PARIS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Socialist Party (PS) cardholders trust Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist group at the National Assembly, to lead the fractured party and give it a new start after stinging defeat in recent presidential and legislative election, Rachid Temal, the party's coordinator said on Friday.
Official results of the first round election for the party's top job showed that Faure collected 48.56 percent of the votes, largley ahead former agriculture minister Stephane le Foll who gained 26.1 percent.
Earlier on Friday, Le Foll, which had been associated with unpopular ex-Socialist government announced his withdrawal from the contest's second leg on March 29, saying that his rival "is destined to become the (party's) first secretary."
Unopposed, the 49-year-old lawmaker won the Socialist party's leadership , according to the party's coordinator.
Faure, once Le Foll's assistant when former president Francois Hollande was first secretary, pledged to change the PS "from the ground to the ceiling" and rebrand a struggling party who lost steam after bitter defeat in the 2017 race to the Elysee Palace and National Assembly.
On May 7, 2017 the Socialists suffered an electoral drubbing, as their representative Benoit Hamon came fifth with less than 10 percent, while five years earlier, Francois Hollande won with a large margin the election which gave France its first socialist head of state since Francois Mitterand quit power in 1995.
In legislative election, the PS won just 29 seats this year, down from 280 previously in the 577-National Assembly.
Inherited divided camp and weak public support, Faure promised to organize thematic sites open to activists and supporters of the PS to settle their incessant quarrels and build a victory of the European Left.
"The key idea of Olivier Faure's campaign is that we must gather because we are too weak to play the revenge of the term, and it had worked," one of Faure supporters was quoted as saying by Le Figaro.
An Elabe survey for BFMTV news channel found that three people out of four did not believe that the Socialists would return to power.
The PS will hold its congress next month in Aubervilliers, near Paris.
