News and Current Events

Antiwar Groups Use New Clout to Influence Democrats on Iraq

NY Times
May 6, 2007

By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 4 — Every morning, representatives from a cluster of antiwar groups gather for a conference call with Democratic leadership staff members in the House and the Senate.

Shortly after, in a cramped meeting room here, they convene for a call with organizers across the country. They hash out plans for rallies. They sketch out talking points for “rapid response� news conferences. They discuss polls they have conducted in several dozen crucial Congressional districts and states across the country.

Over the last four months, the Iraq deliberations in Congress have lurched from a purely symbolic resolution rebuking the president’s strategy to timetables for the withdrawal of American troops. Behind the scenes, an elaborate political operation, organized by a coalition of antiwar groups and fine-tuned to wrestle members of Congress into place one by one, has helped nudge the debate forward.

But there are tensions in the relationship between the groups, which banded together earlier this year under the umbrella of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, and the Democratic leadership. The fissures could be magnified in coming weeks as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, struggle to cobble together a strategy after President Bush’s veto of the $124 billion Iraq spending bill that tied the money to a timetable for withdrawal.

On Thursday, leaders of the liberal group MoveOn.org, including Tom Matzzie, the group’s Washington director who also serves as the campaign manager for the coalition, sent a harshly worded warning to the Democratic leadership.

“In the past few days, we have seen what appear to be trial balloons signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position,� the letter read. “On this, we want to be perfectly clear: if Democrats appear to capitulate to Bush — passing a bill without measures to end the war — the unity Democrats have enjoyed and Democratic leadership has so expertly built, will immediately disappear.�

The letter went on to say that if Democrats passed a bill “without a timeline and with all five months of funding,� they would essentially be endorsing a “war without end.� MoveOn, it said, “will move to a position of opposition.�

The antiwar coalition combines the online mobilization capabilities of MoveOn with the old-school political muscle of organized labor. They have been working in tandem with Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate on a systematic strategy to unify Democrats, divide Republicans and isolate the president.

The alliance, including MoveOn, chose to stick with Ms. Pelosi as she ushered through a war financing bill that included a timeline for withdrawal, but many peace advocates called the measure too timid. Some critics accused the alliance of becoming too cozy with the Democratic leadership and selling out the cause.

“There’s a dividing line between those groups who feel the most important thing is to be clear on bringing the troops home as soon as possible, and the groups that feel that unity within the Democratic Party is most important and the most important thing is for the Democrats to win the White House,� said Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of Code Pink, an antiwar group that is not part of the alliance. “So the groups who feel the most important thing is to win the White House would naturally be more inclined to listening to Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she says the only way we can get a vote through is if we water it down.�

Many of the major players in Americans Against Escalation in Iraq earned their stripes not from sit-ins, marches and other acts of civil disobedience but as Democratic operatives on Capitol Hill and in political campaigns. The sophisticated political operation they have built is a testament to how far the antiwar movement has come since the Vietnam era.

But Tom Andrews, a former Democratic congressman from Maine and the national director of Win Without War, a member of the coalition, said there existed a “healthy tension� between working closely with Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill, many of whom were former colleagues and friends, and continuing to prod them to end the war.

“Our constituency is the people across this country who want to shut this war down,� Mr. Andrews said. “It’s not the Democratic Party.�

Mr. Matzzie underscored the coalition’s approach to a roomful of members on Thursday at the outset of a planning retreat at the headquarters of the Service Employees International Union here.

“The principle under which we’ve been operating is more like a political campaign,� Mr. Matzzie said. “The central strategy is creating that toxic environment for people who want to continue this debacle.�

The discussion at the retreat mirrored that of planning meetings for traditional political campaigns, with presentations on polling, strategy and field operations.

“It’s no different than if you went over to the offices of Clinton for President, Obama for President, Giuliani for President,� said Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, which has roots in organized labor and came out of the legislative battle over social security in 2005.

The coalition, which has raised $7.1 million since January, has concentrated its activities on 57 House districts and senators in nine states, places where they believe Republican lawmakers face tough races in 2008 or have shown signs of wavering in their support for the president.

The service employees’ union has mobilized its phone bank in New York City and asked local leaders to call members of Congress. Leaders of the union, long closely allied with liberal lawmakers, helped assuage many progressives who were uneasy about voting for the war-financing bill, fearing criticism from the left.

The National Security Network, a collection of liberal-leaning military and foreign policy experts headed by Rand Beers, former national security adviser to the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry, has deployed former generals and officials to persuade individual lawmakers.

The coalition’s influence comes from its connections on Capitol Hill and political shrewdness, as well as its grass-roots reach. “The whole movement has updated themselves to be where campaign-style politics are generally,� said Stephanie Cutter, a Democratic strategist. “They’re just incredibly savvy, tactically and politically. They know how to use the news cycle.�

Most important for lawmakers, said Mr. Andrews, the former congressman from Maine, the coalition members are committed to using their resources to changing the political climate in their districts, which gives them credibility on Capitol Hill.

“We want members of Congress to do the right thing and do very well as a result,� he said. “We’re not just there asking them to do the right thing without fully recognizing the task we have on hand.�

Rodell Mollineau, a spokesman for Mr. Reid’s office, said the coalition amplifies what Democrats are trying to do in Washington to end the war.

“It helps us reverberate a unified message outside the Beltway,� he said. “These groups give voice to a message we’re trying to get outside.�

One of the coalition’s strengths is its diversity, bringing to together groups like MoveOn.org and organized labor on one end and former Iraq veterans in the group Votevets.org on the other, members said. But that diversity can also create some tense moments, as each of the groups have different constituencies and some of the groups are more invested in the Democratic Party than others.

But the organizations came together based on a sense of pragmatism, said Mr. Woodhouse, of Americans United for Change, “that we’re better fighting together than fighting apart.�

After the president’s veto this week, the coalition organized 358 rallies and more than 20 news conferences across the country. Organizers had met with leadership staff members the week before to coordinate.

On Friday, in a daily conference call, Tara McGuinness, the coalition’s deputy campaign manager, told members that leadership aides had expressed gratitude for the work, saying it had helped bolster members of their caucus.

Ms. McGuiness also told them that she had received assurances from leadership staff members that all options were still being considered for the new version of the war spending bill.

“The latest word from them is they are talking more and more about a short-leash option,� she said, referring to a plan in the House that would finance the war for only about three more months and require the administration to report back on progress being made by the Iraqi government. Congress would then vote again on the rest of the money requested by Mr. Bush.

Members of the Senate appear to be cool to the idea, but it has currency among some liberal advocates and members of the coalition.

Mr. Matzzie, of MoveOn, was clear about the stakes in the coming weeks, saying his group was only getting started. He emphasized that the next emergency spending bill must be one “to end the war.�

“This is act one of a three-act play,� he said. “Act two will be the summer. During the summer, our job is to create a firestorm of opposition.�

Gitmo Detainess Are Still Stuck Down There

Once again, lower courts have denied habeas rights to Gitmo detainees. When will Congress or the Supreme Court intervene?

By Herman Schwartz
Legal Times
May 7, 2007

The Bush administration this February won a court victory denying habeas corpus to alien detainees. Now, it is trying to deny the detainees the effective assistance of counsel.

None of this should come as a surprise. Ever since President George W. Bush declared his “war on terror� in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he has claimed unlimited and unlimitable power under the commander-in-chief provisions of Article II of the Constitution. Since then, government lawyers have persisted in trying to prevent any judicial scrutiny of the president’s actions in conducting this “war.�

Until recently, these efforts had mostly failed. In February, however, a 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 provision that denies the courts any meaningful supervision over the aliens detained as “enemy combatants� by the military at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere was not an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

With the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari on April 2, the government strategy has apparently succeeded, at least for the moment.

But this could change. Although in the past, Congress has collaborated with the Bush administration in restricting detainee rights, a new Democratic Congress may be more willing to stand up to the president. And at the Supreme Court, two key justices, even while denying certiorari last month, may have signaled their commitment to habeas rights for detainees in the future.

NO BLANK CHECK

The United States holds Guantánamo under a lease and treaty giving it total dominion and control over the base for as long as it chooses. Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty, however, so the U.S. government, assuming that no federal court would have jurisdiction over the base, chose Guantánamo as the place to confine the then 600-plus detainees with alleged links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The first sign of trouble came when it was discovered that Yasir Esam Hamdi, one of the Guantánamo detainees, was an American citizen. The government immediately moved him into a Navy brig off South Carolina, which is in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

When Hamdi filed a habeas corpus petition challenging his detention as an “enemy combatant,� the government first argued that the judiciary should stay out of the case entirely. This was too much for even the usually compliant 4th Circuit and it refused. On the merits, however, it adopted a posture of virtually total deference to the government and dismissed the petition.

When the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the justices declared in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) that where individual rights are concerned “a state of war is not a blank check for the President,� and insisted on some due process. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.

In the D.C. Circuit, where other detainee writs from Guantánamo were pending, the government’s avoidance strategy also succeeded initially. In an opinion by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, the court agreed with the government that because Cuba retained “ultimate sovereignty� over the base, the federal courts lacked jurisdiction.

This decision was short-lived. The same day that the Supreme Court decided Hamdi, it reversed the D.C. Circuit in Rasul v. Bush (2004). In a 6-3 decision, the Court reasoned that because of the “plenary and exclusive jurisdiction� exercised by the United States over the base in Cuba, the federal courts could hear habeas petitions by these detainees.

In response to Hamdi, the government quickly put together a skeletal hearing procedure to determine which detainees were “enemy combatants.� At the same time, the government began war crimes proceedings against some of the detainees before military commissions newly established by the president in 2001.

When these tribunals were challenged in the D.C. Circuit for violating both domestic and international law, the government again urged the court to stay out. Again this argument failed. But like the 4th Circuit, the court ruled for the government on the merits; Judge Randolph wrote this opinion as well.

The Supreme Court agreed to review this decision, but Republican senators quickly added a provision to the then-pending Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 that stripped the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over detainee and military commission cases except for some minimal review by the D.C. Circuit.

At first, this move failed. Last June, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) that the Detainee Treatment Act was inapplicable to pending cases and found the new military commissions inconsistent with the statutes authorizing such tribunals.

OVERTURNING HAMDAN

The Hamdan outcome did not last long. When Congress returned from its summer recess in September, the administration submitted a bill amending the statutes at issue in Hamdan. Congress promptly complied by passing the Military Commissions Act, overturning almost every aspect of the Hamdan decision. The act also abolished habeas corpus and every other form of meaningful judicial scrutiny for all alien detainee cases, pending and future. It was this provision that the D.C. Circuit, in still another Randolph opinion, upheld in February.

The petitioners in the Boumediene case argued that because the Military Commissions Act abolished habeas corpus review without providing an adequate substitute, Congress had unconstitutionally suspended the writ.

According to Randolph, however, in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. St. Cyr (2001) the Supreme Court had declared that the suspension clause protecting habeas corpus protects the writ only “as it existed in 1789.� Randolph found no support in the 18th and 19th century authorities cited by the petitioners for allowing the writ to pertain to aliens “outside the sovereign’s territory.� He then concluded that because Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty over Guantánamo, regardless of whether the United States had total control of the base, habeas corpus would not have been available in 1789 to any detainees confined there. The Supreme Court’s Rasul decision he read as applicable only to 28 U.S.C. §2241, the current federal habeas corpus statute, which the Military Commissions Act had made unavailable to alien detainees.

As Judge Judith Rogers pointed out in dissent, every element of this reasoning conflicts with the Supreme Court’s ruling and language in Rasul. In St. Cyr the Court did not say that habeas corpus is limited to its scope in 1789 but only that this was “the absolute minimum� protected by the clause. Moreover, the Court in Rasul had concluded that even in 1789 “application of the habeas statute to persons detained at the [Guantánamo] base is consistent with the historical reach of the writ of habeas corpus,� citing some of the same authorities dismissed by Randolph.

And though Rasul was indeed a statutory case, the Supreme Court in Hamdan had based its decision on the complete jurisdiction and control, potentially permanent, that the United States exercised over the base.

WHY NO CERT?

All of this is obvious to anyone who has followed these cases. It was certainly realized by Judges Randolph and David Sentelle, who made up the two-member majority. It was therefore not unreasonable to expect the Supreme Court to take the case and reverse. Yet it didn’t.

Why did only three justices — David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer — vote to review the case? Two more of the six-justice majority in Rasul — Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the Court’s opinion, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who concurred separately — are still on the Court, and only four votes are necessary to grant review.

In an unusual joint statement accompanying the order denying certiorari, Stevens and Kennedy wrote that the Court’s tradition of not deciding constitutional questions except when necessary, and the petitioners’ obligation to exhaust available remedies, made it “appropriate� not to review the case at that time. They added, however, that should there be unreasonable delays or “some other and ongoing injury,� they might reconsider.

Regardless of how one views these reasons, there may be an extrajudicial factor underlying the two justices’ decision: Bills to repeal the habeas corpus provisions of the Military Commissions Act and Detainee Treatment Act have been introduced. Although their prospects are uncertain, a Senate bill to strike the habeas corpus provisions from the Military Commissions Act failed last year by only a 51-48 margin, and the 2006 election switched six seats to the Democrats. Passage of a similar bill would resolve the issue and avoid a major confrontation between the Supreme Court and the other two branches of government.

The Stevens-Kennedy statement ended with the conventional “denial of certiorari does not constitute an expression of any opinion on the merits.� But instead of the usual boilerplate citation, the justices added a cryptic “See Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466, 480-481 (2004) (majority opinion of Stevens, J.); id., at 487 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).� The cited pages explain why the majority and Kennedy concluded that Guantánamo is what the latter called “in every practical respect a United States territory . . . a place that belongs to the United States.�

This may be a signal from the two justices that, despite their reluctance to hear the case now, five members of the Court still believe that habeas corpus should be available to the Guantánamo detainees and — underscoring their earlier warning — that they will scrutinize subsequent proceedings closely.

As if to defy this admonition, the government is again trying to shield its activities against outside scrutiny, this time by going after the detainees’ lawyers. In mid-April, government lawyers asked the D.C. Circuit to impose tight limits on the Guantánamo detainees’ counsel: Lawyers who already have clients would be able to consult with them only three times; lawyers willing to represent detainees could have just one visit with a prospective client; lawyer-client mail could be read by government officials not involved in the case; and government officials could deny detainee lawyers access to the evidence on which the government based its claim that a detainee was an enemy combatant.

And apparently emboldened by the denial of certiorari in Boumediene, the government still refuses to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rasul. In its April filing, the government is again insisting that Guantánamo is just another “secure military base in a foreign country.�

Guantánamo may not yet be the legal black hole that the government wants to make it. But the Bush administration hasn’t given up trying.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Herman Schwartz is a law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.

Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina: Don’t negotiate, just send the bill right back to Bush

Boehner acknowledges GOP nervous on Iraq
By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer
Sun May 6, 4:53 PM ET

The House Republican leader said Sunday that GOP support could waver if President Bush’s Iraq war policy does not succeed by the fall.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, said Bush’s troop increase deserves a chance and should be funded even if benchmarks for success are not met. Last week, Bush vetoed a $124 billion bill to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan operations in part because it required troops to begin returning home by Oct. 1.

A senior House Democrat said it would be “ridiculous” not to condition war money on progress in Iraq. Bush and his supporters say a fixed date is unworkable.

“We don’t even have all of the 30,000 additional troops in Iraq yet, so we’re supporting the president. We want this plan to have a chance of succeeding,” Boehner said.

“Over the course of the next three to four months, we’ll have some idea how well the plan’s working. Early signs are indicating there is clearly some success on a number of fronts,” he said.

But, he added, “By the time we get to September or October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn’t, what’s Plan B.”

Thus far, Republicans have stood behind the president’s increasingly unpopular war policies, including the troop increase and an open-ended war commitment.

Yet Boehner’s comments were an acknowledgment of the concern expressed by some lawmakers in private that their support could further damage the party, which lost control of Congress in the November elections.

The senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Sen. Richard Lugar (news, bio, voting record) of Indiana, said Boehner is correct.

“General Petraeus will be back. He’ll make a report,” Lugar said of Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. “Some things will go well. Some things will not go so well, but we’ll still have an obligation.”

The new Democratic leadership is pushing to begin pulling troops out of Iraq.

“It would be ridiculous to think that we’re going to just drop this fight,” said Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record) of New York, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. “This is not our fight. This is the American people’s fight. They asked us to send a message to the president.”

“We’ve got to shake that White House until the people of the United States are heard,” Rangel said. “Sure, we’ve got to have some restrictions on the money.”

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democratic presidential candidate, said congressional Republicans increasingly seem uneasy about Bush’s policies.

“So we may disagree politically here, but remember where the American public is on this issue: They want a change. They think we’re getting less secure, far more vulnerable today, than ever before, and they want a change in this policy,” he said.

Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., predicted, “the taste for continuing with the present course among Republicans in the Senate and the House is going to fade very quickly, and we will get the change in mission.”

In a statement, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois said Boehner’s concern “has less to do with the troops coming home, and has everything to do with his fear that House Republicans will be sent home.”

Top White House aides are negotiating with Democratic leaders on a new war spending bill.

Another Democratic presidential candidate, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, argued against negotiating and said lawmakers should keep sending Bush the same Iraq spending bill.

Edwards started airing a television commercial last week urging Congress to stand up to Bush and keep sending back the vetoed bill, which sparked a quarrel with Dodd.

“With all due respect, we could have used John’s vote here in the Senate on these issues here,” Dodd said.

Dodd and Boehner appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” while Edwards was on “This Week” on ABC. Rangel spoke on “Face the Nation” on CBS while Lugar and Schumer were on “Late Edition” on CNN.

Republicans Defect to the Obama Camp

From The Sunday Times; timesonline.co.uk; rawstory.com
May 6, 2007

DISILLUSIONED supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation.

Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president’s reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing.

Matthew Dowd, Bush’s chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the president’s “my way or the highway� style of leadership – the first member of Bush’s inner circle to denounce the leader’s performance in office.

Although Dowd has yet to endorse a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. “I think we should design campaigns that appeal, not to 51% of the people, but bring the country together as a whole,� Dowd said.

But last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama – that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by

Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was “pure John Kennedy�, a neocon hero of the cold war.

In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to “stay on the offense� against terrorism and ensure America had “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world�. He talked about building democracies, stopping weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to protect US “vital interests� if necessary, as well as the importance of building alliances.

“Personally, I liked it,� Kagan wrote.

Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

“I disagree with Obama on the war but I don’t think it is a test of his patriotism,� Martin says. “Obama has a message of hope for the country.�

Financiers have also been oiling Obama’s campaign. In Chicago, his home town, John Canning, a “Bush pioneer� and investment banker who pledged to raise $100,000 for the president in 2004, has given up on the Republicans. “I know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different,� he said.

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the president’s reelection, qualifying him as a “Bush ranger�. He said last week that he was impressed by Clinton’s expertise. “I know we’re associated mainly with the Republicans but we’ve always gone for the individual,� Mack said.

According to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, Obama and Clinton have vacuumed up more than $750,000 (£375,000) in individual contributions from former Bush donors.

Some of the donations reflect the natural tendency of those with power to shift to the likely White House winner. Penny Pritzker, the staggeringly successful head of fundraising for Obama, voted for John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate, but also donated that year to Bush. As she was a head of the family-run Hyatt hotel chain, it was considered a prudent move.

With the Democrats widely expected to win in 2008, Clinton’s status as frontrunner is encouraging Wall Street money to migrate to her, while Obama may be picking up some mischievous “Stop Hillary� donations from still-loyal Republicans. But there is plenty of genuine enthusiasm to go around.

A poll released by Rasmussen last week showed Obama overtaking Clinton for the first time by 32% to 30%, although another poll by Quinnepiac showed her with a 14-point lead over the Illinois senator, her nearest rival.

The current issue of the New Yorker contains a profile of Obama, which highlights his appeal to conservatives.

For his optimism about the future, Obama has been dubbed the “black Ronald Reagan�. He frequently challenges the black community to support two-parent families and encourage school students, instead of criticising them for “acting white�.

Right-wing Sarkozy sweeps to French presidential victory

Published: Sunday May 6, 2007
AFP; Rawstory.com

Right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy scored an emphatic victory in the French presidential election Sunday, trouncing Socialist rival Segolene Royal and winning a clear mandate for his economic and social reforms.

There were scenes of wild jubilation at Sarkozy’s campaign headquarters in Paris as soon as polls closed and projections said Sarkozy had around 53 percent of the vote against Royal’s 47 percent.

Delirious members of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) burst into chants of “Nicolas - President!” and hugged each other in joy.

Sarkozy was to make a televised speech and a victory party was planned on the historic Place de la Concorde in central Paris with veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday providing the star turn.

Thousands of police renforcements were deployed in and around the capital to head off the risk of unrest by youths from high immigrants areas, many of whom regard Sarkozy as a hate-figure since riots of 2005.

On the last day of the campaign Royal—slipping badly in opinion polls—had issued a stark warning that a Sarkozy victory would trigger “violence and brutality” across the country.

Royal heard the result at her parliamentary constituency of Melle in western France. At the Socialist Party (PS) building in Paris, supporters gloomily digested a third consecutive presidential defeat after 1995 and 2002.

Socialist European deputy Pierre Moscovici said Royal’s defeat was a “a defeat for all socialists.”

The humiliation was expected to trigger bitter recrimination in the party—where many senior figure initially opposed Royal’s candidacy—as well as speculation about a possible realignment of the French left.

The 52 year-old president-elect will take over from Jacques Chirac on May 16, and has promised to act quickly to enact key items of his manifesto.

After legislative elections in June—in which he is banking on a clear majority for the UMP and its allies—he plans a special session of the National Assembly to push through the first stage of his reforms.

These include the abolition of tax on overtime, swingeing cuts in inheritance tax, a law guaranteeing minimum service in transport strikes, and rules to oblige the unemployed to take up offered work.

On the social front he has pledged minumum jail terms for serial offenders and tougher rules to make it harder for immigrants to bring extended families to France.

The son of a Hungarian aristocrat and the grandson of a Greek Jew, Sarkozy will be the first French president of immigrant stock. He entered politics in the 1970s as a follower of Chirac, and in the last five years has been interior and finance minister in the centre-right government.

Sarkozy’s campaign was based on the theme of “la rupture”—a clean break from policies of past governments, which he blamed for creating France’s runaway debt, high unemployment and festering discontent in the high-immigration suburbs.

His avowedly right-wing programme was in sharp contrast to Royal’s promise to extend state protection via the creation of 500,000 public sector jobs and an increased minimum wage.

The pair qualified from the first multi-candidate round of the election on April 22, beating the centrist Francois Bayrou and far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The crux of the second round campaign was Wednesday’s televised debate, in which Royal was unexpectedly aggressive towards Sarkozy, at one point accusing him of “political immorality”.

Commentators said that despite a close rapport with much of the public, Royal never established herself as a credible president. Her programme was widely perceived as unrealistic, and many reacted badly to her last-minute warnings of violence if Sarkozy won.

“This is a turning-point for France. A lot of people may not like Nicolas Sarkozy personally , but they thought first that he was much better than his opponent and second that his strategy is the right one for the country,” said Dominique Moisi of the French Institute for International Relations.