As voting begins in France, take a moment to remember Nicolas Sarkozy.
As per one of those typical French idiosyncrasies that provides inexhaustible material to foreign correspondents, the campaign for the French presidential race is now on hold for two days before the vote, so that everyone can “decide in consciousness”.
Nicolas Sarkozy, supported by the ‘Union for a Popular Movement’ party (UMP) which holds the majority in the French Parliament, is running for a second term as French President. The first round of ballot is on Sunday and the polls are dismally oscillating around a meagre 26-25% for an incumbent candidate. Whereas his major opponent, the Socialist Party candidate François Hollande keeps flirting with the 30%. This political truce is an opportunity to look back at a few defining moments of Sarkozy’s tumultuous relationship with the French voters as this Sunday increasingly looks like a political Requiem for the once ‘wunderkind‘ of conservative politics. Of course a surprise can never be ruled out, but the way the campaign has gone, it looked like Nicolas Sarkozy’s political requiem. So we had to propose a (political) obituary…
Napoleon, on the night before Austerlitz
A nous deux maintenant (Rastignac in Le Père Goriot, Balzac, 1835)
Nicolas Sarkozy started his political career in his home town of Neuilly, one of the wealthiest Parisian neighbourhood further west to the Champs Elysées (a suburb a lot of celebrities call home). From a modest extraction (according to local standards), of short stature (the short-man-syndrome will be later analysed as a reason for his desire for ‘revenge’), from an immigrant father born in Hungary, his personal legend has been built around the story of a self-made-man who had to fight the prejudices of his white conservative peers.
While his class of age was busy growing their hair and getting smashed, Sarkozy also grew his hair but became ‘Mayor’ at 28 in 1983.
He likes to emphasise how much he had to struggle against destiny and how managed to get elected Mayor of Neuilly in 1983, a period when François Mitterand was running the country with socialist and communist ministers. This time as mayor also defined his trademark hands-on approach, when in 1993 he walked straight to a primary school and personally negotiated with a man who became known as the ‘human bomb, who had strapped himself to explosives and had taken a class of children hostage. When Sarkozy finally emerged from the school building carrying a child in his arms, his supporters saluted his immense personal courage, and ability to keep a cool head in a crisis. His detractors suggested a headline-grabbing stunt. He got re-elected.
The child he ‘negotiated’ and brought back from the school under siege
From 2002 on he was Minister of Budget, Minister of Interior and Minister of Finance under the two Chirac cabinets. Nevertheless Sarkozy decided to campaign for the 2007 presidential election as a maverick, promising “changements”, the French equivalent of Barak Obama’s “Change” or Julia Gillard’s “moving forward”. But it is his open and ruthless commitment to his career that earned him the nickname of Rastignac, in reference to Honoré de Balzac’s ambitious fictional character Eugène de Rastignac: an ambitious young man of noble, albeit poor provincial extraction, who did anything to succeed in Paris high society.
Indeed, like Honoré de Balzac’s ambitious fictional character from the 19th century novels La Comédie humaine, his drive to succeed in high society defined his entire life: he had to get the best portfolio, the most attractive wife, the most expensive watch (his Rolex is a source of national laughter) and when he declared he was thinking about running for president, he had to turn it into a statement betraying his impatience to succeed: “he was thinking about it everyday, and not just while looking at himself in the mirror ‘while shaving’ in the morning”.
In a country proud of its Littérature and Art de vivre, he rallied more votes than any other French president with the straight forward propaganda “Travailler plus pour gagner plus” (work more to earn more). Albeit the obvious connection to the myth of le Veau d’Or (the Golden Calf), Catholics gave him their bulletin.
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1660), L’Adoration du Veau d’Or
Unusually, young white working suburbia also voted for his project of promoting entrepreneurship as well as being a ‘national protector’. Even out-fashioned variety singers from the seventies joined in celebrating. Watch this video with caution: this is Mireille Mathieu, a precursor to the Celine Dion school of variety, who sang Place de la Concorde in Paris on the night of his presidential victory (warning: it’s totally has-been).
Casse-toi, pauv’ con!
Unfortunately, the honeymoon did not last long after this tremendous victory. Inappropriate celebrations broke the respect due by all French to their directly elected President.
On the night of his victory, his second wife Cecilia already knows she won’t be staying
Unlike what he had announced before the ballot, he did not retreat to reflect on his daunting task in an ascetic monastery, but joined an exclusive party at one of Paris most select restaurants Le Fouquet’s, among his closest sponsors of the inner circle (the Premier Cercle). They were the happy few of the new regime, soon to be nicknamed la bande du Fouquet’s, and a future symbol for collusion.
Then, no later than a month in office he spent his summer holidays cruising the Mediterranean Sea on the luxury Yacht of magnate Vincent Bolloré, his so-called “brother” and one of the richest shareholder on the Parisian financial market. Those debut moments had sealed the public perception: no matter what Sarkozy would do, he would appear to most as the president of the 1%.
His sudden divorce from his second wife Cecilia who had been working by his side as a ’special advisor’ during his whole political career (but notoriously did not vote for the final job application of his life) also illustrated a concern regarding his ability to unite the nation. The point was not such much to mock a family drama that could happen to anyone, but to observe how he staged it and sacrificed his family to fulfil his political ambitions. Then his rushed subsequent marriage with Carla Bruni – Italian singer and former model – was great source of laughter to the French.
Saving private Nicolas: a new first lady had to be found asap. Some matchmaker friends came to help.
The climax of this vaudeville period was his childish and inappropriate “Casse-toi, pauv’ con!” (“Go to hell, you asshole!”), which he barked at a protestor at the iconic Salon de l’Agriculture (a kind of equivalent to the Royal Easter Show in Australia). The trouble is that he picked the wrong place to do that. Indeed, like it or not, this agricultural show is meant to be an annual semi-religious pilgrimage for politicians in a France still deeply respectful of her farming roots. The event is held each year in the capital so that the disconnected urban Parisians can symbolically re-unite with envoys from the country in the celebration of the French farming industry. This outburst confirmed for many that Sarkozy was an individual mainly driven by contempt. Commentators noted that he desecrated the ‘mystic’ out of the presidency.
He reinforced this perception through his foreign policies. It started with racist statements in a shameful speech (translation here) in front of a bemused audience on July 2007 in Dakar, Senegal about “Africans who have not been able to enter History” (translation: you guys remained in a salvage state, while we Westerners went on to write world history – nice…). It went on with the sacking of François Bockel, his Secretary to Foreign Cooperation on the request of Omar Bongo (president of Gabon since 1967) after Bockel had denounced the corruption of Françafrique: a mafia-like system between France and African autocrats mixing politics and corporations to promote French interests in her former colonies.
The climax on his Foreign Affairs fiasco was reached with the grand reception of Muammar Gaddafi who planted his ‘Bedouin tent’ in a Parisian palace and signed a nightmarish governmental agreement on nuclear cooperation on July 25, 2007 (see the document here)… with the guy who had sponsored the Lockerbie flight bombing, and was to be overthrown four years later by his very same newly-found friend (even with all the benefit of the doubt, you start to get why people started to challenge his consistency).
December 2007, first state visit of Muammar Gaddafi in France since 1973
So shameful was this event that even some of Sarkozy’s own ministers protested given Gaddafi’s record. They were simply instructed to shut up. He also agreed not to meet the Dalaï-Lama while his political party signed a Memorandum for Cooperation with the Communist Party of China. Sarkozy was clearly determined to act as a salesman ready to any compromise to promote the ‘Made in France’: from nuclear generators and jet fighters.
To be clear, ever since Richelieu inaugurated Realpolitik in 17th century Europe torn apart for permanent warfare, bribes and dodgy contracts have always been done between States. But to paraphrase a quote often attributed to the 19th century German chancellor Bismarck “like sausages, they are done backstage, hidden from public eye”. Previous presidents tried to save the face of France, the so-called patrie des droits de l’Homme (Land of Human Rights) with politically correct speeches on the necessary progress of democracy: like Mitterrand did about Africa or Chirac against the War in Iraq. By departing from this symbolism Sarkzoy could have made it look like an improved and welcome transparency. Instead by a bizarre twist, he spoiled the opportunity and he appeared even more cynical.
Paris vaut bien une messe, Henri IV, 1593 (“Paris is well worth a mass”… while converting from Protestantism to Catholicism to be accepted as King of France)
To balance this record, Sarkozy also opened the widest public consultation on environmental policies: the Grenelle de l’environnement, which was made to be a key event echoing Les accords de Grenelle (the agreement of Grenelle) signed between the government and the unions which had violently protested in May 1968, and which had redefined French Industrial Relations for the decades that followed.
The process delivered two set of laws that reshaped the French environmental, from preservation, to energy efficiency, and renewable energies, etc. (with the noticeable exception of nuclear energy – still a no-go area). But then, two years later, patatra.. he withdrew with one hand what he had allowed from the other and abruptly shifted position while addressing farmers with: “l’environnement, ça commence à bien faire” (enough with the environment), explaining that the pressure of environmental lobbies on the farming industry was becoming too much to bear and an impediment to economic growth…
Even his personal style has been suffering the same erratic back flips. During the 2007 campaign he emphatically declared that he was a changed man from his earlier days in politics, that he had mellowed and had developed empathy because he had understood how tough life can be. His entourage announced several times that this time, “it was different”, he has truly changed, he now wore the mantel of the presidential function, with ‘humility and wisdom’ (!). Unfortunately any progress he could have made on that front too has been systematically undermined by his own outbursts (see here losing it in front of an American journalist and insulting his own press secretary because he didn’t appreciate the tone of the interview.
Crisis, what crisis?
Oh and, by the way, there is an economic crisis going on, which should be the key issue of the campaign: in other words, what society do we want in a post GFC environment, given the project of a neoliberal Europe has been brought it its knees by Bond markets and that the very idea of modern welfare, seen until now as progress, is now challenged by mainstream politicians all over the world (see the Australian Shadow Treasurer calling for the end of the “Age of entitlement”).
Unfortunately for a politician from the Right who traditionally feels a sense of entitlement when it comes to economic matters, Sarkozy’s record is far from being glorious on that front either. He lost the AAA rating of the French debt after he repeated he would do anything to save it. He played a central role in the evolution of the European Central Bank to stablise the Eurozone but he merely appeared as the sidekick to Merkel, and after selling the Merkozy alliance as a reason to vote for him, they finally ‘committed suicide’ a few weeks ago as he pandered to anti-euro opinions by the end of his campaign.
In fact, instead of discussing systemic societal choices, he preferred sensationalised populist themes such as the invasion of Muslim ‘halal’ food together with migrants from Africa, the cost of the driving license (no kidding) and his preferred trump card: security and delinquency. He tried to score points after the killings in Montauban and Toulouse but polls stood still. Just a week ago he did venture on the economic front but that was to rant against the Financial Times, accusing it of ‘economic orthodoxy’ (remember: le laissez faire ça suffit – Le Laissez-Faire is over!), whereas he was praising subprimes just five years ago.
As we have reached the end of this campaign, it seems that people have stopped listening. The last polls reported a 10% margin in the second round to his major opponent François Hollande who played deaf-and-dumb to avoid any head-to-head controversy and hopes to harvest this general anti-Sarkozy sentiment.
Marine Le Pen, François Bayrou, Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Three other candidates have particularly benefited from his demise:
- Marine Le Pen who inherited the National Front and glued ’some’ socialist values to its original nationalist program (yes.. *very* brown shirt stuff). Sarkozy’s party tried hard to appeal to her electorate with speeches about the superiority of the Western civilisation for instance, but his obvious failure to reduce insecurity (perceived or real) after a decade in power does not appeal to this hard-core constituency.
- François Bayrou, who has strong roots in South Western France. He is in a tradition of ‘the pure provincial against the evil corrupted Parisian politicians’. He called for national unity against the growing Debt with not much details about the way to do it, and is a refuge for small-l Liberals in their hatred for Sarkozy.
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Left Front candidate who united with the Communist Party and surprised many observers by being popular well beyond the traditional boundaries of the ‘radical Left’. He stands against the banking industry with radical policies on regulation and minimum wages. He wants to be the candidate of the 99%.
The Die Is Cast… The French living in Australia have now voted, and France is on the way. The first two candidate will go to the second round in 2 weeks. One of them will be the next president.
{ NKN, Paris – leLaissezFaire 22 April 2012 -
Post to be refreshed and updated as the results of the votes start to be known }
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