Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, definitively sentenced to one year under an electronic bracelet for corruption and influence peddling, is a political bulimic, who found himself mired in legal affairs.
Nicolas Sarkozy becomes the first former president in France to be sentenced to prison – in this case under an electronic bracelet
Eternal tutelary figure of the French right, although contested by some, his evocation in the meetings of his party Les Républicains (LR) continues to trigger thunderous applause, just as his memory books remain publishing successes.
Endowed with an infectious enthusiasm, a verbal passion linked to unbridled gestures, Nicolas Sarkozy had the gift of making himself loved as much as hated, sometimes by the same people, throughout a political career of forty years spent at the National Assembly, in several ministries or at the presidency of the UMP, the former name of LR.
Endowed with an infectious enthusiasm, a verbal ardor linked to unbridled gestures, Sarkozy had the gift of being loved as much as he was hated, sometimes by the same people.
He opened the doors of the Élysée in 2007. But this “bling-bling president” for some, skillful manager of the 2008 financial crisis for others, was defeated when seeking a second term in 2012.
In 2017, he was excluded from a new race for the Élysée by a vote of his party activists, who preferred his former Prime Minister François Fillon, an unsuccessful candidate against the socialist François Hollande.
Before the courts, Nicolas Sarkozy has had one setback. After the rejection of his appeal on Wednesday by the highest court of the French judiciary, he becomes the first former president in France to be sentenced to prison – in this case under an electronic bracelet.
His mentor Jacques Chirac was given a two-year suspended prison sentence in 2011 in the case of fictitious jobs in the City of Paris.
The decision of the Court of Cassation comes almost two weeks before the opening of the trial into suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, scheduled for January 6 to April 10 in Paris, after a decade of investigations.
“I have been used to suffering this harassment for ten years,” repeats the man who will celebrate his 70th birthday in January.
After his defeat in the 2012 presidential election, the man the French nicknamed “Sarko” swore that “we would never hear from him again”.
But his legal troubles as much as his media life, sometimes alongside his wife, the ex-French-Italian model and singer Carla Bruni, and his love of politics have made this prediction lie.
The man who likes to define himself as a “little Frenchman of mixed blood” – Hungarian father, Greek Jewish maternal grandfather – was only 28 years old when he took over the town hall of opulent Neuilly in 1983, located in the extension of the beautiful districts of western Paris.
A dense political career followed.
Once excluded from the game on the right, he once again became essential during Jacques Chirac’s re-election campaign in the 2002 presidential election, before challenging the latter from the ranks of the government, as very popular Minister of the Interior, then access the Elysée.
Despite his endless troubles with the law, he is still considered by part of the right as a reference and increases the number of meetings in his offices where he receives a stone’s throw from the Elysée.
The tempo of the ballet of friends and courtiers has even accelerated in recent weeks before and after the censorship of Prime Minister Michel Barnier, from the same political family as him.
And he used all his influence to try to prevent his rival, the centrist François Bayrou, from becoming Prime Minister on December 13. In vain.
“He hates him, it’s skin deep,” says an LR official who attributes his attempts to torpedo François Bayrou to the centrist’s choice to support the socialist François Hollande against him during the 2012 presidential election.
Nicolas Sarkozy also displays a cordial understanding with President Emmanuel Macron whom he meets regularly, while deploring that he “does not always listen to him”.
Related News :