Cablegate: Election 2007 Timeline

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DE RUEHFR #6781/01 2861440
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 131440Z OCT 06
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2186
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHMRE/AMCONSUL MARSEILLE 1358
RUEHSR/AMCONSUL STRASBOURG 0201
RUEHC/DEPARTMENT OF LABOR WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
RUEATRS/DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY WASHDC

UNCLAS PARIS 006781

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SENSITIVE
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DEPT OF COMMERCE FOR ITA
DEPT OF LABOR FOR ILAB

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON
SUBJECT: ELECTION 2007 TIMELINE

1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The first round of France's next
presidential election will take place on Sunday, April 22,
2007. Between now and then, the nomination of their
candidates by the two major parties, the composition of the
(long) list of participants in the first round of the
election, and the response of prospective voters' to the
principal candidates' campaign pitches will be at the center
of attention. This cable provides a timeline with expected
events to watch for during the next seven months.

-- In October and November, the main focus will be on the
center-left Socialist Party's (PS) primary election to select
its presidential nominee. Poitou-Charentes Region President
Segolene Royal is favored to win, and any other result would
be a major upset. At the end of November, a PS party
congress will officially nominate the winner of the primary
election.

-- Also, in October and November, the other mainstream
political party, the center-right and governing Union for a
Popular Movement (UMP) party plans to publicize a number of
wide-ranging reform proposals that its likely
standard-bearer, Interior Minister and UMP party president
Nicolas Sarkozy, could incorporate into his campaign platform.

-- In January, the UMP will hold a party congress of its own
which is expected to nominate Sarkozy as the party's
presidential candidate.

-- February and March will be the heart of France's
presidential campaign season, characterized by a vast amount
of televised discussion and campaign activity by the
dozen-plus candidates expected to qualify for the election's
first round.

-- The final list of first-round contenders will emerge only
in mid-March, after prospective candidates file, with the
Constitutional Council, petitions from 500 elected officials
endorsing their candidacies.

-- Also in March, President Chirac will announce whether he
intends to run for a third term. While very unlikely, it is
not inconceivable.

-- The election's second-round run-off is scheduled for May
5, should no candidate receive more than 50 percent of the
vote in the first round. End Summary.

The Dates of the Election, and Qualifying to Run
--------------------------------------------- ---

2. (SBU) The government of Prime Minister de Villepin has
selected Sunday, April 22 and Sunday, May 5 for the two
rounds of France's 2007 presidential election. A second
round has been required in all of the seven presidential
elections since the Constitutional reforms of 1962 provided
for direct election of the president, and the 2007 election
is not likely to be the first exception to this rule. The
second round is a run-off between the top two scoring
candidates in the first round. In the second round of the
last presidential election (in 2002), of about 41 million
registered voters, nearly 32 million went to the polls
election day.

3. (SBU) There are no term-limits in France. Conceivably
then, the current incumbent, 73 year-old Jacques Chirac,
could run for a third term. This is widely viewed as
unlikely due to Chirac's age, questions about his health (a
minor stroke in 2005 limited his activities for a time), and
his declining leadership credibility with the public. Even
so, Chirac has been careful to keep the option open until the
very end, and has said that he will announce his decision on
running again in March 2007.

4. (SBU) Who and how many candidates will compete in the
first round will be clearly established by mid-March. March
16, 2007 is the deadline for filing with the Constitutional
Council the 500 endorsements from elected officials required
for qualifying to appear on the first-round ballot. French
law requires that within 37 days of the first-round vote,
each candidate must file with the Constitutional Council
signed petitions endorsing his or her candidacy for president
from 500 elected officials, who must come from at least 30 of
France's hundred-odd administrative departments. There are
about 47,000 officials qualified to sign these endorsements.
A law passed in March 2005 makes public, for the first time,
the names of who endorsed whom. One result of this new law
is that extremist and marginal candidates are having to do
much more canvassing of elected officials to come up with 500
willing to "go public" with their endorsement. One effect of
this law should be to reduce the number of "micro-candidates"
who qualify to appear on the first-round ballot. In the
2002's first round there were 16 candidates in all; most
observers expect that "only" about a dozen will make the cut
in 2007.

Mainstream Parties' Nominations
-------------------------------

5. (SBU) In October and November the main focus will be on
the Socialist Party (PS) primary election. On November 16,
about 200,000 PS party members will vote for one of three
candidates: the favorite, Poitou-Charentes Region President
Segolene Royal, former Economy Minister Dominique
Strauss-Kahn and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. If
none of these candidates garners over 50 percent of the vote,
the run-off will be held on November 23. In current polling
figures, Royal leads by well over 50 percent; whether in one
or two rounds, any result other than a Royal victory would be
considered a major upset. The PS primary campaign will
include three debates televised from studios (on October 17
and 24 and on November 7) and three debates before party
members in different regions (currently, to be covered only
by print media). If a second round run-off is necessary, an
additional televised debate is scheduled for November 21.
Throughout the six-week campaign period, the candidates will
be crisscrossing France campaigning among socialist party
members.

6. (SBU) Royal is seen as representing a sleeker, more
contemporary version of leftist predilections. Royal, like
Stauss-Kahn, steers clear of inflammatory, anti-capitalist
rhetoric; their policy orientations are fundamentally
social-democratic. Fabius, on the other hand -- despite his
long record of moderate economic policy-making as both
economy minister and prime minister -- has espoused for this
campaign sharply anti-market, traditionally leftist, policy
positions.

7. (SBU) Interior Minister and UMP President Nicolas Sarkozy
is widely assumed to be a shoo-in for his party's
presidential nomination. The UMP's nominee will be elected
by a special party congress scheduled for January 14, 2007.
The date of the congress was moved forward from February 4,
2007 after President Chirac declared on September 18 that he
would be announcing if he would run for re-election "in March
2007." Nearly all expect the UMP congress in January to
nominate Sarkozy.

8. (SBU) Other center-right candidacies cannot be entirely
ruled out. Chirac could announce a bid for a third term as
late as mid-March (the deadline for filing to appear on the
ballot in the first round), though few expect Chirac to try
for a third term. In a recent move intended to force
potential challengers to declare themselves early, Sarkozy
engineered a modification of party rules which requires that
candidacies to be put before the January party congress be
declared before the end of November. Sarkozy's potential
rivals in the party are unlikely to feel bound by this rule,
and could easily challenge it at the eleventh hour --
particularly if unforeseen developments should give them a
real chance of challenging Sarkozy for the nomination. In
addition, under French electoral law, all that is required to
qualify to run are the 500 endorsements from elected
officials. Theoretically then, a candidate like Chirac, for
example, could run without the nomination of his own
political party. In addition, Prime Minister Dominique de
Villepin has not completely abandoned his (faded)
presidential hopes, and Defense Minister Michelle
Alliot-Marie continues edging towards a candidacy, making
very clear she is "available" as an alternative to Sarkozy.

And Minor Parties' Nominations
------------------------------

9. (SBU) France's plethora of minor political parties will
also be selecting their candidates and promoting their
platforms between now and the end of the year. The
extremist, right-wing National Front (FN) will hold its
presidential convention in mid-October. It is a foregone
conclusion that FN founder and party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen
(who came in second in the first round of the 2002
presidential election) will be the FN's candidate.
Frustration with the political process runs high in France;
the ensuing "protest vote" garnered Le Pen nearly 17 percent
of the total votes cast in the first round in 2002. In 2007,
uninspiring performances by mainstream candidates could again
prompt a surprisingly strong showing by Le Pen, though few
expect that he will manage to "ambush" the establishment a
second time, and make it into the second round.

10. (SBU) Notwithstanding its long, and respectable, history
of pro-American, anti-Communist governance during the first
decades of the Cold War, the centrist, Union for French
Democracy (UDF) has become a minor party. The UDF's leader,
Francois Bayrou, is perennially hopeful that divisions in
center-right and center-left could push his vote totals into
double digits -- which in a first-round election with over a
dozen candidates is a respectable showing. The Communist
Party (PC) will also nominate a candidate in October -- as
will nearly a dozen other parties on the far left and the far
right. Extremist parties in France traditionally receive a
far higher percentage of the vote than in other advanced
democracies. In 2002, the far right (19.2 percent) and the
far left (13.8 percent) combined took 33 percent of the vote,
leaving a half-dozen mainstream and environmentalist parties
to battle over the remainder.

11. (SBU) On the far left, the legendary firebrand, and head
of the (Trotskyist) Workers Struggle (LO), Arlette Laguiller
(who was France's first woman presidential candidate, in
1974, and has run in every presidential election since), will
again be her party's nominee. Laguillier came in fifth in
2002 with nearly 6 percent of the vote, behind the
representatives of France's three mainstream parties (PS,
UDF, and UMP), and Le Pen. (Comment: The French themselves
are unsure of whether they should be perversely proud, or
dumbfoundedly dismayed, at the way a leading democracy such
as their own still manages to field not one, but two,
Trotskyist presidential candidates in the first quarter of
the twenty-first century. The other, in addition to
Laguillier, who also ran in 2002 and intends to run again in
2007, is telegenic postal service employee Olivier Besancenot
of the Communist Revolutionary League (LCR). End Comment.)
Please visit Paris' Classified Website at:
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm
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