I can offer for your consideration some examples from familiar to me Indian political life. In India it's very difficult to remove any acting politician from his (her) post. Some politicians behave like old fashioned feudal lords (thank God not like warlords) thinking of their constituences as a pocket borough.
Why? Because in India most politicians deeply rooted in life of communities they represent and the role of MSM is marginal effecting only swinging urban votes. The Indian electorate usually follows its leaders in their highs and lows, corruption allegations or even imprisonment, hostile press do not make the weather.
For example Mayavati, firebrand leader of Dalits (former Untouchables) in biggest state Uttar Pradesh became chief minister of UP three times since 1995. She uniformly receives bad press, for her poor taste (her dress sometimes looks like Christmas tree), juridicial problems (Taj Corridor case is still pending) and especially for her anti Manuwadi (high caste) rhetorics. Yet she has been very popular with her electorate, people greet her as a goddess.
Chandrababu Naidu, former chief minister of southern state Andhra Pradesh, on the contrary, was a darling of Indian and international media. They loved him for his good look, hitech ideas turning Hyderabad into Cyberabad yet he forgot poor farmers, thousands of them committed suicide as they could not cope with mountain of debts. His rival from Congress party Rajashekhara Reddy capitilized on their grievances and thrashed Naidu's Telugu Desam party in 2004 elections but he had to undertake numerous yatras (a sort of participative democracy meetings) during Naidu's rule. He embarked on yatras not on the eve of election but in 2001 - three years earlier.
What does it mean in Ms Segolene case? Probably nothing, as I understand the electoral process in France reached its final stage. But in future European politicians and activists can take some leafs from their Indian peers books.
