By Hadi Yahmed, IOL Correspondent
PARIS, December 3 (IslamOnline.net) – Chances are on the rise for French Socialist Party Secretary General Francois Hollande to score big in the Presidential elections due to be held in 2007, after the party's followers voted in favor of the European Constitution project supporting the European Identity.
Socialists (the biggest opposition party), however, do not regard Hollande as the strong leader who can stand in the face of Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), in the Presidential race.
UMP followers, amounting to 120.000 members, have voted by 60% in favor of the European Constitution and 43% against it, in a referendum held by the UMP Wednesday, December 1.
French Le Parisian daily reported that UMP's voting in favor of the European Constitution in its present form is a huge boost to Hollande's status and a severe blow to the party's second figure in charge Laurent Fabius, who opposes such European Constitution; thereby limiting his ambitions to run for the forthcoming presidential polls.
The paper added that there are other ambitious figures in the Socialist party that may constitute a threat to Hollande.
Current prefect of Paris municipality Bertrand Donalois and ex-Culture Minister Jacques Langue top the list of likely contenders. Both have explicitly expressed their ambitions to end their political career in the Elysee Palace (Premises of the French President).
In its Thursday issue, French Liberation daily wondered about the political future of Fabius following Wednesday's frustration.
Ever-present Mitterrand
Since the former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand holding office as president in 1982 and the withdrawal of the former Premier Lionel Jospin from the political arena in 2002 upon his defeat in the Presidential elections, observers have been saying that the UMP has failed to produce strong leaders like Mitterrand and Sarkozy, capable of competing for presidency.
The European Socialist bloc unanimously agrees on approving the unified European Constitution. This conforms to their traditional and historical attitudes towards supporting all issues of integration among Europeans.
According to a number of political analysts, a large part of the “European referendum” battle within the UMP is only a facade of another implicit battle between two different visions for the integration of immigrants into the UMP.
While Hollande is a supporter of integrating immigrants and opening European markets to the immigrant workforce within the framework of social and multicultural Europe, Fabius is more reserved and has repeatedly warned in several media interviews that Europe would lose its secular identity, in an explicit reference to the threat represented in polarizing Muslim workforce and integrating Turkey into the EU.
Fabius clearly refuses integrating Turkey into the European Union in view of its cultural identity that contradicts the European secularism.