French socialist candidate claims dirty tricks after third break-in

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A disturbing feeling of déjà vu settled on French politics yesterday.

Ségolène Royal is running for the presidency. Her Socialist rivals and colleagues are furious with her. And her home has been broken into, under mysterious circumstances, for the third time in four years. The defeated centre-left candidate in the 2007 presidential elections took the country – and especially her own party – by surprise earlier this week when she announced that she would run in the Socialist presidential primary next year.

Her announcement, seven months before the deadline, touched off a familiar bout of vicious in-fighting within France's main opposition party. It also coincided, within 36 hours, with a burglary in her apartment just outside Paris which resembled two other break-ins, one in 2006 just before she entered the last presidential race and one in 2008 when she was about to run for the party leadership.

Nothing of importance was stolen in any of these raids on her apartment in Boulogne-Billancourt, just south of the Paris city boundary. In 2008, Ms Royal, 57, pointed the finger of blame at what she called the "clan" surrounding President Nicolas Sarkozy.

After this week's break-in, she said that there had been an "intolerable attempt to destabilise" her at an "important moment" by menacing her two daughters, Clémence, 25, and Flora, 18. She said that their "intimate possessions" had been "spread out" on the floor as if to scare them.

No one suggests that rivals in the Parti Socialiste were involved. No political link of any kind was established after the last two break-ins.

It is far from clear why anyone close to the President would want to scare off Ms Royal. Politicians in the ruling centre-right party greeted the declaration of her candidature this week with undisguised delight. They – and many members of her own party – regard Ms Royal as an increasingly flaky figure who is unlikely to win the nomination as Socialist candidate for a second time but could painfully divide the centre-left. President Sarkozy is floundering in the opinion polls. His chances of re-election in May 2012 depend largely on a suicidal civil war next year among the would-be presidential candidates from the Socialists. To try preventing that from happening, the Parti Socialiste has organised something unprecedented in French politics: an American-style "open" primary, in November 2011, in which any registered French voter can take part.

A process intended to unite the party, and produce a clear left-wing alternative to Mr Sarkozy, has already degenerated into vicious in-fighting.

The opinion polls suggest that the runaway primary favourite – and the man most likely to beat Mr Sarkozy – is the former Socialist finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 61, now the head of the International Monetary Fund in Washington. He has refused to say whether he will run and the whole process has been delayed – fatally, according to some Socialists – to give him longer to make up his mind.

The party's leader, or first secretary, Martine Aubry, 60, said last month that she had an informal pact with Mr Strauss-Kahn and Ms Royal. Only one of them – whichever was "best placed to win" – would run in the primary.