In a long interview with (the usually friendly) Figaro, Nicolas Sarkozy very aggressively rejects the loud and mounting criticism coming against him, including from the ranks of the right-wing majority, backs down on nothing and tries to brazen it out, Bush-style. A summary of the recent crises and his answers.
- His son's nomination at the presidency of EPAD
Jean Sarkozy is about to be "elected" to the presidency of the (very rich) organism which runs La Défense, Paris's massive business district. This has triggered a massive protest storm as the left and a part of the right are appalled by the obvious nepotism. Sarkozy is vigorously defending his son, claiming he was properly elected as a local councillor and thus has a legitimate claim to the job, and should not be prevented from it because of who his father is. He of course ignores the fact that the current EPAD president was specifically pushed out by Sarkozy (he is hit by an age limit, which could have been waived by a decision of Sarkozy père), that the local councillor who should have logically taken up the job was offered a plum job by Nicolas Sarkozy to resign from his current position, and that Jean Sarkozy's electoral legitimacy comes from a local election in the wealthiest suburb of Paris where any rightwing candidate gets 90% of the vote (and whose mayor was Sarkozy Nicolas for 30 years). But he is not backing down and there is little others can do to block things, unless it has electoral consequences. The second round of the by-election where Sarkozy close friend David Douillet runs this Sunday could be an important element here;
- The Mitterrand-Polanski polemic
Frédéric Mitterrand, the culture minister (and nephew of former president François Mitterrand) has been embroiled in successive scandals over the past 2 weeks. First, he had some strong words about the Polanski arrest, claiming that it showed "the darker side of America, the one that scares us all." The French population, like a lot of Americans has been appalled by the uncompromising defense of Polanski, and the casual dismissal of the charges aganst him, by many prominent intelectuals, and Mitterrand's words were widely seen as excessive, especially from a senior government member. Then it came out that in semi-autobiographic book written 4 years ago he wrote very ambiguously about paying for sex with "boys" in Thailand. Sarkozy has chosen to stand by his minister, rejecting calls for his resignation, and as the book extracts were unearthed by the racist National Front, Sarkozy has even accused the socialists of abandoning their values in "allying themselves" with the hard right in criticizing Mitterrand. In today's interview, he renews his support and his accusations. Again, this is unlikely to change unless there are political consequences to that position (many rightwing politicians are saying that they are getting massive feedback from their voters who are shocked by the whole episode, and worry about votes going to the hard right in the regional elections early next year);
- tax issues
There has been increasingly vocal criticism from the right (including former PM Alain Juppé saying that Sarkozy was "fucking with local politicians" (se foutre de la gueule du monde) regarding several new tax changes, including the recently announced carbon tax (supposed to not lead to any tax incrase, as the same amount is paid back, in a flat way, to all citizens, but nevertheless stil lseen as a new tax) and the suppression of the taxe professionnelle, an obsolete, badly-designed tax which nevertheless provides significant revenues to local authorities, and whose suppression requires compensation by the central government (it is the modalities of such compensation which Juppé criticized). In addition, Sarkozy wants to stick to the "fiscal shield" ie the rule that no taxpayer should pay more than 50% of its yearly income - meaning that all new tax increases specifically do not apply to the richest who already reach that limit. In a context where budget deficits are ballooning, many on the right worry about it and want him to do something about it. In his interview, Sarkozy boldly states that he won't increase taxes, and that he doesn't worry about the deficit, as it is lower than in the UK...
As usual, Sarkozy brags about his supposed results - that he cut bankers down to size, that France went through the crisis better than others thanks to his policies, that he is doing better in mid-term elections than any previous president (which is not true, the socialists have actually won almost all recent by-elections), and that he is generally "modernising" France to make it "fairer..."
But basically he is following the Bush route - do whatever he wants, lie about it pretty much openly, and not back down unless forced to, which doesn't happen very often as he holds most of the levers of power right now and uses them beyond what was traditional. The only thing that may change that is unfavorable results at elections that cannot be spun away (like the extremely low 28% that his party got at the last European elections, which was somehow presented as a victory because the left was split between the socialists and the greens). So we'll have to watch the Douillet by-election this week-end and the regional elections early next year for some possible toning down - but he'll still have full powers until 2012 in any case.