No longer reaching for the moon, just mooning
François Fillon, who, if you remember, is France’s Prime Minister, says that the new Sarkozy – the one who says things to the press he doesn’t mean, who no longer seems able or even interested in improving his compatriots’ lives – is the product of his infatuation with (sorry, love for) Carla Bruni. Quoted by Le Canard Enchainé, the PM says that now “when you talk to him he doesn’t always listen, he cancels meetings. I wonder how all this is going to end.” In short, the president is behaving like a love-sick adolescent, allowing his sex-life (sorry, his deep lurve) to dominate his thoughts. Signora Bruni is now apparently installed with her own music-room in the Palace – the very place her very recent predecessor refused to live because it is so uncongenial. Now that Nicolas Sarkozy has fulfilled one adolescent dream, to be the most powerful man in France, he is living out another adolescent fantasy – pulling beautiful women (even if the press insists on calling her an ex-supermodel, as though her beauty were a thing of the distant past, and listing all her other lovers, including Charles Berling, Vincent Perez, Louis Bertignac, Arno Klarsfeld, Laurent Fabius, Eric slow-hand Clapton, Michael Jagger, Donald Trump, Kevin Costner, Jean-Paul Enthoven and of course his son, Raphaël Enthoven, by whom she had little Aurélien).
Meanwhile the above-mentioned Rahaël Enthoven has remarked, through his lawyer, that the president’s flaunting of his (Enthoven’s) son in front of the world’s press without seeking the permission of the boy’s father is illegal. But of course since the French president is untouchable by any French law, up go the Gallic shoulders, down go the corners of the Gallic mouth.
Another possible infraction of the law by the president: he told the press on Tuesday “you will be told about it [the wedding] once it has happened.” What about the legal requirement to publish bans? Sarkozy may be above the law, but Signora Bruni is not.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:46 am
In reply to the grown-up and serious seeming Francois Fillon, my feeling is that it will all end with his resigning in frustration with Sarkozy’s lack of seriousness before the end of the year.
Like almost all French politicians, Sarko is all talk and no trousers, style and no substance. He is turning out to be another Chirac: achieving his adolescent dream of becoming president and then not knowing what to do with his office, except enjoy its trappings. The French ruling class continues to let down the people by failing to tell the truth and pushing through difficult reforms.
France’s only hope is that French companies will take matters into their own hands, as the did in Germany.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I’m interested in how you think French companies could take matters into their own hands…..
and I’m also interested in what French company chiefs think about Sarkozy’s new engagement
with business…have any CEOs raised their heads above the parapet yet to express their views?
January 20th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
All three questions will probably answered later this week, when I get back from a seminar organised by the Aspen Insititute about how France is to re-invent herself. The list of people invited includes several CEO’s of companies both large and small, and I guess we will be talking about exactly that. If you are referring to the blog on flexisecurité, then I think many employers see it as a step forward - that part after all is relevant to them while the securité part is relevant mostly to the unemployed. Anything which gives them greater freedom to separate themselves from someone who turns out to have been a bad choice must help. But I also guess that there is disappointment because Sarkozy’s election promise to make things simpler (e.g. a single employment contract to replace the plethora of contracts and rules) has not been respected, instead he is adding more layers of confusion - as with the 35 hour week and over-time payments, the muddy field simply gets muddier. But then many CEO’s realise that national governments are only one factor in the equation, and no President can do much about the wider economic situation - especially if he is president of a country in the euro area, where the situation of other “partners” such as Germany have to be taken into account by the Central Bank