SEGOLENE ROYAL'S VICTORY MOVES HER CLOSER TO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 007424 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT ALSO FOR EUR/WE, DRL/IL, INR/EUC, EUR/ERA, EUR/PPD, AND EB DEPT OF COMMERCE FOR ITA DEPT OF LABOR FOR ILAB E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2016 TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON SUBJECT: SEGOLENE ROYAL'S VICTORY MOVES HER CLOSER TO PRESIDENCY Classified By: Ambassador Craig Stapleton for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Segolene Royal's overwhelming first-round victory in the November 16 Socialist Party (PS) presidential primary makes it official -- she will be the candidate of the center-left in next year's presidential election, likely in a tight race against the center-right's Nicolas Sarkozy. The win is a testament to Royal's ability to confound France's purveyors of conventional political wisdom and her own party establishment. Both regularly underestimated her and discounted her ability to go the distance. Royal's success has been her ability -- as a Blair-like socialist -- to deal with issues non-ideologically through the prism of their impact on ordinary people, with a focus on concrete, operational proposals that she is willing to jettison if they prove unworkable. ¶2. (C) SUMMARY CONT. Royal has demonstrated these same traits in the foreign affairs arena, where her recent statements in support of the democratic government in Iraq and against even a civilian nuclear program in Iran were met with condescension by elites, but seem not to have hurt her with PS voters. If she were to be elected President, we would expect criticism of U.S. "unilateralism", environmental policies, and more. But her years working in Mitterrand's Elysee also portend an openness to pragmatic cooperation with the U.S. End Summary. THE PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS -------------- ¶3. (C) On November 16, in an overwhelming vote of confidence in her ability to win, over 60 percent of PS party members endorsed Segolene Royal as their party's candidate in the 2007 presidential race. Of the 176,220 votes cast by PS party members throughout metropolitan France, Royal received 106,839, former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 36,714 former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius 32,667. Ever since Royal launched her bid for the presidency, France's purveyors of conventional political wisdom have been discounting her ability to go the distance. Royal has proved them wrong each time. The Sarkozy camp now understands it will be facing a formidable opponent, whom they would underestimate at their own peril. Throughout the race, Royal displayed the energy, conviction, charisma, and physical stamina that have made her a leading contender to be elected France's next president. A FIFTY PERCENT CHANCE OF BEING FRANCE'S -------------- NEXT PRESIDENT -------------- ¶4. (C) Royal's clear-cut victory in the first-round of the PS primary election confirms her as the unchallenged leader of the center-left in France. It sets up a showdown between her and Interior Minister Sarkozy for France's presidency in ¶2007. Analysts agree that if the dominance of the presidential field by these two major candidates holds, the second round run-off between them will be very, very close. Though the unexpected -- including major missteps by these leading candidates during their campaigns -- could still reconfigure the electoral landscape, dislodging one or the other becomes more and more difficult as the election draws nearer. FUSING HER POPULARITY (AND HER CURRENT -------------- ORGANIZATION) WITH HER PARTY -------------- ¶5. (C) Royal's primary victory gives her allies in the PS unchallenged control of the party apparatus. Party chief Francois Hollande, who is also Royal's long-time domestic partner, will be instrumental in putting the party fully in the service of Royal's campaign. The next step for Royal is "making the party headquarters my campaign headquarters." According to one of her closest allies in the party hierarchy, her campaign strategy projects two key lines of action: "continuing to be what has made her popular," while bringing to bear the party's electioneering expertise and energizing the party's dense network of elected officials throughout the country. ¶6. (C) Royal's upcoming campaign will continue to feature PARIS 00007424 002 OF 003 the personal characteristics on which her popularity is founded, while also working to improve some of her weaknesses as a candidate. She has shown a vulnerability to getting rattled during TV appearances or before hostile publics. Because she has not had top-level experience in some issue areas, particularly foreign affairs, deepening her command of these briefs will be a top priority. THE CORE OF THE "SEGOLENE PHENOMENON" -------------- ¶7. (C) PS Party spokesman and long time Royal ally Julian Dray recently enumerated to us the four personal characteristics that make Royal so popular. They are the key elements of "the Segolene story" that connects so powerfully with such a wide electorate. -- First, "She's a mom." Royal has raised four children with Hollande. That experience, according to Dray, "gives ordinary people confidence" that she might be genuinely caring towards them also -- very different from the subliminal sentiments towards ordinary people associated with members of France's aloof and inbred political class. -- Second, "She has a successful marriage." Even though Royal and Hollande have never legally married, their long-standing relationship is viewed as an exemplary "success in love" -- and people admire that, wishing for the same in their own lives. -- Third, "She's a beautiful woman." This element of novelty and of gender equality -- with a touch of feminist revanchism in an electorate that is 53 percent female thrown in -- are part and parcel of Royal's success. -- Finally, "She's highly competent." Royal has distinguished herself through her professional achievements. Her rise -- notwithstanding her family's modest means and very traditionalist social values (i.e. women become wives, not presidents) -- through France's witheringly competitive educational meritocracy, are recognized by voters as those of an extraordinary individual, worthy of consideration for France's highest office. CRITICAL OF U.S. APPROACH, YET OFTEN -------------- STILL IN SYNCH ON SUBSTANCE -------------- ¶8. (C) Royal, as is to be expected from the standard bearer of France's center-left Socialist Party, can be quite direct, even harsh in her assessments of U.S. foreign policy initiatives. As is the case nearly across the board -- left and right -- among the members of France's political class, Royal has made clear that she opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and what she saw as the high-handed U.S. dismissal of multilateral, UN-led efforts to defuse the crisis. However, in some of her more recent statements on Iraq, Royal has clearly broken with the conventional wisdom in France, particularly that of the French left. After a meeting with Iraqi president Jalal Talibabi in Paris last November 3, Royal told reporters that, despite all the problems there, Iraq "is getting back on its feet." She underlined that the Iraqi government, "not outsiders" should decide "when the time has come" for withdrawal of foreign forces from the country. Reflecting her penchant for seeing war and peace problems in terms of their effect on the lives of everyday people first (rather than in terms of balance of power among states, regional stability, etc.),Royal stressed the importance of "a swift reconstruction of that country, which was so ravaged by dictatorship, so that the Iraqi people who have suffered so so much (emphasis hers) might recover their dignity and their self-confidence, and desire to get back on the road to success." ¶9. (C) Repeatedly, in her pronouncements on international issues, Royal has insisted on the legitimacy and pre-eminence of the U.N. in acting against threats to international peace and security. Royal's statements on the conflict in Lebanon last summer, for example, reflected the view that ending the suffering of the conflict's civilian casualties (on both sides) should be the first priority, addressed by an immediate cease-fire, to be followed by UN-mediated disengagement, and the disarming of Hezbollah. In addition, she proposed that former President Clinton be considered as a special UN mediator for the conflict. A Royal advisor pointed to this proposal as illustrative of her inclination to personalize political issues. Royal's reaction to the Israel-Hezbollah confrontation -- seeing the crisis first and foremost through the prism of its impact on ordinary people, PARIS 00007424 003 OF 003 while advocating the empowerment of the UN to seek a longer-term solution -- reflect what is likely to be Royal's approach to international conflicts. In Dray's words, spoken as a close friend of Royal's for many years, "She's not interested in the theory, and approaches problems in terms of what's being proposed to solve them." If true, this would certainly represent a refreshing break from the ingrained French preference for the theoretical over the empirical. ¶10. (C) In her recent statements specifically about the U.S., Royal has not been shy about criticizing what she has repeatedly termed the "attitude" of the U.S. -- America's willingness to act outside of the consensus of the international community. Royal's America-bashing however, concerns more the form of U.S. policy than its substance. In fact, to the extent she has expressed herself on them, her views on some key issues are in fact quite close to those of the U.S. A striking example of this is the way Royal has been the most outspoken of France's major political figures about the danger posed by Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. She has spoken explicitly about the threat to Israel's existence of nuclear weapons in the hands of the current Iranian leadership, and has gone so far as to suggest that Iran's civil nuclear program, because it is a stepping-stone to a weapons program, is illegitimate in light of Iran's reneging on its non-proliferation obligations. COMMENT -------------- ¶11. (C) If elected -- and that is a big if that is still a long way down the road -- Royal appears to be someone who would approach world affairs pragmatically and would seek to maintain a close, if critical, relationship with the U.S. There may be a fresh opportunity for Washington policy makers to take her measure if, as we know her staff is considering, she goes through with plans to visit the U.S. at some point before the end of January, when the presidential campaign begins in earnest. End Comment. Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm STAPLETON