Former president Nicolas Sarkozy's comparison between the phone taps placed on him and the actions of East Germany's notorious secret police the Stasi has provoked universal and bitter condemnation among his political opponents. From the president François Hollande to the socialist candidate to be mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, and including the prime minister, the interior minister, the justice minister and the president of the National Assembly, virtually every senior figure in the government and on the Left has accused the former head of state of undermining France's republican institutions and especially the judicial system. Labour minister Michel Sapin even suggested the attack was a “verbal coup d'état”.
Nicolas Sarkozy's extraordinary comments, unprecedented for a former French president, came in a comment article published in the right-wing Le Figaro newspaper, owned by UMP senator and billionaire industrialist Serge Dassault, on Friday March 21st. Breaking his self-imposed silence since losing the election in May 2012, Sarkozy violently attacked the telephone taps that have been placed on him, the contents of which were revealed by Mediapart on Wednesday. “If I [break this silence] it's because the sacred principles of our Republic have been trampled underfoot with an unprecedented violence and an unparalleled lack of scruples,” he writes.
The former president says that everyone who calls him now should know that their conversations will be eavesdropped by the judiciary. “This is not an extract from that marvellous (2006) film 'The Life of Others' on East Germany and the activities of the Stasi. This isn't about the actions of some dictator in the world against his opponents. This is about France,” writes the former president.
In the article Sarkozy says he trust the “impartiality” of the “immense majority” of judges in France, but attacks the way judges have behaved in relation to the phone taps, which were put in place as part of an investigation into Libyan funding of Sarkozy's election campaign in 2007. “I cannot accept that French political life only has room for underhand blows and crude institutionalisation.” And he adds: “I have never asked to be above the law, but I cannot accept being below the law.”
Sarkozy insists in the article that he only learned about the judicial eavesdropping on him via the media. “I learn from the press that all of my telephones have been tapped for the past eight months... That judges are listening to my discussions with French and foreign officials. That conversations with my lawyer have been unashamedly recorded,” he writes. And he is ironic about the claims that neither the interior minister Manuel Valls nor the justice minister Christiane Taubira knew about the phone-tapping. “I know, the justice minister was unaware, despite all the reports that she requested and received,” Sarkozy writes. “That the interior minister was unaware, despite the dozens of police officers who were assigned to my case alone. Who are we kidding? You'd laugh about it if it didn't involve such fundamental republican principles.”
Referring to his much-speculated return to politics and a 'rematch' between him and President Hollande at the 2017 presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that “today” he has no desire to return to the political fray. But he notes: “Finally, for all those who might fear my return, let them be assured that the best way to avoid that would for me to be able to live my life simply and calmly...in essence like a 'normal' citizen.” The last comment is a side-swipe at President Hollande who during the 2012 election portrayed himself as the “normal” candidate who would be a “normal” president. Some on the Right claim there is a plot by the Left to destabilise Nicolas Sarkozy and prevent him returning to politics.
Among the first to react to this written outburst was prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who said the ex-head of state had committed a “serious moral error” in questioning the “honour” of the police and judiciary in France. Then from Brussels, where he is attending a two-day EU Summit, President François Hollande also responded swiftly to his claims, dismissing any comparisons between modern-day France and Eastern Europe in the days of the Cold War. “To suggest that our country, our Republic, may not be based on freedom, is to introduce a doubt where there is none, and any comparison with dictatorships is clearly unacceptable,” said Hollande, who nonetheless made it clear he did not intend to get into a public “row” with his predecessor.
The interior minister Manuel Valls defended the police and judges against the attacks. “You cannot compare France to a dictatorship, you can't compare the French police and justice system to the Stasi, you can't call into question the judges.” He added: “Reading the article I get the feeling that Nicolas Sarkozy, overcome by a kind of rage, wants to destroy everything to protect himself, to protect himself from what I don't know, that's for the judicial system to say.” Another of those criticised in the ex-president's article, justice minister Christiane Taubura, also dismissed the claims. “Under the rule of law, the application of the law that allows judicial [phone] interceptions by independent judges cannot be compared to the work of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes,” she said in a statement, adding that she could not accept this attack on “French citizens and judges as well as the institutions of the Republic”.
Perhaps most aggressive of all was labour minister Michel Sapin, a close friend and ally of President Hollande, who described Sarkozy's comments as “in some ways a form of verbal coup d'état”. He said that to “dare to suggest that the French police or the French justice system are the same as the worst political police that we've known in East Europe and in Stalinist Europe” is like a “coup against the Republic's institutions”. And both he and the president of the National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, likened Nicolas Sarkozy's attacks on France's institutions to those by former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi against Italy's legal system. “What we're seeing here is a Berlusconi, in other words verbal assaults on the institutions,” said Sapin. “We're not going to paint a very pretty picture of France doing that.”
The green party Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) – who are members of the government - said they read with “astonishment” the “violence of the attack by the former president on the institutions which, not long ago, it was his duty to protect and ensure were respected”. The joint statement from the party's national secretary Emmanuelle Cosse and spokesman Julien Bayou described the parallels Sarkozy made with the methods of the Stasi as “grotesque and scandalous”.
Inevitably there was support for the former president from the Right. The president of the UMP, Jean-François Copé, said Nicolas Sarkozy's words had been “essential” given the “violence of the attacks he has been subjected to...it was very important what he's done, it was important for our political family to hear his voice”. Copé said the attacks by the Left on the article on Le Figaro showed “double standards”. He said that when the former president was attacked “it was never violently enough” yet when it was he who went on the offensive “it's always too violent”.
The UMP president said he also believed there was a clear element of political calculation in the timing of the revelations about Nicolas Sarkozy, in the run-up to this weekend's local elections in which the right-wing opposition hopes to make gains from the socialists. “In the periods before elections we speak in a balanced manner about the issues...yet here for the first time we find a campaign that systematically raises questions about my political family and my political family's leaders and never about the Left,” said Copé.
Former UMP minister Nadine Morano went even further, claiming there was a “an orchestration, an instrumentalisation that is doubtless run by the president of the Republic himself”, because the Left was afraid that Sarkozy might return to front-line politics. Meanwhile UMP vice-president Guillaume Peltier spoke of a “dirty tricks unit” at the top of the state apparatus, raised the suggestion that journalists who are “attacking” Sarkozy have been received at the Elysée Palace, and attacked interior minister Manuel Valls for wanting people to believe that he is the worst-informed man in France by not knowing about the phone taps.