France's Socialist Party presidential hopeful Segolene Royal, jokes with supporters after the party's primary for the next French presidential election in Melle, France, on November 16. France's Socialist party has picked Royal as its candidate for the 2007 presidential election, where she will bid to become France's first woman head of state, party spokesman Stephane Le Foll said on Thursday. -REUTERS

PARIS (Reuters):

Segolene Royal pledged a new style of leadership yesterday after her sweeping victory in the Socialist presidential primary took her a step closer to becoming the country's first woman president.

Royal, 53, was overwhelmingly endorsed as party candidate, winning over 60 per cent of the vote in a poll of party members after an often rancorous internal campaign in which her emphasis on values and symbolism over concrete policy paid off.

"The world has changed. France has moved, so politics must change," she said in a speech in Melle in the western Poitou-Charentes region, where she is regional president.

"I do not only want to embody this profound change but to build it with you," she said.

Despite a long career in politics, Royal has managed to present herself as a fresh face willing to listen to the concerns of ordinary people, enraging opponents who say she lacks convictions but winning over voters tired of the unchanging ways of the French political elite.

"The French are ready for reform, but they're not going to consent to decisions imposed on them without their involvement," a smiling Royal told supporters on Friday.

The scale of her win over former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius confounded leftist critics who had portrayed her as a lightweight populist ready to throw the party's convictions out the window.

It also set her up for the upcoming fight expected with the right's likely candidate, hardline Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, and will speed the start of the 2007 campaign proper.

An Ipsos opinion poll published in the weekly Le Point on Thursday predicted a 50-50 draw in a run-off between Royal and Sarkozy, leader of the ruling rightist party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

Before confronting Sarkozy, however, she will need to rebuild a splintered left deeply scarred by the 2002 presidential election, when Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was knocked out by far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.