Alain Juppé, a former prime minister who rebounded in politics after a criminal conviction in a 2004 corruption scandal, announced on Wednesday that he was seeking the nomination of France’s main conservative party for president, reports The New York Times.
Mr. Juppé, 69, the mayor of Bordeaux who was prime minister under former President Jacques Chirac, said on his personal blog that he was joining the presidential race because he wanted to “respond in a convincing way to the questions haunting the French.” He characterized himself as a unifier who could calm the “useless tensions” polarizing France.
Mr. Juppé's decision to seek the nomination of the rightist Union for a Popular Movement comes as the party has been mired in a leadership crisis and the Socialist Party of President François Hollande faces dwindling public support, with the ascendant far-right National Front seeking to fill the electoral vacuum.
Analysts said that Mr. Juppé could face an uphill challenge to win the nomination if his fellow party member and the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, decides to enter the race. Though still reeling from a corruption investigation in which he was recently questioned by the police, the charismatic and voluble Mr. Sarkozy remains popular among his party’s ranks, even as he remains a divisive figure among the French.
Mr. Juppé said he would compete in the party primaries, which he said he expected to take place in the spring of 2016. The presidential elections are scheduled for 2017.
Mr. Juppé, who was foreign minister when Mr. Sarkozy was president, is considered a solid, skilled and courteous politician, and a foil of sorts for the more flashy Mr. Sarkozy, over whom he was said to have acted as a moderating force.
During the conflict in Libya in 2011, Mr. Sarkozy reportedly joked that to conduct airstrikes, it would be necessary “to step over the body of Juppé.”
The son of a landowner, Mr. Juppé is the product of France’s elite institutions, including the École Nationale d’Administration, the traditional training ground of France’s political ruling class.
He was a close ally of former President Jacques Chirac, and worked for him in the 1990s when Mr. Chirac was mayor of Paris. Mr. Juppé became ensnared in a scandal over fake jobs at City Hall, and was convicted in 2004 of misusing public funds. He received an 18-month suspended jail sentence and was banned from holding elected office for 10 years. He appealed, and the ban was reduced to one year.
Mr. Juppé rebounded and was re-elected mayor of Bordeaux in 2006. He is considered a successful manager there, which has helped bolster his popularity as a national figure.
Mr. Sarkozy has not officially entered the race for his party’s nomination and it remains to be seen whether Mr. Juppé will face off with his former boss.
Read more of this report from The New York Times.