“I have asked Francois Hollande to leave our home, to pursue his love interest”
They show themselves to more like Hillary and Her Hino every day.
More dirt on the French sham marriage from The Toqueville Connection
FRANCE’S ROYAL SPLITS FROM PARTNER
- Defeated French Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal said on Sunday she has split from her partner, party leader Francois Hollande, after accusing him in a new book of having an affair.
“I have asked Francois Hollande to leave our home, to pursue his love interest which is now laid out in books and newspapers and I wish him happiness,” Royal said in an interview for the book to be published Wednesday.
Speculation about the couple has been rife for months.
In the book, Royal did not name the other woman in
Hollande’s life but said she and the Socialist leader “remain on good terms. We talk to each other. There is mutual respect.”
She asked that Hollande no longer be described as her “partner” because, she said: “That is no longer the case.”
Excerpts were released as Socialists welcomed in a better-than-expected performance in France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, although President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing camp won a comfortable majority.
Speaking on French radio late Sunday, Royal confirmed that she and Hollande had decided to end their relationship.
“For some time, guesses and rumours had been circulating about me and Francois Hollande. I think there comes a point when you have to clarify things and say quite simply we have decided not to be together anymore,” she said.
“Like all couples, we have had our share of problems. I decided to put these problems on hold during the presidential and the legislative campaigns,” Royal said. “It was also necessary in order for me to protect my children.”
“Today we are moving on to a new stage. It is important to say things as they are, and to have everything out in the open.”
Royal announced her plans in a book by AFP journalists Christine Courcol and Thierry Masure, “Behind the Scenes of Defeat” (”Les Coulisses d’une Defaite”), which is to be published Wednesday.
Royal, 53, and Hollande, 52, had been together for more than 25 years and have four children: Thomas, Clemence, Julien and Flora, aged between 22 and 14.
Hollande’s role in Royal’s failed presidential campaign has been criticised and he has said he will stand down as the Socialist Party’s first secretary. Royal confirmed in the book that she is a candidate to take over.
While she remains the Socialists’ most popular politician, Royal is contested by senior figures in the party who blame her for losing the presidential race to Nicolas Sarkozy.
Royal and Hollande met in 1978 while studying at the elite Ecole National d’Administration (ENA) in Paris and said they were attracted by their shared leftist ideals.
They were leaders of the generation of left-wingers groomed in the 1980s and early 1990s under Socialist president Francois Mitterrand.
Royal held minor cabinet posts in the 1990s but became a national figure in 2005 when she declared she would run for the presidency.
There were recurring rumours about the Royal-Hollande couple during the campaign for the presidency but Royal, in a book released at the end of March, denied any breakup, saying that they still lived together.
Royal even suggested in the earlier book that the pair had discussed plans for a “romantic” wedding in Tahiti.
But another book released last month claimed that her relationship with Hollande was in crisis, prompting Royal and Hollande to lodge a suit in court for 150,000 euros (200,000 dollars) in damages.
Former prime minister Laurent Fabius, who had been Royal’s rival for the presidential nomination, said the breakup was a “private decision” that did not concern the party.
Socialist senator Jean-Luc Melenchon added: “We sympathize because there is no such thing as a happy divorce.”
France is seeing a new openness in the private lives of its politicians.
She should have looked for a man who was willing to marry her. She really has no grounds for complaint.