PARIS,
Women
troubles are nothing new for Francois Hollande, to the bewilderment of
those who can't quite see what it is that attracts beautiful, talented
females to France's otherwise unloved president.
From
the lecture halls of the elite Ecole National d'Administration (ENA) to
the summit of the state, affairs of the heart have played a central role
in Hollande's political journey.
The next step in that
journey comes on Tuesday afternoon, when Hollande is due to appear
before more than 500 journalists and, the world expects, explain exactly
what is going on in his private life.
With his long-term girlfriend, France's First Lady Valerie Trierweiler having taken to a hospital bed with stress following the revelation of Hollande's clandestine trysts with actress Julie Gayet, that will be no easy task.
But, according to those who know him well, it is the price Hollande has to pay for his personality.
He
does not seem to be a serial philanderer, unlike his "hot bunny"
predecessor Jacques Chirac. But it would appear that, when passion hits,
it overwhelms him to the point of clouding his judgement -- as it did
when he thought he could get away with nightime visits to Gayet in a
borrowed apartment just yards from the Elysee Palace.
"He
is the kind of man who can fall in and out of love," said Thierry
Mandon, a Socialist deputy and long-term ally of the president. "It
shows he is (as Hollande describes himself) a normal man, but if he is
to be a normal president, he has to clarify his situation very quickly."
It
was at the ENA -- a graduate college that is a kind of finishing school
for France's political elite -- that he met Segolene Royal. The bright
young things bonded over a common outlook and soon formed a political
power couple that was to endure for more than 25 years and produce four
children.
POWER COUPLE
By
the early 2000's the pair were both established as heavyweight figures
in the Socialist Party, but Hollande was to find himself eclipsed by his
more glamorous partner. She became a high-profile minister and her
greater popularity with both activists and voters enabled her to see off
Hollande and her other rivals to secure the party's nomination as its
candidate for a presidential election she was to lose to Nicolas
Sarkozy.
By then, the relationship was on the rocks,
Hollande having, according to a number of recent biographies, become
involved with Valerie Treiweiler, a feisty and attractive journalist at
Paris Match, a glossy weekly.
By 2005, accounts say,
they were a couple although, for the sake of Royal's bid for the
presidency, he maintained a pretence of happy families until after the
vote.
In 2010, Hollande told Gala magazine Trierweiler
was the "love of my life". Two years later, on the night of his election
victory over Nicolas Sarkozy, she was by his side, famously insisting
on a schmaltzy soundtrack of Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose" - a way of
declaring to the world that life could not be any better for both the
couple and the party, whose symbol is a rose.
But that
vision of domestic bliss was soon clouded by rumours of tensions at the
Elysee. Trierweiler, a voluptuous beauty once dubbed the "epitome of
Parisian chic", was accused of upstaging Hollande with the spiky heels
and thigh-flashing skirt she wore on the day they entered the Elysee.
He
publicly rebuked her over what looked like a spiteful tweet supporting a
renegade Socialist in a battle with Royal for a parliamentary seat --
an act aides blamed on Trierweiler's insecurity about Hollande's
maintenance of cordial relations with the mother of his children.
A VERY FRENCH AFFAIR
Then, early last year, the first rumours of an entanglement with Gayet began to emerge.
When
an affair was finally confirmed last week, the reaction in France
amounted to a collective shrug of shoulders and a typically Gallic, "So
what! It is nobody's business but theirs."
The rest of
the world, meanwhile, was lapping up a saga in which every little
snippet, from the national indifference to infidelity to the breakfast
croissants delivered to the new couple's love nest, has been
quintessentially French.
'Vive la France' has been the
verdict of commentators around the world, although the treatment of
Hollande, who has the worst approval ratings of any modern president,
has not been quite so kind.
Nicknamed "Flanby" (after a
kind of wobbly dessert) or "Pepere" (Granddaddy), at home, the portly
59-year-old president has had to endure much worse from foreign
observers.
British commentator Cristina Odone wrote
that she had spent the weekend giggling with friends at the spectacle of
a French president caught "with his pantalons around his chubby
ankles."
"We couldn't get over the success this podgy
and humourless Leftie enjoys with gorgeous women who should know
better," Odone added.
On Twitter, British blogger Willard Foxton was even more cutting.
SWEATY POTATO
"I
can't help but feel Segolene Royal, Valerie Trierweiler and Julie Gayet
could do better than Hollande, who looks like a sweaty potato."
Looks,
as history has repeatedly shown, are not everything in love however and
another close observer of the French political scene, journalist Anne
Elisabeth Moutet, says Hollande's success with women is no mystery.
"It is the Woody Allen method: he makes them laugh and he listens to them."
Now it is the world's turn to listen to what Hollande has to say.
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