François Hollande

François Hollande
First Secretary of the Socialist Party
In office 27 November 1997 – 27 November 2008
Preceded by	Lionel Jospin
Succeeded by	Martine Aubry
Mayor of Tulle
In office 17 March 2001 – 17 March 2008
Preceded by	Raymond-Max Aubert
Succeeded by	Bernard Combes
Deputy of the National Assembly for Corrèze
Incumbent
Assumed office 12 June 1997
Preceded by	Raymond-Max Aubert
In office 12 June 1988 – 16 May 1993
Preceded by	Jacques Chirac
Succeeded by	Raymond-Max Aubert
Personal details
Born	François Gérard Georges Hollande 12 August 1954 (1954-08-12) Rouen, France
Political party	Socialist Party
Domestic partner	Ségolène Royal (1973–2007) Valérie Trierweiler (2007–present)
Children	4
Alma mater	HEC Paris National School of Administration Paris Institute of Political Studies

François Gérard Georges Hollande (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ɔlɑ̃d]; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who was the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008. He has also served as a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze since 1997, and previously represented that seat from 1988 to 1993. He was the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008 and has been the President of the General Council of Corrèze since 2008.

On 16 October 2011, Hollande was nominated to be the Socialist Party and Left Radical Party candidate in the 2012 French presidential election. His main opponent is expected to be incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Early life and education

Hollande was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, the son of Nicole Tribert, a social worker, and Georges Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor. He is a graduate of HEC Paris, ENA Strasbourg, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. Immediately after graduating, he was employed to work as a councillor in the Court of Audit.

Early political career

After volunteering to work for François Mitterand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election when he was a student, Hollande joined the Socialist Party five years later. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterand, who arranged for Hollande to stand for election to the French National Assembly in 1981 in Corrèze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the Leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round, although he would go on to become a Special Adviser to now President Mitterand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. After becoming a Municipal Councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corrèze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. In 1989, he was also elected as the Deputy Mayor of Tulle. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the amount of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.

First Secretary of the Socialist Party

As the end of Mitterand's term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission but Delors renounced to run for presidency in 1995, leading to Lionel Jospin resuming his earlier position as the leader of the party, selecting Hollande to become the official party spokesman. Hollande went on to contest Corrèze once again in 1997, returning to the National Assembly. That same year, Jospin became the Prime Minister of France, and Hollande won the election to succeed him as First Secretary of the French Socialist Party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French Government during this time, Hollande's position lead some to refer to him the "Vice Prime Minister". Hollande would go on to be elected the Mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.

The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat to far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election but, although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 Party Congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected First Secretary against opposition from left-wing factions. After the triumph of the Left, and notably of the Socialist Party, in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande's supported for the ill-fated "yes" position in the French referendum on the European Constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as First Secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline from this point onwards. Eventually his domestic partner, Ségolène Royal, was chosen to represent the Socialist Party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as First Secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris, although it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeeded him in 2008.

Following his resignation as First Secretary, Hollande was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the President of the General Council of Corrèze, a position he holds to this day.

Presidential campaign

Main article: François Hollande presidential campaign, 2012

Following his re-election as President of the General Council of Corrèze in March 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist Party and Radical Left Party presidential nominee. Though he initially trailed the front-runner, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, following Strauss-Kahn's arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls. After a series of televised debates, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October, although he did not gain the 50% required to avoid a second ballot. The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011, after which Hollande was declared the official Socialist Party and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election. After the primary, he immediately gained the support of the other contenders for the party's nomination, including Martine Aubry and Arnaud Montebourg and 2007 candidate Ségolène Royal.

His campaign for the presidential election is organized by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll. François Hollande made his first big campaign speech at Le Bourget on January 22, 2012 in front of 25,000 persons. The main themes were equality and the regulation of finance.

On January 26, he detailed his program in a 60 propositions manifesto where he said that he would separate retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses, raise taxes for big corporations, banks and the wealthy, create 60,000 teaching jobs, bring the official retirement age back down to 60 (from 62), create subsidized jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young, promote more industry in France by creating a public investment bank, grant marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples, pull French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012, etc.

On February 9, he detailed the part of his program about education, one of his priorities, in Orléans.

Personal life

For over thirty years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children - Thomas (1984), Clémence (1985), Julien (1987) and Flora (1992). In June 2007, just a month after Royal's defeat in the French presidential election of 2007, the couple announced that they were separating.

A few months after his split from Ségolène Royal was announced, a French website published details of a relationship between Hollande and French journalist Valérie Trierweiler. This was controversial as many considered this to be a breach of France's strict stance on politicians' personal privacy. In November 2007, Valérie Trierweiler confirmed and openly discussed her relationship with Hollande in an interview with French weekly Télé 7 Jours.

Works

François Hollande, July 2011

Hollande has had a large number of books and academic works published, including:

• "La Gauche Bouge", Jean-Claude Lattès, 1985.
• "L'Heure des choix. Pour une économie politique", with Pierre Moscovici, 1991. ISBN 978-2738101461
• "L'Idée socialiste aujourd'hui", Omnibus, 2001. ISBN 978-2259195843
• "Devoirs de vérité", interviews with Edwy Plenel, éd. Stock, 2007. ISBN 978-2234059344
• "Droit d'inventaires", interviews with Pierre Favier, Le Seuil, 2009. ISBN 978-2020979139
• "Le rêve français" (The French Dream), Privat, August 2011. ISBN 978-2708944411
• "Un destin pour la France" (A Destiny for France), Fayard, January 2012. ISBN 978-2213662831
• "Changer de destin", Robert Laffont, February 2012. ISBN 978-2221131176

External links

• (French) Official page at the French National Assembly
• (French) Official page at the Socialist Party
• Sego’s love rival named by website
• François Hollande, 11 années à la tête du Parti Socialiste, Politique.net
• Michael C. Behrent (Sister Republic),"Socialism of Adjustment: François Hollande"

Political offices
Preceded by Raymond-Max Aubert	Mayor of Tulle 2001–2008	Succeeded by Bernard Combes
Preceded by Jean-Pierre Dupont	President of the General Council of Corrèze 2008 – present	Incumbent
Party political offices
Preceded by Lionel Jospin	First Secretary of the Socialist Party 1997–2008	Succeeded by Martine Aubry
Preceded by Ségolène Royal	Socialist Party nominee for President of France 2012	Most recent
	Radical Party of the Left nominee for President of France 2012