France: The decline of Nicolas Sarkozy | International

When former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is bored, when he experiences moments of calm, he tends to feel impatient, to become nervous, to act on impulse. And that’s where he made a mistake. “I am distressed”, he confessed last December during one of the last hearings of the trial for having tried to obtain information from a prosecutor in a case which affected and worried him, in exchange for promise the prosecutor to help him get a job in Monaco.

On Monday, the court handed down a sentence: three years in prison for the former President of the Republic, of which he must serve one and can do it with an electronic bracelet. When the conviction is appealed, the sentence is suspended until a new trial.

Those who know him say – and he says it himself – that it’s in the most difficult times when Sarkozy is really Sarkozy, when he brings out the best in himself. And the current one is one of them.

The condemnation is not the political death of Sarkozy, even if it ruins the hopes that Sarkozy and some supporters still harbored of a possible return to power. “It is the end of any hypothesis of candidacy for the presidential election of 2022”, estimates the essayist Alain Minc, one of his friends. But this is not the end of his political influence. If Sarkozy said: “In the name of the national interest, I support President Emmanuel Macron in 2022”, that would be very valuable. This would guarantee Macron votes from the right. “

“Storms have always fascinated me”, begins the last book of the former head of state, The time of storms (The time of storms). Historian Éric Roussel, biographer of presidents and author of an essay entitled Nicolas Sarkozy. Near, far (Nicolas Sarkozy. From near, from afar) for whom he interviewed him at length, corroborates him: “What unleashes his energy are moments of crisis. This is where he reacts most strongly ”.

After knowing the sentence, Sarkozy accused in an interview in the newspaper Le Figaro against the magistrates, he threatened to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and proclaimed that “if we were in Mr Putin’s Russia, human rights defenders would denounce that it is extremely serious ”. “I cannot accept being sentenced for something I did not do,” he said.

In an interview with the television news of the private channel TF1, he declared to the interviewer: “If you were not convinced that I am an honest man, would you welcome me on your newspaper as you did? ” The distraught journalist did not respond.

The life of Nicolas Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa (Paris, 66) could be counted as a play in three acts. First that of a son of a Hungarian immigrant and a Frenchwoman of Sephardic origin who, without going through elite schools or belonging to their circles, rose to the right and then dominated by Jacques Chirac. In the second, between 2007 and 2012, he held the presidency of the Republic for five years marked by the global economic crisis, marital crises and an atypical way of exercising power.

“He is a man who is distinguished by a style that does not correspond to the modes of intervention of his predecessors”, specifies Roussel. “In France, the President of the Republic has a symbolic role which requires a greater distance. I don’t think he’s very sensitive to that. “

The third act would speak of a post-presidency marked by marital happiness, commercial activities and the search for enrichment, unsuccessful attempts to return to power and, above all, continuing problems with the law. From the alleged Libyan funding of Muammar Gaddafi of the 2007 campaign to the overspending of the 2012 campaign – the latter case, for which he will be on trial from March 17 – the last ten years of the former president, they are the history of its relationship with prosecutors and judges.

No other president has entered so many legal issues, nor has he had so many open fronts in this area. This may be explained by his tendency to take risks, to play to the limit. “He is so imbued with himself that he thinks that nothing can happen to him,” said the journalist from The world Philip smiles author of the book The president and me (The president and me), one of the best portraits of Sarkozy. “It’s not so much that he’s unconscious, but that it’s a form of complacency.”

“He is an excessively attractive character, but also boastful, presumptuous,” continues Ridet. “He has an almost childish personality. [El político francés] François Bayrou had an expression that was barbarian child. That is to say, he was someone with something a little immature and who at the same time could be cruel and not follow the codes ”.

Minc, author of the book My presidents (My Presidents), describes it this way: “He’s a totally complete character, in one piece. He says what he thinks, he is not censored. This is exactly what it seems. So, as far as justice is concerned, it has never been censored either ”.

The essayist, businessman and unofficial adviser to presidents alludes to Sarkozy’s attacks on magistrates when he was president. Wrapped in the flag of the “little Frenchman with mixed blood” or “bastard”, as he likes to say, he denounces the apparent consanguinity of the judiciary, qualifies its members as “peas, all the same among them”, and provokes his anger with repeated criticism in cases that shocked the country such as the rape and murder in 2011 of the young Laëtitia Perrais, a case that the sociologist Ivan Jablonka dealt with in the book Laëtitia or the end of men. One theory is that his legal problems are not due to the former president’s tendency to act outside the law or that he felt unpunished, but to an alleged desire for revenge by prosecutors and judges. for previous wrongs.

“What I find scandalous in the Sarkozy decision is that it is not about legalism, but about moralism,” said Minc. “The judge said:” To be a former President of the Republic, it is more serious. But it is not possible! Justice must treat a former president in the same way as a homeless man. Otherwise, he will not. devotes himself more to law, but to morality ”.

Now, Sarkozy has more difficulty than ever to return to the Elysee Palace, even if this option was already complicated before the conviction. But the man who gave France its last presidential victory almost 15 years ago will not disappear from the scene.

The former president has a good relationship with Macron, and his support could be instrumental in 2022. For many of his supporters, the corruption conviction and the ongoing cases are the result of unjust cruelty and one more reason for him. support.

“For the right, it’s a myth. The right likes bosses. He loved Chirac, he loves Sarkozy. It is the Gaullist tradition, ”says Minc, referring to General de Gaulle, hero of the Second World War and founder of the Fifth Republic.

“All his legal problems,” says Ridet, “somehow reinforce his legend: that of an extraordinary guy, in his failures and his successes.”