Relieved French Socialists celebrate Royal success

Paris, Apr 23: Waving red roses and French flags, Socialists hailed Segolene Royal's election success as a triumph that buried the ghost of the party's humiliating defeat in the last presidential poll.

Cheering supporters said Royal's score finally overcame the Socialist party's traumatic defeat in 2002, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen came second and eliminated the mainstream leftist candidate in the first round of voting.

''We've buried 2002. We're back!'' shouted librarian Gerard Desprez, 58, watching the first poll estimates on a giant screen outside the Socialist party's headquarters in Paris yesterday.

With almost all ballots counted, Royal came second on 25.8 percent with right-wing leader Nicolas Sarkozy first on 31.10.

She was comfortably ahead of centrist Francois Bayrou, who at one stage in the campaign had threatened to overtake her.

Sarkozy and Royal will meet in a run-off vote on May 6.

''I need you,'' a smiling Royal told several hundred cheering supporters, who had waited for her in the street near the National Assembly until late into the balmy spring night.

''The battle that leads us to victory starts this evening.

Today, I no longer just belong to the Socialist supporters, but I must go beyond that to get the entire left together, the environmentalists and even go beyond that,'' she said.

Shouting ''Segolene President'', student Alexandre Goutagny, 22, said he was relieved by the poll result.

''Now we must all fight together against Sarkozy. He's playing with people's fear. But Segolene will make it!'' he said, as dozens of supporters held roses up into the Paris night sky.

The pictures of leftist voters hugging and cheering were a sharp contrast to the atmosphere in 2002, when crying Socialists consoled each other and some sat on the streets in speechless disbelief after Socialist Lionel Jospin's first-round defeat.

Royal, 53, has had a spectacular rise over the past three years, moving from being a little-known lawmaker to become the first woman with a serious chance of becoming French president.

After 2002, Royal had promised voters a new type of Socialist leader, distancing herself from many of the veterans known as elephants who led the party previously.

She also proved controversial by breaking with some old Socialist policies and promoting conservative social values, but some more radical leftists backed her anyway to avoid the left-wing vote being fragmented as happened in 2002.

''It was a pragmatic decision,'' engineer Antoine Veyrat, 25, said of his vote for Royal, adding he had not voted for the small Greens party as he did in 2002 because he wanted to make sure a leftist candidate would be present in the second round.

Socialist supporter Virginie Battu, 22, said Bayrou had reached a good score by leading an anti-Sarkozy campaign.

''His voters must turn towards Segolene Royal,'' she said.

Socialist party leader Francois Hollande, who is the father of Royal's four children, said all French who had voted for Bayrou were welcome to rally behind Royal, but indicated there would be no negotiations with the centrist.

Reuters