Sarkozy’s six wars will make or break him

The French president has public support, but if things go wrong that will fast disappear, says Anne-Elisabeth Moutet.

Mr Sarkozy once enjoyed a cordial relationship with Col Gaddafi Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 8:58PM BST 06 Apr 2011

66 Comments

Not even George W Bush could have hoped to get away with six simultaneous wars. Yet Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be thriving on them. We French have troops in Mali, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Somalia – and, most visibly, over Libya and in Ivory Coast.

Cynics will argue that Sarkozy is a gambler, staking his re-election next year on the throw of the military dice. But even though he’s wildly unpopular, and a political calculator nonpareil, the truth is that Sarko is also showing his own peculiar brand of sincerity. He genuinely believes, for instance, that France’s failure to stop the Rwandan genocide was dishonourable (as a junior minister, he argued in favour of intervention). And he has form: a couple of years ago, he authorised a raid against Somali pirates, resulting in the rescue of our hostages and the pirates being showily taken back to France for trial.

Any image of the French as pacifists is misleading. We hate losing wars, but we believe in both la gloire and in hard-nosed choices that we sell to ourselves as idealism. We have forgiven Sarko a botched (and fatal) attempt to free two hostages from an al Qaeda affiliate in Mali, and are remarkably quiet about our 10-year presence in Afghanistan. French troops have also been an almost constant presence in Ivory Coast over the past decade, more than once stepping in to prevent a Liberian-style civil war – and to protect French nationals and interests.

But what makes the current outbreak of muscular interventionism so delightful for Sarko is that he seemed to have missed his opportunity. When the Tunisian revolt began, the foreign secretary, Michèle Alliot-Marie, suggested that French police could help quell the unrest (for which she later lost her job). Events in Egypt, too, seemed to pass France by, not least because a host of presidents have been the grateful recipients of Hosni Mubarak’s hospitality: Sarkozy even went there to woo Carla Bruni in the winter of 2008.

What saved Sarko’s blushes was Col Gaddafi’s bloody repression of the Libyan revolt. This offered Sarkozy – and France – an overdue opportunity to take a principled stance. And the operation’s unlikely mastermind was one of France’s unique contributions to both fashion and global politics: Bernard-Henri Lévy, the battling philosopher with a line in human rights advocacy and designer shirts.

In February, the 62-year-old author of such slight but best-selling volumes as Barbarism with a Human Face (Communism: bad), Left in Dark Times (politically correct toleration of totalitarianism: very bad) and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (LSE-graduate Islamists beheading US reporters: uniquely bad) found himself in Cairo. The situation was unbearable: he was but one of an indiscriminate mass of reporters, all after the same story. So when he heard the rumbles of revolt in Libya, he hitched a ride to Benghazi in a fruit-seller’s van, made his way to rebel HQ, told them he could arrange for them to get diplomatic recognition from France, borrowed an old satellite phone – and did just that.

Lévy sees himself as the reincarnation of André Malraux (Nobel-winning novelist, hero of the Spanish Civil War, wartime acolyte of de Gaulle and former culture minister). In truth, he is a far more buffoonish figure, but he certainly has connections: it was in his palazzo in Marrakesh that his daughter’s husband left her for Carla Bruni, and his godfather is the impeccably connected Gucci tycoon François Pinault. Although Lévy supported the socialists in the last election, and won’t vote for Sarko next year, the pair have dined together regularly for years. So, after he called Sarko, the president arranged for the rebel leaders to be spirited to Paris. The visit, and formal recognition of the rebels as the lawful government in exile, was kept so secret that the new foreign secretary, Alain Juppé, only heard about it when asked by reporters in Brussels.

So far, the gamble seems to have paid off. After France initiated the first air strikes against Gaddafi’s forces, the news was full of rebels waving tricolours and vowing that their firstborn would be named “Sarkozy”. Even warnings that some are former al‑Qaeda militants have failed to dent the popular support. As in Ivory Coast, French initiative is seen as preventing a bloodbath – and having a good conscience has always played well in Paris.

Of course, Sarko knows that things could turn sour at any moment. Loyalist counter-attacks mean that operations in Libya could last longer, and reports of massacres in Ivory Coast by supporters of the new president have cast a pall over events. All of which could transform what seemed clear-cut – supporting the good guys, preventing bloodshed, upholding France’s ideals – into a protracted, bloody mess. In Paris, as elsewhere, foreign adventures have often been the last resort of the battered politician. If the missions fail, Sarkozy’s presidency will surely fail with them.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2011

Jacques Chirac's trial holds little fear for the ultimate bon vivant

Jacques Chirac's long-awaited corruption trial will begin in Paris this week. But, as Anne-Elisabeth Moutet writes, he can go to court on Tuesday with serenity.

Jacques Chirac - Photo: GETTY

By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Paris 7:00AM GMT 06 Mar 2011

When Jacques Chirac finally shows up for his corruption trial, on Tuesday, in the Première Chambre Civile of the Paris Law Courts – the same where Queen Marie-Antoinette was once judged – he will sit on a special upholstered chair instead of the usual wooden bench in the dock.

There will be an extra lectern for the former French President's notes and documents, requested by his barristers; and a secured room within the historic Law Courts building will be made available to him to rest any time he "feels tired."

The court will already have sat for a full day; but Chirac, who is now aged 78 and in questionable health, has exceptionally been allowed to show up only on specific dates, the ones on which he is scheduled to be questioned by the judges.

Otherwise, we are asked to believe, the former president, now "a private citizen" after enjoying immunity from prosecution during his two consecutive terms from 1995 to 2007, will be tried like any other French politician accused of confusing official and party funds.

The case goes back to the early 1990s, when Chirac was Mayor of Paris.

On the city payroll were, it turned out, dozens of full-time employees who never did a stitch of work for the city. They were instead detailed to the right-wing RPR Gaullist party, there to help Mr Chirac's eventual, and successful, 1995 bid for the presidency.

The facts are not in dispute: other Chirac associates have already been sentenced for them, most notably former PM (and current Foreign Minister) Alain Juppé, who at the time was – conveniently – both Secretary General of the RPR and Paris Deputy Mayor for Finances.

Finally tried in 2004, Juppé was given a 12-month suspended jail sentence, and was declared ineligible for office for one year: he had to take a visiting professor's job in Canada for two years, before he could resume his political career.

The question is whether Chirac knew of his party's financial arrangements.

Although he denies it, he signed last year an out-of-court agreement with the capital's authorities whereby he and his party would refund them to the tune of €2.2 million. In exchange, the City relinquished its suit – to see it taken up by a group of Parisian taxpayers, outraged at what they see as a sweet deal for "less than half the true outlay".

As the case stands, Chirac, while theoretically facing up to 10 years in jail, a €150,000 fine and a five-year voting ban, wouldn't seem to be in really hot water.

For one thing, the state prosecution office – which operates under the direct authority of the justice ministry – has already said it was pushing for a dismissal, "because there isn't enough proof."

Only cynics, perhaps, will observe that we stand barely a year from the next presidential election, and Nicolas Sarkozy will need the entirety of the Gaullist party, nostalgic Chiraquiens and all, squarely behind him in what will be a tight race.

For another, the 6'3" beer-drinking, calf's head scoffing, larger-than-life bon vivant the French always had a soft spot for is suddenly rumoured to be "frail", "ailing", and suffering from Alzheimer's – rumours which Chirac and his high-profile wife, Bernadette, have carefully denied in targeted public statements. (That's officially what the special chair and lectern and side room near the courthouse are all about.)

This should be enough to ensure, in the worst-case scenario, a suspended sentence.

Never mind that only two weeks ago Chirac couldn't bear to miss the Paris yearly Agricultural Show, which he has faithfully visited on opening day for the past four decades, whether in office or out.

There he was mobbed by the crowds, basking in the admiration and love of tens of thousands of his favourite constituents, French farmers, who feel nobody has or will ever fight their corner as fiercely again. Nicolas Sarkozy is usually booed at the Salon de l'Agriculture.

It is ironic that the trial should take place barely one week after one of Chirac's protégés, Michèle Alliot-Marie, was sacked from her job as foreign minister merely for having accepted free flights from a relative of Tunisia's just-deposed strongman, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. (It is even more amusing that she should be replaced by none other than Alain Juppé, who at the time of his sentencing, for the same facts Jacques Chirac is now being tried for, was said to be bitter at having to carry the can for persons unnamed.)

In the last a couple of years, the climate in France has become starkly intolerant of corruption, extra perks, dodgy political financing and the like.

The public used not bat an eyelid at secret second families housed and guarded at the Republic's expense (François Mitterrand's), lavish holidays paid by exotic tycoons in five-star palaces (Mitterrand, Chirac), gifts of diamonds by megalomaniac African tyrants (Valéry Giscard d'Estaing), secret state funds re-routed to political campaigns (everyone's, even staid, Calvinist Socialist PM Lionel Jospin), not to mention a comfortable blurring of the private and public use of what must surely be the loveliest official real estate in the world, all the aristocratic palaces of France's nobility, complete with their furniture and artworks, turned into ministerial offices and grace-and-favour homes.

No longer.

A combination of the economic crisis, Nicolas Sarkozy's perceived love of bling, and the globalisation of political sensitivities has made French politicians' life less comfortable of late.

One minister was recently sacked because he charged his office for €12,000 worth of Cuban cigars. (And he had to pay for the cigars.)

Another was a victim of an early reshuffle because she'd lent her grace-and-favour flat to her unemployed brother for one month. Yet another lost his job after favouring private planes over scheduled flights.

Besides the ousting of various strongmen, the Arab spring claims as collateral damage the reputation of a number of French politicos, as week after week their holidays with this or that tyrant are being made public.

What is perhaps surprising is the Teflon-like popularity of Jacques Chirac even today.

The French are largely aware that in or out of office, Chirac never paid for a luxury holiday in his life (in Morocco, in Oman, at the luxurious Hôtel du Cap-Eden Roc on the Riviera, as guest of the luxury tycoon and Gucci owner François Pinault in his St Tropez compound.)

They know Chirac was proven to have spent some €4,000 a day in "entertaining and food expenses" when he was Paris Mayor. They know the Chiracs have been living rent-free since they left the Elysée palace in 2007 in a luxurious 4,300 square foot Paris flat on the Seine, 3 Quai Voltaire, just opposite the Louvre, "loaned" by the family of Lebanon's slain PM, Rafik Hariri. But apparently, they don't care.

However strange it may seen, Chirac, who is the scion of a provincial industrialist, married to the aristocratic daughter of an early De Gaulle supporter, and whose constituency home is a 17th century château he had listed in the early 70s to make its maintenance tax-deductible, is seen as having the common touch, being one of the people.

His second term as president was marked by strikes and rising unpopularity, but now that Nicolas Sarkozy's poll numbers have sunk even lower than his ever did, he is considered fondly by Right and Left alike.

The former regret his more consensual style. The latter give him credit for opposing the Iraq war from the start.

All things considered, he can go to court on Tuesday with serenity – nothing, not even a judicial rap on the fingers, can seemingly change his reputation.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2011

Nobody expected this French revolution

The pensions row has turned into a referendum on Sarkozy, says Anne-Elisabeth Moutet.

Riot police officers during clashes with youths in Lyon Photo: AP

By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in Paris
8:51AM BST 21 Oct 2010

82 Comments

As the French Autumn of Discontent morphs into its second week (more trains, fewer planes, long lines at petrol stations, banlieues kids indulging in a bit of self-administered wealth redistribution in the streets), no one can predict how things will turn out for Nicolas Sarkozy and his embattled government. And yet this should have been the easiest reform of his first term.

The government was looking to score points for realism and for shoring up the pay-as-you-go pensions system. Instead, they have boxed themselves into the kind of standoff the French always used to call, scathingly, la politique à la Thatcher.

The Socialist opposition, hoping to energise grassroots support for their 2012 presidential campaign, encouraged their natural constituents, the teachers' and students' unions, to stoke up anti-Sarkozy resentment in schools and universities. Now they find themselves watching in dismay as the student revolt spirals out of control. If there is a single fatality in these heated confrontations, they will be branded irresponsible, and the same parents who encouraged their children to demonstrate will withdraw every ounce of goodwill and support.

Both sides were taken by surprise. Over the past months, in negotiations quietly undertaken at the Elysée Palace, union leaders had indicated that they understood the pensions quandary. On paper, simple arithmetic sums it up: in 1945, when the scheme was established, eight workers paid for the pension of one retiree. By 1960, they were down to four. Today, it's 1.8, and if nothing changes, in 15 years' time, 1.2 French workers will bear the burden of one pensioner.

The unions were prepared for the usual French face-saving social kabuki: after some pre-planned tactical retreats, a bit of symbolic give and take on implementation, a few exceptions made for women and manual labourers, the bill would have been accepted. Instead, they have been pushed into a hard line stance by their members. The CGT union's Charles Foulard, the oil-and-gas industries' answer to Arthur Scargill, is leading the blockage of Total's oil refineries; he's constantly on radio and television exclaiming that reform is unfair because the French have it too hard already.

One of the great no-nos in France is criticising the right to strike. Worker solidarity is professed with Young Pioneer unanimity. You can complain about anything else – but there's a logical disconnect that obtains before you can suggest that the three hours you spent commuting home, packed into the train like a sardine, are actually due to the collective irresponsibility of unsackable public sector workers. And so what is emerging is a kind of surly Gallic Blitz spirit, with morning radio news giving tips on petrol stations still open, and the SNCF iPhone app showing cancelled trains in real time.

Politicians always learn too late, to their cost, that perception is reality. By all practical measures, we French actually live a pretty good life. The social welfare system works, with generous unemployment benefits and tax rebates; the national health system is the one thing no French citizen complains about (this translates into Europe's longest life expectancy and the World Health Organisation's highest score); and public infrastructure spending ensures good services even in problem areas. This we take for granted.

All the same, the strikes have turned into a referendum on Nicolas Sarkozy – not his actual policies, so much as his style. The perception is that he panders to the rich, an unfair one when you consider his predecessor Jacques Chirac, who never paid for any holiday he took in or out of office (Chirac still relies on an array of benefactors, from luxury goods tycoon François Pinault, to the family of the late Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, who pay for his splendid flat by the Louvre).

Sarkozy (whose fortune is the product of selling his family flat for £1.6 million when he was elected in 2007) earned himself, early on, the "bling bling president" tag. Nothing he has done since has shifted the impression that he wants the French to make efforts he will not subject himself and his rich friends to.

The fact is, if the pensions reform fails (for now, the government intends to stand firm, and a parliament vote is expected next week), it won't have been seen off by the unions, but by the Bettencourt scandal. The fight between the l'Oréal heiress and her daughter uncovered casual tax evasion on a large scale, and illegal contributions made to Sarkozy's presidential campaign. The sheer amounts quoted as the saga unfolded – a Seychelles island here, pictures by Matisse and Picasso there – awakened revolutionary feelings not felt in two and a half centuries. Against the spirit of Robespierre, no amount of reason can prevail.

The only hope for the government is an especially French one: at the end of next week, All Saint's Day marks the start of the half-term holidays. It is expected that most young demonstrators will choose to break their revolt to go and enjoy that other French inalienable right, and the fires will dwindle and die.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2010