Cablegate: Segolene Royal's Victory Moves Her Closer To

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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

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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,

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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

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