Francois Hollande, France’s Socialist Party presidential candidate, doesn’t have the “stature of a president” Bernadette Chirac, the wife of the country’s former leader, said, according to Agence France- Presse.

“Holland is a very courteous man (…), but that doesn’t give one the stature of a president,” Chirac, whose husband, Jacques Chirac, was France’s president from 1995 to 2002, was quoted as saying.

“It requires a lot of experience to be president, it requires long political training, you need to have been a minister, you need to have many international contacts,” she said, according to AFP.

Bernadette Chirac, 78, and Hollande are both on the local council of Correze, a rural region in central France where the two of them and former President Chirac have built long political careers.

To contact the reporter on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net