For a long time it was a taboo subject. It may have been something that Nicolas Sarkozy's adversaries on the Right delighted over in private but they refused to discuss it in public for fear of being seen as bad sports. So when these internal opponents spoke of the former head of state in public they spoke briefly about his term of office, praised his energy while regretting that it often bordered on the excessive and highlighted their fundamental policy differences with him, but they never spoke of his judicial travails. No mention of him being placed under formal investigation after phone taps suggested he tried to induce a French judge to pass on confidential information, nor of him being similarly investigated for “illegal” funding of his 2012 election campaign, a scandal known as the Bygmalion affair. Nor was there any mention of the many other political and financial judicial cases in which around 30 of his old allies are currently entangled. All that was strictly kept for off the record comments.
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Until now. Fifty days before the first round in the Right and centre's primary election to choose a presidential candidate for 2017, and just two weeks before the first television debate between the candidates, the gloves are finally coming off. It was Sarkozy's former prime minister, François Fillon, who first shattered the silence on August 28th at a gathering in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in central western France. “Those who don't respect the Republic's laws should not be able to stand for election in front of the voters. There's no point talking about authority when one is not irreproachable oneself. Who can imagine General De Gaulle being placed under investigation?” asked Fillon.
Initially Sarkozy supporters found the comments amusing, feeling sure they would come back on Fillon himself. For until now, it is true, anyone on the Right who has sought to raise the issue of Sarkozy's legal problems has found the criticism rebounding on them. They have been branded as divisive by a Right still scarred by the bitter in-fighting between Fillon and Jean-François Copé in 2012 over the presidency of the UMP (now Les Républicains). However this time the attack did not have the effect that Sarkozy's supporters expected and hoped for, something which says a great deal about the way the former president's political situation has changed. For the first time it feels as if the numerous legal affairs that surround him could be fatal to Sarkozy's chances of becoming president in 2017. That is precisely why his former allies, now his opponents, are seizing on those affairs in public.
The most violent attack came last week from fellow primary election candidate and former minister Jean-François Copé who, as an 'assisted witness' in the Bygmalion affair, decided to break his silence on the political-judicial plot of which he believe he is a victim. “Bygmalion is simply the story of a campaign going off the rails,” he told Le Monde. “When we go more than 15 kilometres an hour over the speed limit, we get sent to court. As for him, he wants us to elect him so he he doesn't have to go to court,” said Copé, effectively accusing Sarkozy of wanting to be president to postpone the judicial cases ranged against him.
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On top of Copé's comments came an intervention by Franck Attal, former director of the events subsidiary of communications firm Bygmalion, who organised some of Nicolas Sarkozy's meetings during the 2012 presidential campaign. In an investigation broadcast by the 'Envoyé Spécial' programme on public broadcaster France 2 on September 29th, Attal, who is himself under formal investigation, detailed the way in which Sarkozy's campaign accounts were doctored in a system of double billing (among other sleights of hand) to end up at more than 45 million euros. The legal cap for election spending is 22.5 million euros. “The truth is not a truth that exonerates me,” Attal declared. “It would have been noble if the people who are seeking the highest functions of state at least adopted the same behaviour as me … I am ready to explain myself with Nicolas Sarkozy in a television studio, and for us to debate the facts that relate to my actions in this affair, argument by argument.”
The former president, meanwhile, continues to fight against being placed under formal investigation – which is one step short of charges being brought – over the 2012 campaign funding affair and the way it has been interpreted by the media. Sarkozy insists that the only matter for which he is being reproached is the “formal” offence of exceeding his campaign spending limit, as if the justice system had not imputed any intention on his part to do so. Yet on September 5th, 2016 the Paris prosecution authorities called for the former president to be sent for trial over “illegal” financing of his campaign, and accused Nicolas Sarkozy of having “knowingly” underestimated his spending.
“Absolutely not, it's untrue! It's false information,” Sarkozy, said on the 'L’Émission politique' political programme on France 2 on September 15th. Then on September 19th, Sarkozy's campaign coordinator for the primary election, Gérald Darmanin, claimed on BFMTV news station: “Nicolas Sarkozy was put under investigation for the overspend, and just for the overspend, in his campaign accounts. It was the Paris prosecution's press release that made a mistake, which has been recognised.”
In the face of the damning investigation by the 'Envoyé Spécial' programme, Sarkozy supporters have chosen to attack the journalist who carried it out as well as the public broadcaster France 2 which, after many twists and turns, finally broadcast it. “Is that the ethics of public service? Is that the objectivity of news? Bravo Madame Ernotte [editor's note, Delphine Ernotte, president of public broadcaster France Télévisions of which France 2 is a part],” declared Sarkozy loyalist and former education minister Luc Chatel. Another Sarkozy loyalist, senator Roger Karoutchi, went one step further. “There's a problem with the public service but we'll see about that later,” he warned.
Other candidates in the Right's primary election have also spoken about the 2012 election funding affair, as well as other scandals. “It's a scandal because public money has disappeared,” said Fillon of the election funding affair. “For months and months I have been demanding that justice be done and that justice be done within a reasonable time.”
The former prime minister said that without wishing to “pass judgement”, he nonetheless regretted the existence of a “kind of relativism in our country in relation to all these affairs, the feeling that fundamentally none of it's serious and that it's always been like this. But this relativism has a consequence: and that's the rise of the [far-right] Front National,” warned Fillon. Another candidate in the November primary election, Sarkozy's former agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire, has meanwhile taken to “trolling” his ex-boss by Tweeting, during the broadcast of the France 2 investigation, a link to his own online counter showing his campaign donations and spending, with the hashtags #transparence and #EnvoyéSpécial (see below).
However Sarkozy's greatest rival, the former prime minister Alain Juppé, who was in a meeting at Villeurbanne, near Lyon, in eastern France at the time the television investigation was broadcast, has not said a word on the subject. The mayor of Bordeaux, who was himself convicted in 2004 for his role in the creation of fictitious jobs at City Hall in Paris, is maintaining a strict silence on the affair, judging that he does not need to venture into such territory to remain the favourite in the polls. That is why he has in general avoided personal attacks, leaving it to his supporters as well as the other primary candidates – who are likely to support him after the first round of voting in which Sarkozy and Juppé are favourites to come top – to criticise his main rival more openly.
'Sarkozy supporters are preparing for his defeat'
The campaign in 2012 is not the only election whose legacy is hampering Sarkozy's efforts to win the November primary. For three years the French judiciary has also been investigating suspicions of massive Libyan funding of his 2007 presidential campaign, based in particular on an official Gaddafi regime document, revealed by Mediapart, which gave details of an agreement in principle to pay 50 million euros to the Sarkozy campaign. This document was dismissed as a “crude forgery” by Sarkozy but has since been authenticated by technical analysis ordered by the judicial authorities. To this document one can now add the notebook kept by former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem, who was found dead in the River Danube in 2012, in which details of some payments were recorded in 2007.
With the exception of diehard Sarkozy supporters who, like the boss of the Les Républicains MPs in Parliament Christian Jacob, continue to dismiss such evidence as “ridiculous”, the nature of the financing of the 2007 campaign is starting to seriously intrigue Sarkozy's former allies. Mediapart questioned MEP Jérôme Lavrilleux, former deputy director of the 2012 campaign, who has also been placed under investigation in the Bygmalion affair, at his office in the European Parliament on September 28th. “Nicolas Sarkozy has himself declared to the judges that he carried out the same campaign in 2012 as in 2007, in the same halls, with the same resources, no more, no less,” said the MEP. “Yet the judicial investigation shows that the campaign in 2012 cost 50 million euros rather than the authorised 22 million. In 2012 it was the party which made up the difference and paid the service providers [editor's note, illegally], there was no cash. But in 2007? It indeed means that there was cash in 2007.”
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When asked what might have been paid for in cash in the 2007 campaign Lavrilleux, a close ally of Jean-François Copé, replied: “I don't know, ask the question. What I do know is that following the 2012 presidential electioneer [editor's note, when he was still working at the UMP party] some staff representatives came to see me to complain. Apparently there was grumbling in the corridors. They explained to me, 'It's the first time that the party's employees have not had a cash bonus.' I gather that in 2007 the staff who had worked on the presidential election received the equivalent of one to three months' pay in cash!” Jérôme Lavrilleux suggested that the judicial authorities should trace the origins of this money.
The last week of September was a nightmare for Nicolas Sarkozy, as he saw his former chief spy, Bernard Squarcini, former head of the internal intelligence agency the DCRI (now the DGSI), placed under formal investigation, for influence peddling. Even worse, though, was the publication of a book by one of his former closest advisors at the Elysée, Patrick Buisson. In La Cause du Peuple ('The People's Cause'), published by Perrin, Buisson serves up a vitriolic portrait of the former president whom he describes as a “narcissistic Cartesian diver [editor's note a figurine which falls or rises in water according to the pressure] with aviator Ray-Bans”.
Not content with portraying him as a man without convictions, Sarkozy's former advisor also accuses him of having deliberately allowed clashes to continue during protests against plans for a new employment contract for young people in 2006. Sarkozy was then interior minister and the tactic was apparently designed to weaken Sarkozy's rival, the then-prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who suspected as much at the time. “These are Nicolas Sarkozy's comments. They are comments that I report very faithfully. I report these comments, comments which incidentally I didn't need to record as they were sufficiently striking to remain etched in my memory,” Buisson told the evening news bulletin on France 2. “I didn't need to record them, he said it very willingly and to people other than me. It was part of his weaponry. It was his Waterloo. And that is the entire Sarkozy system, right there, where to say is to do. No, to make believe.”
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As is his custom, the former president decided to counter these accusations by playing the martyr. “When you're candidate for the presidency of the Republic you need to have thick skin, very thick … you don't retreat, even in the face of base acts, even in the face of outrageousness, even in the face of calumnies, even in the face of betrayal,” he said during a visit to the Oise département or county north of Paris on September 28th, reverting to the familiar refrain he has employed since his political comeback. “Those who think that it's possible to discourage me should know that they will get discouraged before me,” he said.
Unsurprisingly Sarkozy's supporters followed suit by falling back on another argument that has been heard many times: that if Sarkozy is being attacked it is because he represents a challenge. “We are challenging the system? So much the better. What counts are the French people,” the LR MP Guillaume Larrivé Tweeted, without specifying if the “system” he was referring to was the same one in which Nicolas Sarkozy has participated since he was first elected, as mayor of the well-heeled west Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, in 1983. “What counts is the programme that Nicolas Sarkozy puts forward and if he is attacked, it's because this programme upsets people,” said LR MP Éric Ciotti on BFM-TV.
Campaign manager Gérald Darmanin, commenting on Buisson's remarks, said it was simply “episode 8 or 9 of what we've experienced since 2007 when it comes to anti-Sarkozyism”. This final comment caused some mirth among Alain Juppé supporters. “They always speak about anti-Sarkozyism, but without ever asking themselves who really creates it,” said someone close to the mayor of Brodeaux. “As fas as they're concerned, it's always others who are responsible.”
Former staff, judges, opponents in the primary election....because the list of those responsible for this anti-Sarkozyism is never quite long enough to absolve the former head of state and pass him off as a victim of a massive conspiracy, his supporters have just added another group to it – the Left. Apparently the Left is so fiercely opposed to the return of the ex-president that, claim his people, they will be prepared to take part in the Right and centre's primary election in November to vote against him. It is an open election, and anyone can take part provided they are on the electoral roll, pay a 2-euro fee and sign a pledge saying they share the values of the Right and centre. The LR's spokesman Guillaume Peltier, who has been dubbed “baby Buisson” and who co-founded the hard-right La Droite Forte movement, has started a petition in a bid to avoid what it calls this “manipulation, a genuine socialist coup d'État”. It is a controversy that has, once again, amused certain Juppé supporters. “They're preparing for the defeat,” said one.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter