Just An 'Average Brunette' from the Banlieue

[ensho]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,687950,00.html#ref=nlint


France's Rising Political Star


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Cecile Duflot, the head of France's Green Party, has become a rising star in Paris power politics. Following her party's success in the European Parliament and last month's regional elections, Duflot could become the kingmaker in France's next presidential election -- a campaign in which a trio of women might unseat Nicolas Sarkozy.

"We have been lucky to have won twice," a beaming Cécile Duflot begins. "First in the European elections last June and now in the regional elections." She still has the figures at hand: "2.7 million French people voted for us," and landed "265 delegates in 22 parliaments." But then the microphone fails.

"Some things never change," the young woman on the stage says, laughing, joking about the organizational chaos one usually expects from the Green Party. But then, to confirm the movement's unity, she adds: "We are together and we will stay together." The 200 delegates in the Paris hall belonging to the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), a major umbrella group of trade unions in the country, cheer loudly.

She's sharp as a knife, she's quick on the uptake and, on top of that, she's the graduate of a well-respected business school in Paris with the face of a Madonna. Duflot has all the qualities for a career in politics. Nonetheless, even when she was elected chairperson of Europe Ecologie, the French Green Party, three years ago, nobody really trusted her to do the job. "Young, photogenic, likeable -- but totally unknown," the French leftist newspaper Libération wrote.

Greens Could Be Kingmakers of French Politics

But recently -- and particularly since the French regional elections that delivered President Nicolas Sarkozy a bitter defeat over three weeks ago -- Duflot has become a political star. Under her leadership, Europe Ecologie garnered 12.5 percent of the vote. With this result, the Greens finally became the third-most powerful political party in France, after the Socialists -- no small feat in a nation where the handing out of Michelin stars to high-class restaurants often gets more attention than environmental policy.

With this, the Greens have also become the kingmakers. The fact that Duflot held a press conference together with her colleagues, Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry and Communist head Marie-George Buffet, in the Café de L'Industrie in Paris' chic Bastille district was symbolic. This trio of women at the head of the Green, Socialist and Communist parties could end Sarkozy's rule.

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A 'Small Totally Average Brunette from the Banlieue'

More than one-third of all French find Duflot, a 34-year-old mother of four, likeable.
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wishing them well