigning to replace her former partner, Francois Hollande, as party head, the 55-year-old Royal has presented herself as an agent of renewal and placed herself squarely against the old guard, such as former prime minister Laurence Fabius and Dominique Strauss- Kahn, the current head of the International Monetary Fund.
Royal was defeated in the 2007 presidential election by Nicolas Sarkozy, and wants an alliance with the centrist Modem party to unseat him in 2012.
She is opposed by the mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, who is supported by the party "elephants," and the relatively untested Euro-deputy Benoit Hamon, 41.
Both Aubry and Hamon have rejected talk of a centrist alliance, although Aubry forged a deal with the Modem to win election as Lille mayor.
Some 233,000 dues-paying party are elegible to vote in the election, which ends late Thursday night. If no one receives more than 50 per cent of the vote, a run-off will be held on Friday.
