This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

281828Z Nov 05

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 008069 
 
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: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON
SUBJECT: SOCIALIST PARTY ENDS MONTH-LONG DECISON PROCESS 
UNITED AND RE-ORGANIZED -- READY TO TAKE ON INTERNAL BATTLE 
FOR ITS 2007 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION 
 
REF: A. EMBASSY PARIS DAILY REPORTS FOR NOVEMBER 9 
 
     ¶B. 10 
     ¶C. 14 
     ¶D. 17 
     ¶E. 18 
     ¶F. 21 
     ¶G. 25 
     ¶H. AND 28 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1.  France's Socialist Party (PS) -- in a convoluted, 
fiercely contested, but genuinely democratic process 
throughout November -- agreed on a document setting out the 
party's policy direction and renewed the membership of its 
governing institutions.  It also created a "Presidential 
Commission" to draft a detailed party platform for the 2007 
presidential election and organize the competition for the 
party's presidential nomination to be decided by the vote of 
party members one year from now.  Through the month-long 
process just ended, the leadership of the party, and its 
127,000 members, found a way to hold together despite barely 
containable contending ambitions and factional differences. 
They did so in the conviction that, without unity, the PS 
would have little chance of winning the 2007 presidential 
election, now only 16 months away.   This unity seems more 
than a temporary agreement to put on a united front; party 
members and party leaders across the board seem to have come 
to the conclusion that uncontrolled dissension within the PS 
risks marginalizing the party, undermining its chances of 
alternating in power with the center-right.  END SUMMARY. 
 
Centerpiece of Month-Long Decision Process 
------------------------------------------ 
¶2.  The centerpiece of Socialist Party's (PS's) month-long, 
organizational decision process was the party congress in the 
city of Le Mans over the week-end of November 18 - 20. 
National Secretary Francois Hollande and party number two 
Francois Rebsamen succeeded in brokering a text that brought 
aboard the party's two principal minority factions.  One of 
these factions (about 20 percent of party members) consists 
of supporters of former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and his 
bid for the party's presidential nomination; these party 
members, like Fabius, also opposed the proposed EU 
Constitution last Spring.  The other faction (about 25 
percent of party members) consists of supporters of the 
reform agenda of the New Socialist Party (NPS), and of no 
particular presidential candidate.  The majority faction 
(about 55 percent of party members) supports party leader 
Francois Hollande and the party establishment (in the 
establishment faction there are over a half-dozen would-be 
presidential candidates, most notably, former Finance 
Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn).  Party by-laws call for a 
party congress every three years; this is the first party 
congress since 1990 that has ended in across-the-board 
agreement by all party factions on a single policy sttatement 
-- or, in PS-speak, "political orientation" or "motion." 
 
Seventy-Fourth Socialist Party Congress 
--------------------------------------- 
¶3.   Over the week-end of November 18 - 20, about 3000 
participants, observers, journalists, and ordinary PS 
militants gathered for the PS's 74th Party Congress -- and 
the final installment of the party's year-long celebration of 
its 100th birthday.  (Note:  The party was founded in 1905 -- 
with about 35,000 members -- as the French Section of the 
Workers International (SFIO).  End Note.)  The party congress 
was held in the city of Le Mans, in western France, site of 
the famed 24-hour automotive endurance race.  The well-worn 
joke among congress attendees was that listening to three 
full days of party speakers was more grueling than anything 
that might take place on the race-track right next to the 
site of the congress. 
 
Preparing for the Congress 
-------------------------- 
¶4.  On November 9, about 80 percent of the party's current 
127,000 members voted in the party's 3,500 "sections" for one 
of five competing "motions" (see ref for November 9).  The 
results of this vote, through a complex proportional system 
and further elections in the party's 102 departmental 
"federations" (of "sections") determined the 614 delegates to 
the party congress in Le Mans. 
 
Business of the Congress 
------------------------ 
¶5.  These delegates, at the congress, on November 20, voted 
into office 204 members of the party's National Council (the 
party's "parliament"); the 102 heads of the party's 
federations are automatically members of the council, for a 
total of 306 council members.  For the first time the party 
imposed its gender parity policy on itself; the council -- at 
least the 204 members elected by congress -- is made up of 
equal numbers of men and women.  On the evening of November 
19, faction leaders and key supporters met late into the 
night in a "commission of synthesis" to arrive at an agreed 
text for party policy direction -- the "synthesized motion" 
in the PS parlance.  Once they had agreed to agree, a key 
part of the deliberations of this caucus was the factional 
composition of the list of National Council members to be 
submitted to the vote of the congress delegates the following 
morning.  The net result is a "unified" "party parliament," 
with each faction represented commensurately with its showing 
in the vote by party members on November 9. 
 
Post-Congress Decisions 
----------------------- 
¶6.  In the week following the congress, PS party members 
again voted, on November 23, for the party's First Secretary, 
and new federation and section secretaries.  (Comment: The 
PS's terminology is very revealing of its culture; for 
example, the party bosses are called "secretaries" which in 
French, unlike in current American usage, strongly connotes a 
trusted but subordinate status -- those charged with 
faithfully recording and executing the decisions of others, 
in this case, the party members.  End Comment.)  Among the 
results of the unity reached at the Le Mans Congress is that 
Francois Hollande was unopposed in his bid to remain party 
First Secretary.  On November 25 the National Council elected 
54 members of the party's National Bureau (the party's 
"executive branch"); 18 additional National Bureau members 
were selected by the federation secretaries from among 
themselves. 
 
12-Member "Presidential Commission" 
----------------------------------- 
¶7.  On November 27, Hollande then designated -- after long 
and arduous political horse-trading with all the party's 
barons -- the members of the party's new 43-member, National 
Secretariat, its "inner cabinet."  Also on November 27, 
 
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Hollande and the party announced the creation of an 
unprecedented, 12-member "Presidential Commission" which is 
to prepare a detailed party platform for 2007.  (The literal 
translation of this commission's title is "The Commission on 
the Party's Project for 2007.")  This commission consists of 
three leaders drawn from the NPS, Fabius plus two chief 
lieutenants, and six establishment heavyweights (not counting 
Hollande and Rebsamen who are attached to it as a sort of 
commission secretariat).  This group's ostensible mission is 
to draft a detailed platform for the party by May 2006.  In 
fact, it will be overseeing the competition for the party's 
presidential nomination -- trying to prevent the rivalries 
among party leaders from undermining the party's -- currently 
quite low -- credibility with the public at large.   The 
document agreed to by all factions at the party congress 
establishes that the party's 2007 presidential nominee will 
be selected by vote of the party members in November 2006. 
 
Comment: Hollande's Triumph 
--------------------------- 
¶8.  Playing on his strength, popularity among rank-and-file 
party members -- who see him as a genuinely committed 
guarantor of decision processes that ultimately rest on their 
votes -- Hollande (and Rebsamen) have managed to pull the 
party into one tent.  This maximizes the probability of the 
party emerging with one single candidate for the 2007 
presidential election, now only 16 months away.  The need to 
project to the French public that the center-left PS is a 
credible contender for normally alternating in power with the 
center-right (as in other major European democracies) drove 
the strategy of Hollande and Rebsamen.  All in the party are 
well aware that unity is a necessary, if not necessarily 
sufficient, precondition for victory in 2007. 
 
Fabius: the Other Big Winner 
---------------------------- 
¶9.  In order to achieve party unity, Hollande and the party 
establishment accepted the return to the fold of black sheep 
Fabius, who had broken with the democratically established 
party position by advocating 'no' to the proposed EU 
constitutional treaty.  Resentment against Fabius -- for his 
allegedly cynical and opportunistic flaunting of party 
discipline -- still runs very strong among many party 
members.  With his re-acceptance into the party fold at Le 
Mans and his membership in the Presidential Commission, 
Fabius can now continue his quest for the party's 
presidential nomination with the credibility of a newly 
respectable, party member in good standing.  Fabius has the 
support of 20 percent of party members; the members of the 
NPS faction of the party are as likely to sympathize with 
Fabius' more "traditional leftist" stances as with the more 
"social democratic" stances of his establishment rivals, such 
as Strauss-Kahn.  Among many party loyalists however, the 
contempt for Fabius remains palpable; from conversations on 
the margins of the party congress in Le Mans, it is clear 
that many of these party mainstreamers would drop their party 
activism, if not membership, should Fabius win the nomination. 
 
A Crowded Field 
--------------- 
¶10.  The "unified" PS now turns its attention to what 
promises to be twelve months of internal political 
trench-fighting for the 2007 nomination.  Hollande and 
Rebsamen believe that if the party manages this conflict in a 
transparent and democratic way, that will stand to the 
party's credit in the estimation of the electorate come April 
¶2007.  Even within the party establishment, this will not be 
easy, given the number of heavyweight contenders.  The 
dissident Fabius and mainstreamer Strauss-Kahn are currently 
the front-runners for the nomination.  Should either falter, 
however, a range of others -- former Culture Minister Jack 
Lang, President of the Poitou-Charentes Region Segolene 
Royale, Mayor of Lille Martine Aubry, former Justice Minister 
Elizabeth Guigou, Paris Mayor Bernard Delanoe, Former Health 
Minister Bernard Koucher (who declared his interest last 
week), Hollande himself or former Prime Minister Lionel 
Jospin -- would certainly be tempted to break out to head the 
pack. 
 
A Confusing, Complex, and Democratic Process 
-------------------------------------------- 
¶11.  PS party members are proud to characterize their 
organization's culture as one of "debate and democracy."  The 
month-long process that just ended with a unified party 
exhibited all the strengths and weaknesses of the PS's way of 
doing things.  All decisions were taken or ratified by 
genuinely democratic vote of the party members or their duly 
elected representatives -- all in a long-established, highly 
complex system rife with factional infighting, fierce 
intellectual disagreements, intriguing to shape electors' 
choices, and competition to outmaneuver rivals.  A similar 
process, equally confusing, complex and democratic, should, a 
year from now, end with the designation of a single candidate 
to represent the PS in the 2007 presidential election. 
 
Goal is Normally Alternating in Power 
------------------------------------- 
¶12.  Hollande and Rebsamen believe that a unified party, that 
remains unified behind a single candidate in 2007, is 
absolutely essential if the PS is to remain the center of 
gravity of the center-left, in what should be the regular 
alternation in power between center-left and center-right 
that is the well-established norm in developed democracies. 
So far, they have masterfully managed to maintain the unity 
of a nearly unmanageably divided party.  In so doing, they 
have fulfilled a necessary precondition for victory in 2007, 
although it is not clear that even this will last.  Even if 
it does last, it is not at all clear that it will be 
sufficient.  END COMMENT. 
Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm 
 
Stapleton