It's rare to be really moved by a television programme. That happened for me this week with a show on France 2 in which Hubert Védrine, a former Foreign Minister, interviewed Mikhael Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union. Old Gorby stirred some strong memories.
Védrine, a Socialist, was diplomatic adviser and spokesman for the late President Mitterrand at the end of the cold war. In the Thursday night programme, he took Gorbachev through the events that led to the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the nation that he headed.Gorbachev (pictured with Védrine below) has said a lot about the period. But Védrine's authority and gentle touch helped him open up and give a few insights. They went over the story of how this boy from the southern Russian farmland managed to rise to the top of the sclerotic Soviet state, then let it unravel, along with its empire. He remains bitter over what he sees as the west's betrayal of the emerging democratic Russia.
Back in 1985, when Gorbachev was picked by the Politburo (the Communist Party body that governed the USSR), we had not the tiniest inkling that the nuclear super-power was about to collapse peacefully.
By 'we', I mean the journalists and diplomats who were based in Moscow. I was Moscow bureau chief for Reuters news agency at the time. We cheered Gorbachev's arrival after the chain of sickly old men who had been running the country. He was different. He was 54,charming, spoke directly and had the touch of a western politician. But he had still come up the totalitarian machine and we never imagined that the grey apparatus and its KGB security arm would promote a man who would close them down. We knew the Soviet state was a sham, the economy was hollow and that the long-suffering people had no time for their rulers. But it did not seem anywhere near collapsing.We were too close to the story, living the odd life in that parallel universe where black was officially white. Though under KGB surveillance 24 hours a day, we were oddly attached to the place. We had a love-hate feeling for the country that Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire.
Gorbachev of course did not intend to scrap the USSR and was aiming for a more democratic version with his project for glasnost -- openness or transparency. He was caught up in the tide when the flood-gates opened in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.
He told Védrine that he came to understand very early as a young Communist official that the system was doomed. He described paying a "fraternal" visit to a Czech factory after Soviet tanks had put down the Prague Spring uprising of 1968. "The workers turned their backs to us. I understood why," he said. As an illustration of how things are not simple in Russia, he spoke highly of Yuri Andropov, the longserving boss of the KGB, who was his mentor. (My closest contact with Andropov, apart from seeing him in his open coffin, was when his Kremlin invited my daughter to a children's New Year party with kids from the high Soviet nomenklatura).
Gorbachev said that his first step to reform was at the funeral for Konstantin Chernenko, Andropov's short-lived successor. Newly appointed as Kremlin boss, Gorbachev summoned the heads of the satellite states of central Europe (known at the time as 'people's socialist republics'). He said he told the puppet leaders bluntly that they were on their own and that Moscow would not impede their people's desire for freedom.
Gorbachev recalled his first meeting with Reagan in November 1985. "My immediate impression was that I was facing a dinosaur," he told Védrine. Hearing that, I thought Wow, that was my impression too. I was in the room at the time, one of three pool reporters in the cottage in woods near Geneva. There was a fire crackling by their two arm-chairs. Gorby and Reagan made small-talk via their interpreters before we were ushered out to recount the event to the rest of the media [that's the moment in the picture. The interpreters were behind the chairs]. 
You have to remember that only a year or two before, Moscow and Washington were accusing one-another of planning nuclear war. I had never been with Reagan before and was struck by how unfocused he seemed alongside the sharp new Soviet leader. The next autumn, as a Washington correspondent, I went to Reykjavik to report on the second summit. Gorbachev, to the horror of Reagan's advisers, almost persuaded the US president to sign away all nuclear weapons.
This week, we had confirmation from Jacques Chirac of western worries about Reagan's state at the time. Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister and friend of Reagan, told Chirac ahead of the following year's Washington summit that she did not believe that the US leader was up to facing Gorbachev.
Gorbachev talked sadly of western suspicions towards him and what he said was the cold refusal of the first President Bush to give Moscow a hand in its time of need. Prodded by Védrine, who was at Mitterrand's side in his meetings with the Soviet leader, Gorbachev said France was the most helpful of the westerners. Mitterrand still opposed the re-unification of Germany, along with Thatcher, and went to Moscow (with Védrine in tow) to ask Gorbachev to stop it.
By selfishing turning their back on Russia, under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, the west helped foment chaos and created a new European divide, pushing the western frontier eastwards, Gorbachev said. But he has no regrets about his attempt to recast the Soviet Union. "I lost as a man. But from the point of view of history, perestroika won," he told Védrine.
Gorbachev is not much loved in modern Russia. He is blamed for the mess that succeeded him. And as they salute the Berlin anniversary this week, the younger generation of western leaders may, I feel, not all realise how huge was the role of this single visionary man in ensuring the near bloodless end of the cold war.
Below, a picture that I took of Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв (Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev) with Raissa, his late wife and a little girl voting in Soviet "election" near our office just before his rise to power in 1985.
We have a ripe example of the linguistic minefield between France and Britain today. A French minister has caused offence in Britain by calling the Conservative Party autistic.
Pierre Lellouche, 58, the Minister for Europe, should have known better since he speaks pretty good English. His spokesman said that he was talking French when he had a brief telephone conversation with the Guardian while in a car between two meetings. But according to my Guardian colleague who spoke to him, he used only English [Day-after update. See footnote]. So Lellouche fell into the old language trap. He should have been aware that words often carry quite different tones on opposite sides of the Channel.
In France in recent years, autism has become a standard term in the political-media vocabulary. It does not shock. Handicap organisations complain about it, but the word has become a routine put-down for someone who seems determined not to listen to your point of view. Trade union leaders use it against the government. Teenagers use it in school yards. In Britain, of course, it is an outrage to use a metaphor that is akin to the old insult spastic.
Lellouche's remark has caused no surprise in France, but we asked Patrick Sadoun, a member of an association called the Sesame Autism Association what he thought. "The English are right to be shocked. I congratulate a country that reacts to this. I am horrified that French politicians, at the slightest occasion, call one-another autistic," he said.
Lellouche, a maverick with a sharp tongue, was voicing what the Sarkozy Government thinks in private of the Conservatives' hostility to the European Union. He was trying to shake up a party which seems headed for government next spring and with which he is allied. He used other strong language, saying the plans of David Cameron, the Conservative leader, were 'pathetic' and would 'castrate' Britain in Europe. "They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament," he said.
Lellouche does not seem to be very sensitive to the strong overtones of these words in English. Saying that someone's power has been émasculé in French is not as strong as saying that he has been castrated in English. Lellouche has been saying on the radio that he meant pathetic in the French sense of pathéthique -- meaning sad, like Tchaikovsky's symphony. The English sense is lamentable in French. He also said that he had no idea that autistic was offensive in English. These are among dozens of terms -- like miserable and misérable (destitute in English), seduction and la séduction (the act of charming or winning over) or ...politician versus politicien, which refers to petty politcking. A politician in French is un homme or une femme politique.
The word autistic has stung most in Britain because sensitivity over the condition has put its metaphoric use beyond the pale. France is less sensitive over using human iimpairment and physique in invective. Crétin is a more acceptable insult in French than English. Things are however changing. An association called Autisme France has been campaigning in recent years to have the media and politicians stop wielding the condition as an insult. "In colloquial French this designates someone in a bit of a bubble, who is a little dreamy," the association said recently.
The threshold of offensiveness is always moving. It is still acceptable in both languages to 'turn a deaf ear' or be 'blind' to something. The British call people dumb now in the American sense of stupid (which came via German). In French it remains acceptable to allude to bodily functions that are unmentionable in English. A senior radio commentator last night dismissed President Chirac's new memoirs as "chiantissime". That would politely be rendered as ultra-boring, but literally and crudely, it means that it provokes extreme excretion.
And then there is the matter of race. Anything remotely ethnic cannot be used metaphorically in English. France is not quite there yet. The French for speech-writer or ghost-writer is still un nègre -- a negro.
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Saturday Footnote: For the record, the original version of this post said that we did not know which language Lellouche had been speaking in. Later the same day, Lellouche's spokesman said he had been speaking French and there had been mistranslation, so I inserted that. Yesterday the Guardian said they only spoke English, so I corrected the first insert with a note. None of this changes the point of the post which is about Lellouche's linguistic gaffe. He confirmed on Europe 1 radio yesterday that he had been unaware of the English sense of the key words. He maintained the substance, that the UK Conservatives were in danger of sidelining Britain from Europe. CB]
Nicolas Sarkozy must be annoyed. Jacques Chirac, his former mentor and predecessor, has been snatching the headlines for nearly a week.. Hard on the heels of his indictment on ancient corruption charges,old Jacques has made a splash with his first volume of memoirs.
Usually quite private about his thoughts, Chirac unbuttons himself to some extent and settles scores with old rivals. The book, Chaque pas doit être un but [Every step must be a goal] has a terrible title. He says nothing about the sleaze around the Paris city hall during his 18 years tenure as mayor, but he provides a good glimpse into his four decades at the top of the French political pile.
A whizz through all 500 pages throws up a few nuggets. One of them involves Margaret Thatcher, the tough British Prime Minister with whom he did business while serving as President Mitterrand's premier from 1986-88.. I'm writing this from London today, so I'll start with her. The legend that Thatcher fought tooth and nail with Paris over EU spending takes a knock. Chirac says that he was a big admirer of the former "Iron Lady" and their closeness even made the late Mitterrand envious.
She was a fierce and stylish defender of British interests in her battles over EU spending and its farm policy, but she was always fair, Chirac writes. "Her inflexible, intransigent positions made her one of the most redoubtable personalities on the international scene...Her grandeur, in my eyes, stemmed first from the force of her conviction. She did not try to impose the authority of her point of view, but used all her energy to convince..." Under his premiership, Britain and France enjoyed a honeymoon, he said. "Our complicity even irritated Francois Mitterrand, who took umbrage in November 1986 at a Franco-British summit."
The former Gaullist leader, said his views on Europe were closer to those of Thatcher than of Mitterrand, a Socialist. In 1988, in the midst of her "handbagging" over EU spending, Thatcher agreed to "kick the matter into touch" to help Chirac's campaign -- ultimately unsuccessful -- for the presidency that spring, he writes. (Thatcher dealt directly with Chirac because he was the elected head of Government in "cohabitation" with the President, not appointed by him).
In November 1987, Thatcher told him of her fears for President Reagan on the eve of the Washington summit at which the USSR and the United States agreed to limit their intermediate nuclear forces (INF). "Ronald Reagan did not appear to her to be either intellectually or physically up to handling a long bout of negotiation," he writes. (I covered that summit and can testify to Reagan's shakiness).
The disclosure of the complicity between the pair undermines one of Chirac's most famous quotes of the period. After a heavy negotiating round with Mrs Thatcher in 1986, he asked aides: "What more does this housewife want from me ? My balls on a plate?"
Chirac writes for the first time of Laurence, 51, his elder daughter, who has made repeated suicide attempts and has been in psychiatric care with anorexia for three decades. He blames himself for neglecting his two daughters and wonders if this caused her illness. He makes no mention of his famous love life and talks of his devotion to Bernadette, his long-suffering wife, though she can be "too blunt" for him sometimes. His sexual initiation came while serving as a crewman on a merchant vessel at 18. In Algiers, the boatswain asked if he was a virgin. "It was very nice of him. It had to be done. He took me to the famous Casbah quarter... In the morning, I was no longer the same man."
Chirac writes with sadness and bitterness over his betrayal by two subordinates -- Sarkozy and Edouard Balladur, the Prime Minister who ran against him for the presidency in 1995. He writes off Balladur as scheming and out of touch. He is harsher with Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the President whom he served as Prime Minister in the mid-1970s. Giscard d'Estaing is vindictive, arrogant and self-obsessed he says.
He is gentler with Sarkozy, his former protege. "He had an iron will, which has not changed, to make himself indispensable, to always be visible. He was nervous, he would fuss over me, he was impatient to act and undeniably had a talent for generating publicity," he writes.Stronger stuff will come in the next volume, which covers his 12-year presidency.
Another surprise in the book is Chirac's high esteem for Mitterrand, the Machiavellian opponent who ran rings round the impetuous Gaullist when he was Prime Minister. He salutes Mitterrand as a political artist.
"The man I got to know during our meetings had excellent judgment and a tactical intelligence that I have rarely encountered in political circles,"
Chirac will hear tomorrow whether the Paris prosecutors are going to appeal against the examining judge's decision to send him for trial. They may bear in mind that over 70 percent of the country believe that the legal process must go on, despite the fact that he is France's most popular politician.
After a streak of damaging news, Nicolas Sarkozy has just switched channels. Forget the Culture Minister's sex tourism, presidential nepotism, political trials and a slide in Sarkozy's ratings. Attention must now turn to the matter of what it means to be French.
The ploy is transparent. The strings are too thick, to use a good French expression. By suddenly decreeing a four-month "great debate" on national identity, Sarkozy is reverting to the menu that won him the conservative vote in 2007. He will defend traditional values of Frenchness.
These are deemed to be under threat for a lot of reasons, including American-dominated globalisation and the financial crisis. The main fear in the minds of many arises from the minority of Arab and black origin who do not fit the old French model. In a speech last week, Sarkozy revived a line from his 2007 campaign, saying that Frenchness had been forged by the "singular relationship of the French to the land". In case anyone missed the point, he noted: "All French families have grandparents who at one time or another worked the land." (Hilariously, Sarko's speech was word-for-word the same one that he had delivered to an agricultural audience at the start of the year. He didn't apparently realise that his staff had cut and pasted.)
Sarkozy is a lifelong city-slicker with a Hungarian immigrant father and no farming grandparent but he knows that his theme is a sure-fire winner. It touches on a spectrum of public fears, which are by no means all unjustified.
Continue reading "What makes us French, Sarkozy asks" »
When the judge comes calling, French politicians always declare themselves "serene" because they are not guilty of anything. Today it was finally the turn of Jacques Chirac. From his luxury hotel in Morocco, he had his spokesman issue the traditional serene statement as France pondered on the prospect of putting its last president on trial. The charges that have caught up with Chirac, 76, are a trifle compared with the shenanigans that went on at the city hall during his 18-year-reign as the first Mayor of Paris since the 19th century. Against the wishes of the prosecutor -- an old friend -- the examining judge wants Chirac to stand trial over a couple of dozen allegedly fraudulent jobs on the city payroll when he was Mayor, from 1977-1995. Back in his 1980s and early 90s, when Chirac used the baronial city hall as his power base and seat for his Gaullist party, the mayoral machine was celebrated for this kind of largesse. Generous to a fault, Chirac commanded a grace and favour system that benefited friends, supporters and their associates. If you had the connections, someone in the Mayor's big private office could help your children with jobs or fix you up with a handsome Paris apartment at council-house prices. The son of Alain Juppé, Chirac's first Prime Minister, was among beneficiaries of such cut-price accommodation -- until he was exposed and forced to leave in 1996. Two of the charges facing the former President now involve the provision of chauffeurs on the mayoral payroll to a former prefect and a former trade union leader. Money was no object for the Chirac family, according to accounts from former insiders and judicial investigators. When Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, followed Jean Tiberi, Chirac's successor, as Mayor in 2001, his inspectors found that the city's tax payers had been funding 600 euros a day in food and drink for Jacques, Bernadette and Claude, their daughter. The funds did not even cover entertainment expenses, which were separate. Until today, the former President has escaped the legal fall-out from a period when the city hall was raking in millions of pounds a year in kickbacks from building contractors and other businesses. Several of Chirac's former lieutenants and about four dozen businessmen and former officials have been convicted in recent years for their role in the illicit payments and use of public money for financing the Rassemblement pour la République, the Mayor's party. The most prominent among them was Juppé, who received a suspended sentence and a brief ban on holding elected office in 2004 for corruption while he served as Mayor Chirac's deputy in the 1980s and 1990s. The fall-out from the case forced him to resign a cabinet post from President Sarkozy's first Government but he has bounced back as Mayor of Bordeaux. It is acknowledged in the political world that Juppé carried the can for his boss, who as president enjoyed immunity from prosecution for 12 years until Sarkozy succeeded him in 2007. But it was not always plain sailing. The cloud of sleaze dogged Chirac for much of his presidency, as it became ever clearer that the city administration had been a money machine. Until appeal courts confirmed a judicial ruling on his immunity in 2001, Chirac skirted disaster after the publication of a posthumous video tape made by Jean-Claude Méry, one of the RPR's clandestine financiers in the 1980s and early 90s. Méry depicted Chirac as the instigator and controller of the biggest kickback schemes. He claimed to have regularly collected suitcases of cash from donors and deposited them with the Mayor. At the same time, investigators found that Chirac, his family and friends, including a woman journalist, had recently made expensive trips to Indian Ocean resorts and the United States, with expenses paid in cash. The President's staff explained -- with difficulty -- that the money came from cash which he had legally accumulated when he had served as Prime Minister under President Mitterrand from 1986-88. Chirac shook off the brewing scandal by deploying his charm and an obscure word in a celebrated television appearance in September 2001. The sleaze allegations were "abracadabradantesque" -- pure fantasy -- he said. Nevertheless, the government of the time, under Lionel Jospin, put an end to the so-called "special funds". These were bundles of cash which were traditionally distributed to cabinet ministers once a month for use at their discretion. The money was supposed to be used to top up staff pay, but no records were kept. Chirac, who now enjoys his country's affection as its genial elder statesman, has always succeeded in 'passing between the raindrops', or staying dry, as the handy French expression puts it [passer entre les gouttes]. He has escaped serious scrutiny in other matters, such as persistent reports that he had held secret bank accounts in Japan, and may have had a second family there. This month, he was an invisible presence in the court in the so-called Clearstream trial. Dominique de Villepin, his former Prime Minister, was accused of plotting to smear Sarkozy and witnesses said that President Chirac had been involved. But the former President was not asked to testify. In yet another case, Charles Pasqua, a former Interior Minister and old Gaullist colleague, claimed this week that Chirac was implicated in bribery over arms sales to Angola in the 1990s. Pasqua was sentenced to 12 months' prison. The sentence was very stiff by the standards of French political corruption cases. Pasqua may never serve it but it is just possible that Chirac's alleged role will be investigated. Few people expect that case or yesterday's corruption charges to go far. Even if he is tried and convicted on the new city hall charges, the most Chirac can expect is a fine or suspended sentence. There is a lot of sympathy for the old man. His presidency achieved little and will probably be remembered by historians as an uneventful 12 years. His chief act in public memory was his opposition to George Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003. But he now enjoys the rank of most popular politician in France, according to polls. Even old foes think they should just leave him in peace.
I'm off for a few days this week. It's the Toussaint holiday, so time for the chestnuts and mushrooms in the Cévennes. Comments will be posted as usual, so please keep them coming. But I'm still on the steam modem.
This has not been a good week for airline pilots. Four American ones -- all employed by Delta, have been suspended for two blunders. Now we hear that Air France, the national carrier, has accused its pilots of dangerously sloppy flying.
The charge arises from a dispute between pilots and management over the Flight 447 disaster which killed 228 people off Brazil last June 1. There is a common thread in these three cases. It is the reminder that aircraft depend on human beings to pilot tham.
On Monday, a pair from Delta got muddled and put their Boeing down on a taxi-way at Atlanta instead of the runway. The other two, flying a Northwest Airlines Airbus from San Diego, failed to notice that they had flown past Minneapolis, their destination. That incident, which passengers did not even notice, has sparked a furore while the more dangerous Atlanta bungle has been largely ignored.
People imagine that jets these days are guided to their destination by a web of computers, satellites and other high technology. In reality, the automation is simply there to help the pilots, who use their judgment to keep everything the right side up. New technology is on the way, but airline crew still take "turn left, turn right" instructions from controllers over old-fashioned radio, as they have since the 1920s. They put the plane down on the runway by hand -- after making sure that it is the right one. Airliners have even landed at completely wrong airports quite recently. Fatigue, boredom, emotions and many other things can get in the way. It's surprising that they do not cause damage more often. Flying near Paris airport in a small plane I sometimes have to correct incoming airliners who have called our aeroclub frequency by mistake because it is only a few digits on the dial from the Charles de Gaulle tower.
No-one was hurt in the two US incidents. Old airline pilots recall getting away with worse. The Delta crew made their error after being asked to switch, at the end of a tiring night flight, from one runway to a parallel one. It was not fully lit for the approach and its instrument landing beacon was off. They were rushing to disembark a third pilot who had fallen ill. They were very lucky that nothing was on the long taxi-way that they mistook for the runway. The Northwest pilots (whose airline is now owned by Delta) have not said publicly what was going on when they flew past their destination. Initially they talked of being distracted by a heated discussion. They were initially suspected of having fallen asleep -- something which has befallen many pilots but usually not both at once. [November 1 update: The pilots have told investigators that they were were distracted by a discussion in which they had opened their laptop computers. They seem likely to lose their jobs.]
In the case of Air France, the story is complicated. The airline management is reacting to unrest among pilots over the way they have been blamed for recent incidents and accidents and especially the AF 447 crash. On Tuesday, the management sent all crew a memo headed: "Enough argument and false debate on flight safety." They accused "over-confident" crew of ignoring standard procedures and risking their aircraft. Too many foolishly believe that they have "mastered elementary risk" -- according to the text leaked today.
The management said it was especially unhappy with the way that pilots have blamed the AF 447 disaster on the Airbus A330 and on faulty airline practices. "There are no procedures to correct, no new ones to create," it said. The Unions are furious. "The bond of confidence between pilots and management is totally broken," said the SNPL, the moderate main union. The more radical minority unions are in open war, accusing Air France and the state accident investigators of trying to cover up serious flaws in the Airbus A330 by blaming the dead crew for the Flight 447 crash [previous post].
None of these three episodes do much to inspire the confidence of passengers who travel on these major world airlines. But they are nothing new. Flying stirs special emotion. People put up with carnage on the roads but are outraged by every mishap in the much safer air. When you think of the thousands of airliners aloft 24 hours a day, it is a huge achievement that human error does not lead to more trouble.
It will still be fascinating to find out what the crew on Northwest Flight 188 were up to on Wednesday evening as they forgot to land.
[Top photo from Air France advertising]
France Television prefaced its Jean Sarkozy interview (last post) with a report on funny flash-mob demonstrations in which young people wielded bananas like mobile phones (video). At the risk of trumpet-blowing, this blog can claim a little credit here.
I made the banana republic comparison in a slightly cheeky post the other day which was picked up by French media and the net.(Last week's Paris Match: De toutes parts, les critiques fusent. Charles Bremner, le chroniqueur du très sérieux « Times », parle même de « Banana république » dans son blog.)
The fruity image was taken up by Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, a former TV executive and reader of this blog, who set up a site www.bananarepublique.org. Several hundred people signed up for instructions to appear at 1.13 pm yesterday in about 20 towns around France in a mobilisation éclair (official French for flash-mob). The idea was to gather bananas, which become 'magic telephones' for calling the Elysée Palace and asking for a job at La Défense. A few dozen people made a splash in front of the TV cameras under the great Arch of la Defense yesterday afternoon (top picture).
Jérôme told me today: "The flashmob bananarépublique is a citizen's initative which I organised spontaneously with Olivier Auber and Gilles Misrahi after a chat on Twitter. I had read on your blog that you had revived the term 'banana république' and it's with that Twitter tag that we mobilised the internet. Part of this success naturally is due to you. Thanks to you, and the foreign press, our regime now has a few fewer bananas."
It was quite a coup for Bourreau-Guggenheim and friends to land up as the intro to Jean Sarko's big moment on the TV [watch here]. It is a little revenge for him. Regulars here may remember that last year he lost his job as chief of technical innnovation at TF1, the biggest network, for the offence of lèse-Sarkozy. He had written to his parliamentarian to criticise the president's new law against internet piracy. The e-mail was passed to the government and TF1, owned by a friend of Sarkozy, dismissed its employee.
And no, The Times is certainly not attempting to foment unrest. I'm just reporting this because I was rather tickled to have contributed to a French buzz.
Nicolas Sarkozy finally called a halt to the massacre. Assailed by world-wide ridicule, he pulled the plug on the scheme to catapault Prince Jean, his 23-year-old student son, to the head of La Défense business district.
Jean announced his withdrawal in one of those only-in-France moments, interviewed with reverence live on the evening TV news. Coached by Dad's aces from the Elysée Palace, Sarko Junior did quite a good job -- at imitating his father. His self-assurance and rhetorical touches were pure Sarko. Was it an error to claim such an august post at his tender age? "One never makes an error by being candidate in an election. It is not a fault to commit oneself," said Monsieur Fils. "My passion for political engagement is unaltered because it is unalterable," he concluded. He has got the language down with all that noble talk about 'combat' in service of the public
The suave, self-confident mini-Sarko is still on the very fast track, despite his lack of work experience and his struggle to finish his second year of university studies.
This is not even a pause in his fabulous destiny. He is still being elected today to a seat on the board of the Epad, the development agency of la Défense which commands a budget of 115 million euros a year. He is just not going to grab its chairmanship for the time being, as Dad had planned for December. He is also still being lined up by the President and his local barons to take over the Hauts-de-Seine département council in 2011.
But the affair has left a stain on Sarko senior. His breathtaking act of nepotism will not be forgotten, no matter how much he and his team blame the media. The final straw was a flash-mob demonstration at la Défense yesterday -- shown on TV -- in which people turned up holding bananas to their ears, mocking Sarkozy's republic [see later post].
Sarkozy's troops, having been forced to sacrifice their dignity in the impossible defense of the royal appointment, have been humiliated. Today, ministers and spokesmen are dutifully praising Junior's courage and congratulating him on his wise decision, which was the right thing to do, his great maturity and so on. If it was so right, one wonders why no member of the government or parliament said so before the presidential order to retreat ? I feel sorry for François Fillon, the Prime Minister, but at least he kept his head well down throughout the storm.
In a crowded field of flatterers, the prize for best courtier goes to... Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister and lifelong friend of le Président. He came on TV right after Jean and attacked "the lies, the contempt, the arrogance, the stupidity" of the opposition and media in the affair. He then saluted brave Jean -- who is his godson. ""This is a difficult moment for the son of the President. It is a moment that inspires respect," he said. Not -- as my teenage children say.
We don't get around very often here to faits divers -- that useful journalistic term for random, human-interest news events. Here is one with interesting implications.
It is the tale of a retired accountant from near Toulouse who ordered the kidnapping of a retired cardiologist in Germany over the weekend. The case is unusual. It goes back to 1982. André Bamberski, 72, the accountant [above], was on the radio explaining this morning how he paid 20,000 euros to have Dr Dieter Krombach, 74, [below] abducted in his home-town of Scheidegg in Bavaria on Saturday. He was dumped in the French city of Mulhouse on Sunday.
Public opinion is on Bamberski's side because his act in hiring a gang of east European kidnappers is seen as understandable. In 1995, Krombach was convicted in his absence by a Paris court of killing Bamberski's 14-year-old daughter Kalinka.The German authorities refused to take any action because their prosecutors had found that there was no case to answer in the 1980s. The French authorities made no serious attempt to seek Krombach's extradition, the father says.
Kalinka was found dead at Krombach's home in 1982. Bamberski's wife had moved in with the doctor. Bamberski alleged from the start that Krombach had killed his daughter with an injection in an attempt to rape her. After having the body exhumed, the French prosecutors brought homicide charges over a decade after her death. The Paris assize court sentenced Krombach to 15 years prison for "causing death by deliberate violence without the intention of killing" --roughly manslaughter in British law.
In the late 1990s Krombach was convicted in Germany of sexually abusing patients and he was struck off as a doctor, but Germany still took no action over the 1982 killing. Bamberski remained obsessed by what he considered to be an unavenged crime. He kept tabs on Krombach and campaigned in the media.
He said today that his principles as a Catholic meant that he had never imagined killing Krombach. Finally, this month, he met a man in a park in Germany and arranged the abduction. Krombach was left in Mulhouse,trussed up and badly beaten and Bamberski tipped off the police.
The upshot is that Krombach will be kept in France and will probably to be sent for a new trial in Paris -- the normal procedure after an initial conviction in absentia. "I have achieved my goal," Bamberski told today's Le Parisien. "My daughter's murderer will be tried.... It will be the moment to expose all the dysfuncion in this case...I feel relieved. I am in peace with myself." He said that he gave no instructions to have Krombach beaten. Krombach's lawyers are demanding his return to Germany, arguing that he was illegally abducted.
Bamberski was released on bail after his arrest on Monday. He has been charged in France with kidnapping and other offences, but says that he does not fear prison. He will probably face a lenient court in France. Beate Merk, the Bavarian Minster of Justice, has publicly condemned Babmerski's action. However Bavarian prosecutors may not get their hands on him because France refuses to extradite its nationals. The German police are meanwhile pursuing the alleged ringleader of the kidnap gang, a Kosovar who is said to be in Austria.
It's interesting that we have only had the French side of this story.
Have Parisians finally got the green message and stopped buying cars ? There has been an extraordinary 60 percent drop in vehicles registered with '75' plates that denote Paris since a new licensing system came in last April. Even more spectacular, nearly 80 percent fewer new cars have been registered with plates from the Seine-Saint-Denis, the rough northeastern suburbs that go under the number 93.
The explanation is simple. The locals are buying cars the same as usual, but taking advantage of the new system to hide their place of residence. Regular readers will recall the fuss which led to a hybrid system, in which people are allowed to pick the département and surrounding region of their choice for the car plates.
So Parisians are simply choosing other localities for their wheels to spare themselves the stigma of being city slickers from the arrogant capital. Le neuf-trois, 93, -- with its image of lawless ghettos -- is such a burden that people there prefer to claim motorised allegiance to just about anywhere else.
The government came up with these figures in a review of the first six months of the new registration system. The national top choice of département for people living elsewhere is 69, or the Rhone, which encompasses Lyon. Then follows 59 (Nord), 13 (Bouches-du-Rhône -- Marseille), 31 (Haute-Garonne -- Toulouse) and le 33 (Gironde -- Bordeaux).
These choices reflect regional loyalties. People want to boast with their plates that they belong to Toulouse or Lille, but no-one wants to crow about being Parisian. With the fierce attachment that they inspire, Corsica and Brittany are also enjoying a license-plate boom beyond their shores.
This all upholds the tradition that Parisians, even those who have been Parigots for generations, cling to their provincial roots. Those without any just pick places that they like, such as the location of their holiday homes (Young Jean Sarkozy should note that this applies even inhabitants of the Hauts-de-Seine, the rich western suburbs where he is striving to become the political boss. Registrations with the département's tell-tale "92" are also withering away.)
The lesson is that the geographical system is now pointless. The old département numbers told you where the car owner lived so, if a 75 roared through town, the locals could swear at the bloody Parisians. Now the road hogs from the capital can quite legally disguise themselves as humble villagers.
Admirers of Philippe Pétain, head of the wartime Vichy government, are dwindling but they still have some money. Today they paid 40,000 euros for the desk from which the old marshal ran his collaborationist regime.
The mahogany, empire-style bureau and two armchars and book cases were snapped up by the Association for the Defence of Marshal Pétain after intense bidding from a starting price of 4,000 euros. The furniture, sold in Saint Dié in the Vosges, belonged to a Jewish family from Alsace. Pétain's staff requisitioned it from storage when they set up the puppet government in the Hotel du Parc in Vichy in the summer of 1940. The family got it back in 1948.
"We have been searching for this furniture for a long time. We thought it had disappeared," said Hubert Massol, 72, a Parisian who heads the late Marshal's fan club. "This is quite an emotional thing." The items are to go to a Pétain museum that Massol said is being planned by the association. It has thousands of members, he told Agence France-Presse.
The marshal still stirs strong emotion among the older generation. Massol would only have been three when the parliament voted Pétain into office as dictator in charge of a new French State. He and his supporters subscribe to the belief, dogma for the far right, that the national hero of the first world war was a decent sort who saved France in its darkest hour. François Mitterrand, the late Socialist president, served the marshal as a senior official and revered his memory all his life.
The Association's site -- which is not very up to date -- explains that it is devoted to rehabilitating the memory of the leader whose early military honours saved him from a post-war death sentence.
"If Philippe Pétain was glorious in 1914-1918, he was great in the 1940s," Massol says in a speech on the site. "He sacrificed his prestige and his tranquility after a well-filled life in the service of the motherland.... making the gift of his person to France in order to ease its misfortune."
A new book, Naufrage: 16 juin 1940, by Eric Roussel, shows the extent to which the marshal was adored when he took over in 1940. Le Point magazine published extracts this month.
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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