Sarkozy behind bars: the conviction dividing France

“For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, in a few weeks a former head of state will be sleeping in prison,” said Le Monde. Nicolas Sarkozy’s five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy has left the country in a state of shock, and the former president incandescent with rage.

Funds from ‘bloodstained hands’

Outside a court in Paris last week, Sarkozy railed against the “limitless hatred” of the judges, who he claimed were pursuing a left-wing witch-hunt against him. But his punishment is commensurate with his “shameful” crime: seeking illegal presidential campaign funds from the “bloodstained hands” of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The court found that in 2005, when Sarkozy was minister of the interior, his associates met Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and the mastermind of a 1989 attack on a French airliner, to discuss whether the regime would provide campaign funds in exchange for lifting the arrest warrant against him. It was a clear abuse of authority by a man “fuelled by ambition, the thirst for power, and greed”, said Thomas Legrand in Libération.

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Sarkozy is only incensed because he believed he was invincible. He is the last “prototypical figure in this era of all-powerful presidents” who assumed they could do anything, because all would be swept away “by the grace of their triumph”.

‘Bizarre, contradictory verdict’

Sarkozy’s left-wing opponents are giddy with delight, said Yves Thréard in Le Figaro. But “everything about this bizarre, contradictory verdict is incomprehensible”. Where’s the crime? “There was talk of millions, yet no one saw any of it.”

Nor was there any evidence of personal enrichment. Sarkozy was cleared of three of the four charges – illegal party funding, embezzlement of Libyan funds and corruption. Yet for the lesser charge – the more vague “criminal conspiracy” – Sarkozy was not only given five years in jail, but the sentence wasn’t even suspended pending appeal, as is customary in France. It’s hard not to suspect the judiciary’s visceral dislike of Sarkozy played a role. (In 2013, photos of his face were found pinned on the office wall of one of their professional unions, under the words, Le Mur des Cons: the Wall of Idiots.)

This scandal is much murkier than either side wants to admit, said Hugh Schofield on BBC News. Sarkozy is far from spotless: an “egotistical and highly influential political operator”, he has a “litany of lawsuits against him” and has already been convicted on two other charges of corruption. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest he “consistently pushed the law to its limits in order to get his way”. But equally, there are some in the Paris “politico-mediatic-judicial” establishment “who loathe the former president and rejoice in bringing him down”.

Sarkozy’s opponents shouldn’t be too smug, said Paul Quinio in Libération. By confirming the suspicion that mainstream politicians are all as corrupt as each other, this scandal “has only served to deepen the rift between the French people and their political representatives”. In that cynical climate, the only winner is the far-right, who have “never been closer to power”.