Socialist Ségolène Royal will not be the first female president of France, having lost to her conserviative rival Nicolas Sarkozy. It remains to be seen whether the “violence and brutality that will be spawned in the country,” as Royal predicted in a radio interview on Friday, will be widespread and sustained.

In his victory speech at Place de la Concorde the law and order candidate also spoke of upholding the rights of women - particularly Muslim immigrants living in France - deprived of their rights under sharia law. Sarkozy is clearly throwing down a gauntlet: Multiculturalism does not trump French law and custom.

Sarkozy won 53 percent of the vote to Royal’s 47 percent. An estimated 85 percent of France’s 44.5 million registered voters cast ballots – the highest voter turnout in more than four decades. The staggering size of the vote gives him a clear mandate to pursue his social, economic and foreign policy initiatives.

In the second round of voting, Sarkozy and Royal each got 40 percent of centrist François Bayrou’s first round votes – the rest abstained; 63 percent of hard-right nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen’s vote went to Sarkozy.

The son of a Hungarian immigrant who fled communism and the grandson of a Greek Jew, Sarkozy will be France’s first president from an immigrant family. He begins his five-year term on May 16.

The Stiletto was rooting for Sarko, not only because he wants closer relations with the US, but also because he wants to keep Turkey out of the European Union: “Turkey is not meant to join the E.U., because Turkey is not a European country” (The New York Times, March 1, 2007; archived article). No new members may join the bloc without unanimous agreement.

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