I don’t know whether reports of Nicolas Sarkozy’s performance at his first major international press conference have been taken up by the British press. Here there is something less than enthusiasm for writing about it, although the video is circulating on the web. It’s hard to believe it’s genuine – the way he moves is so odd it looks faked. Certainly if it isn’t, then his behaviour is extremely strange. Some people say he was drunk (Sarkozy claims he doesn’t touch alcohol), others that he was stoned, yet others that he had OD-ed on vitamins. If the video is genuine then he is acting as if he were all those things at once.

He arrived late, and alone to answer questions about his first major international meeting, a summit of the world’s most powerful countries. According to a report in Le Monde by Richard Werly, who was one of the few French-speaking journalists present (the anti-globalisation demonstrators had cut off the world’s press from the hotel where G8 was happening), he seemed “in a state of euphoria, as if amazed to be there, in the holy of holies”, at the top of the world’s power structure. At the same time he made Werly think of “a trapeze artist who, in mid act gets an attack of vertigo”. “At G8 you don’t have a second,” the president explained. “You run from meeting to meeting.” According to Werly all his colleagues looked at each other somewhat disconcerted by this odd remark. Werly adds “This president looked like a rather lost adolescent…..there was something false in the way he spoke. That evening he was not the French head of state.” But for Werly, the worst aspect was that “he didn’t seem well prepared by his advisors for his first diplomatico-médiatique punching-ball”, during his time on stage “he didn’t talk about the state of the world, but about himself, his agenda, his manner, how calm he is.” These things apparently interest Sarkozy more. It’s worth looking at the clip of him later in the conference where he’s talking about how he dealt with the Russian menace: he has pulled himself together but he nevertheless seems on something stronger than water.

But to me the worst part is that the French press have not talked about it. Belgian TV news showed the clip, with a wry comment. Le Monde published Richard Werly’s account, written for the Swiss paper Le Temps. I would say they took it mainly to counter the rumours circulating on the web about the president taking alcohol, drugs and amphetamines. The conference took place on the 7th June, Le Monde published Werly’s article on the 13th, and now, on the 15th, you have to find it by using their search engine, it doesn’t seem to be on their normal web-site. The strange behaviour of Sarkozy’s wife the day before was scarcely mentioned either: she had, without officially excusing herself, not turned up for the dinner given by her German hosts for the spouses of the G8 heads of state. She had to organise her daughter’s birthday party, was the reason given afterwards. In other words an annual family event takes precedence over international diplomacy. Well, at least now we know where her priorities are.

But again, it’s the press silence which bothers me: we know that the editor of Paris Match was sacked by Sarkozy for putting on the cover a photo of Cecilia with her lover. Is it fear of similarly losing their jobs which cows French editors? If it is, then it is to be deplored. More important still, since all this information is freely available on the internet, the web will become a French equivalent of the old Soviet-era samizdat and the official French press as ridiculed as was its Soviet counterpart. Oh, but maybe that’s what Sarkozy was talking to Putin about! How to muzzle the press (one of the few things Sarkozy does say in the video conference is that he and Putin talked about “la journaliste”, not mentioned by name but presumably referring to Anna Politkovskaya), and maybe it was Putin’s suggestions that made Sarkozy so happy?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 5:32 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.