I never thought I'd say this, said a friend.....

But I'm almost missing Sarkozy!

We both laughed, as Sarkozy hadn't been high in our popularity stakes though he might have done better if he had succeeded in pushing through his reforms of the French economy in the teeth of opposition from his own party.

Then it came back to me...from when I was first in France, at some point the incoming President would be judged in the light of his predecessor....and found wanting. It was just happening a little sooner than usual for Hollande.

That sinister man Mitterand was President when I moved to France and some of the veils were beginning to shift from his past...his service in the Vichy regime....the protection of top collaborators...the suicide of colleagues.....although the bombshell that he had been keeping a second family at the expense of the taxpayer would not be revealed until much later when both families turned up to his funeral.

Then came Chirac, mired in corruption from his time at the Mairie of Paris....and the faces were long.

What a man to follow Mitterand who, be he what he was, could at least use the French language properly! 

Chirac was a rustic...fit only to stroke rumps at the Paris Agricultural Show!

He could stroke a few other rumps too....his boon companion and chauffeur would collect him in an unofficial car at eight o'clock and they were off on the town.

No one knew where he was - probably least of all himself - so on the night that Princess Diana was killed in Paris his Interior Minister had to wait until the President rolled in from his night on the tiles before making decisions on how to handle the affair.

Mme. Chirac was unforgiving. The chauffeur was 'translated' to the post of inspector in the cemetery service.

And after Chirac, Sarkozy...the outsider. The man who was going to shake up France....once he had solved the problem of acquiring a wife to replace the one who had bolted....once he had finished holidaying on the mega yacht of a mega rich friend....once he had dined with his supporters at Fouquets in the Champs Elysees...

Mitterand had had a sombre dignity, Chirac had had charm.....Sarkozy had temper.

He showed emotion...if he was annoyed, everyone knew about it: no waiting a year to send someone to a cupboard in Limoges 'in the interests of the service' for not ensuring that only short arses surrounded the President on televised appearances - the official concerned would be on his bike in very short order.

His appearance at the Paris Agricultural Show was not the regal procession of Chirac either....

To a man who refused to shake his hand he replied

'Casse toi, alors, pauvre con!' which might be roughly translated as 'Bugger off then, idiot.'

For clarity it couldn't be beaten.....but it was felt to be lacking in class.

And now we have Hollande....the man in the baggy Bermudas. 

The man who announced that change was to happen now. 

Except that now was then, when he was campaigning. 

Returning from his holidays this week he announces that change will happen in the fullness of time........

So, while we wait for the reappearance of les neiges d'antan - the snows of yesteryear - let's take a look at  the irrepressible Chirac doing what he did best....enjoying the company of les girls.

Here he is on holiday at Dinan this summer, posing for photographs....note the left hand.

And here he is accompanying his grim wife Bernadette to one of her fund raising events...

And getting into trouble....as he says to his delightful companion 'You have to watch out for women...'

And for the man sitting on Chirac's right hand....Francois Hollande, the great white hope of France.

Sarkozy plays the Bongos

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I am selling my house in France. I have it advertised on the internet together with contact details.

Now, I gather from a friend in France that you call this 'having a presence on the internet'...or you do if you are the Performing Elephant and her ilk who make up in self publicity what they lack in knowledge and talent.

So, having a 'presence on the net' I receive a number of communications from people anxious to put vast sums of money at my disposal as they have entire confidence that I will give it back to them, minus a token million euros or so for what they kindly refer to as my 'trouble'.

Nowadays, some of them are claiming to be ex or serving American army personnel who have come upon untold illicit wealth in Iraq or Afghanistan and need my help to get it past whatever controls might be supposed to exist in these shreds of what were once countries, but most of them are African state governors and bankers.

I don't feel inclined to 'trouble'...but I have kept a note of those needing assistance and when I have sold the house I will be circulating the private bank account numbers  - not the client account numbers - of the local crooked notaire to all those who have contacted me...and devil take the hindermost.

People tell me that these are scams and that involvement in them will leave one on the wrong side financially, but I have reason to believe that people are wrong.

Would President Chirac, President Sarkozy et al participate in a scam?
Yes, of course they would.

Would they however, participate in a scam which left them on the wrong side financially?
No, of course not.

This is how it worked......

According to what an official of BEAC  - la Banque de l'Etats d'Afrique Central which is the central reserve for six states of central Africa - Gabonese officials have been siphoning off vast sums from the reserves for years, most of which appeared to fall into the hands of the then President of Gabon Omar Bongo.

While the PC among us may be shuddering in horror, fearing some link is about to be made between President Bongo and Alan Clark's remarks about Bongo-bongo land as a general term for sub-saharan Africa, let me just say that the remark caused no offence to the President himself.
He sent Mr. Clark one of his election posters ....... 'Gagnez avec Bongo'......advice which Presidents Chirac and Sarkozy took heed to follow.

President Bongo's perceived need was to maintain himself and his family in power.
He succeeded in this aim. After his death, he was succeeded by his son Ali-Ben Bongo.
However, he needed assistance in maintaining economic stability....for the Bongo family...and in quelling unrest...among the not-the-Bongo family, and this assistance was forthcoming from Gabon's ex colonial overlord - France.
This is the 'what is in it for the initiator of the scam' bit.

Moving to the 'what is in it for the person contacted by the scammer' bit it is alleged that President Bongo helped various French politicians, of both right and left but quite possibly not Jean-Marie Le Pen with financial contributions to their campaign funds. Particularly Presidents Chirac and Sarkozy.

I expect in so doing he was making no vulgar bribe -as in the case of Giscard d'Estaing and the Bokassa diamonds - but trying to assist them in their quest to learn from their colonial past.....to remodel France on the lines of post colonial Africa.

To install rule from the top in the interests of national security, where the President, fully informed by the state surveillance services, knows the needs of his people and distributes the goodies accordingly.

A process which might best be described by perverting the sense of Matthew chapter thirteen verse 12:

'For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.'

Now I know why he got rid of the dog...

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Some time ago, it was reported...and commented upon....that ex-President Chirac was getting rid of his dog, a bichon given him by his grandson, which had apparently turned vicious when deprived of life in the Presidential palace and confined to a luxury apartment in Paris paid for by M. Chirac's foreign friends.
I wondered at the time whatever was going on in the Chirac household, and now we have the answer.

They could not afford to feed it.
No wonder it was taking a grab at the ex-Presidential stomach...it was hoping for something to eat.

Before Monsieur Chirac became Monsieur le President, he was Monsieur le Maire....Mayor of Paris.
In those palmy days, the municipality of Paris awarded its' maire an allowance of some 3,000 francs - about 375 pounds - a day - to maintain himself and his family above the poverty line.
You can buy quite a bit of dog food with that.

Appreciative of being so well treated, Mr. Chirac spread the goodwill about.
As Mayor, he sought to improve local services by having the council 'employ' some 500 consultants....a number of whom, not unnaturally, belonged to the same political party as the Maire.
Unkind tongues suggested that some of these consultants did very little or nothing for their money.
Which was probably as well since few of them had any qualifications which would fit them for these posts.

If only Edith Cresson - other side of the political divide from Mr. Chirac - had had the sense just to pay her dentist instead of giving him a consultancy job when she was a European Commissioner.....and then getting the poor man to produce a report on something of which it was evident he knew nothing....she might not have had to resign.
Mr. Chirac was more intelligent. His - sorry, the city of Paris' - consultants stayed mum and Mr. Chirac stayed mayor.

Then Mr. Chirac became Monsieur le President and moved into the Elysee Palace, his official residence.
He and his family continued to be maintained above the poverty line, but this time the whole country paid, not just the Parisians.
He could afford to feed the dog his grandson gave him.

Unfortunately, his successor as Mayor of Paris, while being of the same political persuasion as President Chirac, followed the consultancy practices of Madame Cresson.
He asked his consultants...who included his wife...to produce something with which to justify their fees.
The results were as one might imagine.
People noticed.
Unkind tongues began to wag again, and investigative magistrates started poking their noses where no self respecting person would poke the end of their walking sticks...into the internal affairs of the city of Paris.
They came to the conclusion that not only had the then maire paid people who produced no benefit whatsoever to the city of Paris but that his predecessor, Mr. Chirac had done so too.

Fictitious employment was the term used.

The maire of Paris found himself in legal hot water.
But not Mr. Chirac.
He was by then, after all, President Chirac, and the President of France has immunity from being hauled before French courts.

Time passed...a young politician called Sarkozy started dating the President's daughter before dumping her for being too dumpy.
Relations became strained between Mr. Chirac and Mr. Sarkozy.

President Chirac finally called it a day and gave his backing to his unelected Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, as the candidate to succeed him in preference to Mr. Sarkozy.
Dirty tricks dogged the Sarkozy campaign, but he became the party's candidate and, in his turn, President.

President Sarkozy took great umbrage at the dirty tricks campaign, and was delighted when it was suggested to investigative magistrates  that Mr. de Villepin had been instrumental in organising some of them  as discussed here.
While it was suggested that Mr.Chirac might have information which would assist Mr. de Villepin, he was not called upon to testify, and did not volunteer any information either.
Mr. de Villepin was exonerated and the state is appealing the verdict.

Investigative magistrates have long memories.
Having patiently waited during the years of the immunity from prosecution of President Chirac, once he was again just Mr. Chirac they reopened the dossier and found that, in their view, public money had been improperly used in 21 cases of fictitious employment while Mr. Chirac had been M. le Maire.

Mr. Chirac denies all impropriety, and the state prosecutor appears to side with him, stating that he sees no case to answer, but the city of Paris, under new political management, launched a civil claim for 2.2 million euros which is what it reckons the fictitious employment cost the ratepayers of Paris.

President Sarkozy went to see Mr. Chirac recently, to discuss the problem and it appears that a solution has been found.

Mr. Chirac has announced that, while he did nothing wrong, he is willing to repay the money on condition that the city of Paris drops its' civil claim.
The City of Paris has been happy to do so.
That leaves just the prosecutor...who is convinced of Mr. Chirac's innocence.... to plead the case before the court, so there doesn't appear to be much risk from that quarter.

Questions remain, however.
Why, if innocent, would Mr. Chirac offer to pay up?
And how is Mr. Chirac, whose daily subsistence is no longer being paid by the taxpayer, to find such a huge sum?
He'd have to economise on an awful lot of dog biscuits.

It's not as if he can do much to reduce his expenses.

He is living on the charity of his friends as it is.
His friends pay for the frequent flights in first class to Japan for himself and his family, where he is rumoured to be very interested in the interior decor of a bank.....
They allow him to squat in a luxury apartment in Paris.....
So the only way in which he could possibly economise was to part with the dog.

Not that the dog was capable of eating 2.2 million euros worth of biscuits.
Ridiculous even to think so.
The little bichon could only consume 550,000 Euros' worth...the sum Mr. Chirac is proposing to pay from his own pocket.

The rest of the money?

Well, this is coming from the UMP, the party of both President Sarkozy and ex-President Chirac.
I am not convinced that the party faithful are too chuffed about money on this scale being handed over to the socialists who control Paris at the moment, any more than I am convinced that President Sarkozy would have willingly rescued his predecessor, but this is politics, after all.

Sarkozy is not too popular with his party after the regional election debacle, and needs to sooth the troubled breasts....thus his support for the idea of supporting Chirac, idol of the bottom patting classes.
Cows that is.
At agricultural shows.

What about the party faithful?
Well, they won't want an innocent man to be financially broken by the demands of his political opponents, but it must be a blow to the party finances.
Thanks to the revelations spilling over from internecine strife in the family of the Oreal heiress, it seems that folding money in brown envelopes was used to finance quite a bit of UMP activity.....even though all large donations are supposed to be declared and very large donations are banned, as tending to notions of corruption.
However, there are other ways.
Almost every French politician worth naming has his own political party, apart from the one he supports.
These micro parties campaign for donations, and then, quite legitimately, pass these on to the main party set up...in this case, the UMP.

So the money necessary to rescue Mr. Chirac from the consequences of what he has not done will be forthcoming without too much pain, although the sale of brown envelopes will be on the rise as the well heeled await the visit of their local politician.

This case makes you count your blessings.

When you're sitting at home this winter, in the part of the house you can afford to heat contemplating the electricity bill with the cat on your knee, just imagine what it must be like to be an ex-President, dependent on others for the very roof over your head and forced to part with a beloved pet.

Your heart bleeds, doesn't it?

Seeing his way clear...stream

Image by Franck Prevel via Flickr

Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, former Foreign Minister best known to the world for his speech of opposition to the war in Iraq at the United Nations General Assembly, is to appear in court on Monday, accused of complicity in a plot to blacken the reputation of President Sarkozy, then just a presidential candidate, by making it appear that he had been laundering money from bribes arising from the sale of frigates to Taiwan.

Complicated? You just bet.

President Sarkozy has let it be known that he wants politics cleaned up...no more of these plots and manoevres which have, he says, been typical of the Vth French Republic. He has also let it be known, rather more colourfully, that he wants the perpetrators of this particular plot 'hung from meathooks'. I have always said that he has so sense of historical resonance.
However, history seems to be what all this is about.

Sarkozy was once a protege of Chirac, famous for his Spanish practices while Maire of Paris and then President of France. As any good protege should, Sarkozy made himself agreeable to his patron's daughter but then, somewhat tactlessly, dumped her for something less dumpy. In for a penny, in for a pound, Sarkozy compounded his error by supporting Balladur, Chirac's unsuccessful rival, which left Sarkozy out in the cold for some considerable time, until his growing support in the party forced him back into government.

De Villepin has always been Chirac's man.... a graduate from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, one of the 'enarques' who appear to think that the government of France should only be confided to one of their number. Sarkozy is not an enarque. Never elected to any office, de Villepin was Chirac's chief of staff before being appointed Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister, and, in the run up to the last Presidential elections, was Chirac's choice of candidate, though Sarkozy, by then Finance Minister, was making all the running.

While the preparations for that election were hotting up, de Villepin happened to meet his old friend Jean-Louis Gergorin, another enarque, and, at the time, vice president of the aerospace company EADS, just before the latter approached an investigating magistrate with a list purportedly showing the names of those involved in the kickbacks from the frigate deal with accounts with a Luxembourg company called Clearstream. Although it quickly became apparent that the documents were forged, de Villepin mounted an enquiry, an enquiry which, according to the then head of intelligence in France, was ordered by Chirac himself. Chirac refuses to answer any questions, claiming the immunity which covers any actions of a President of the French Republic while in office.
Inevitably, news of the enquiry leaked, and Sarkozy confronted de Villepin, accusing him of making it appear as though the allegations had weight by ordering an enquiry after it was clear that the evidence was a forgery. He then brought a civil action to clear his name.


In the meantime, Sarkozy has become President, de Villepin is an isolated figure in his own party, but, more importantly, the investigating magistrates have been busy confiscating all sorts of interesting documents, including the notebook of France's chief spy, cataloguing the little foibles of the country's political elite. Rumours abound of the dirty tricks played against Sarkozy in the run up to the election, including, apparently, alerting his then wife to his infidelities, which might be one explanation of her refusal to be at his side during the campaign.


De Villepin might have trouble wriggling off this particular meathook - I think a lot depends on how much can be put down to Chirac who of course will not testify - but he is mounting an interesting defence. Despite the fact that a court has already ruled that a President can bring actions while in office, de Villepin's lawyers will be arguing that it is impossible for the court to hear Sarkozy's charges as the inequality between the parties is so great....Sarkozy can attack as an individual, while being immune from attack in his turn, as President. It's a bit like being armed with a machine gun while wearing Ned Kelly's protective armour.

Why does this case have any importance for the general public, apart from the wafts of sleaze in the wings? It is important because Sarkozy has announced that he wants no more of these insalubrious plottings and if that is the case it can be nothing but a good thing for the political climate in France. However, as he is also proposing to abolish the role of the investigating magistrate, it is hard to see how we should ever know about any future government shennanigans, since the French press is supine and the future investigators will be the government run prosecution service.