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DE RUEHFR #6781/01 2861440
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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 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
SENSITIVE 
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: 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 
STAPLETON