Hollande led the Socialist Party
for 11 years and was leader when his partner Segolene Royale ran unsuccessfully
for president against Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. He emerged as the candidate after
the downfall last May of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was then considered the
Socialist favorite to defeat President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Strauss-Kahn was arrested after a
New York hotel maid alleged that he tried to rape her. Charges against the
former IMF chief were later dropped in the U.S. but he has been warned
he could be investigated in France
over accusations he participated in a prostitution ring.
One commentator said Hollande was
maneuvering himself even before the scandal broke. "He's been preparing this
campaign for 18 months now, much before DSK's demise," journalist Agnes Poirier
told CNN.
"Some say that he knew, like
actually many others in the party, that DSK was doomed: his colorful private
life was always bound to prevent his running for president.
Messages to French election
candidates
"In that respect, he's not a
candidate by default," Poirier added. "He's simply a less charismatic
personality than DSK, and less antagonistic than Sarkozy. It doesn't make him
weaker though. If he wins, it'll be down to political skill, luck and the fact
that Sarkozy is massively rejected by the French."
Born in 1954 in the northern city
of Rouen, Hollande was the son of a doctor and a social worker. He was educated
at the elite Ecole National d'Administration (ENA), where in 1978 he met Royal,
and the couple started a three-decades relationship. They had four children
together without marrying, before splitting a month after the 2007 election.
Hollande has represented the
southern Correze region in parliament since 1988 but many question if he has the
right stuff. The main obstacle to his election, analysts believe, is that
despite being a Socialist Party insider Hollande has never formally held any
national elective office.
The 57-year-old's electoral
appeal is built around his affability, but the candidate continues to be dogged
by questions from even within his own party about whether he has the charisma
and decisiveness to be president.
Hollande himself said: "There's
always a risk when the candidate becomes president: will he deliver what is
expected of him?
"It's a choice, it's always an
important moment for a country because it has to choose between two risks:
either you keep the candidate who is on his way out or take the new candidate
that we don't know. It's a gamble."
But after five years of
Sarkozy's hyperactive premiership, during which time France's economic status
has taken a knock, polls suggest voters are keen for a change from the
president's flamboyancy. The bland Hollande was the early frontrunner in the
campaign and opinion polls suggest he will beat the president by about 6% in the
second round.
Before the first round, former
president Jacques Chirac added his support to Hollande. Chirac's biographer Jean
Luc Barre told French TV channel BFM TV: "He said last June that he will vote
for Francois Hollande ... he has said it a few times since and then again 10
days ago."
Hollande is wary of complacency,
saying half of those who declare they will vote for him will do so only because
they are voting against Sarkozy.
"What the French want is
coherence, stability and justice," Hollande said. "If I am in a favorable
position today it's because my fellow citizens want to make the effort to
straighten out the country, and at the same time they want it to be just and
equitable, no one left out of national solidarity and no one left out of the
contributions which must be made."
To his critics that sounds as if
Hollande wants to revive left-wing tax and social policies of the past, a view
reinforced in the first speech of his campaign when he attacked the financial
community.
"I don't want to drive the
markets crazy, I don't want to create trouble but rather order and rules and
norms. We have to struggle against financial excesses ... those who speculate
with sovereign debt, those who develop financial products which have done so
much harm."
Given the constraints of
international finance and economic structures, observers say that if Hollande is
elected president he will not really have the room to maneuver to radically
shift France to the left the way his Socialist predecessor Francois Mitterrand
did three decades ago. What's more, they believe many voters may be making their
choice for president this election based not on substance but on style.
And who can blame them, as
Hollande has been criticized for declining to spell exactly what his policies
will be on the economy, although he has pledged to increase taxes on the rich,
boost social spending and create thousands of state jobs. He has also vowed to
renegotiate the eurozone fiscal agreement, but analysts say Hollande will likely
be a pragmatic leader.
The word one hears most often to
describe Francois Hollande's style is "sympa" French slang for sympathetic, and
his style could well transform his lead in the polls to a victory on May 6
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