: Nicolas Sarkozy (/nikola saʁkozi/ — French pronunciation(help·info)), is a French politician, the second son of a Hungarian father, Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, and French mother, Andrée Mallah.
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (born 28 January 1955 in Paris, 17th arrondissement), simply known as Nicolas Sarkozy (/nikola saʁkozi/ — French pronunciation(help·info)), is a French politician, the second son of a Hungarian father, Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, and French mother, Andrée Mallah. He is often nicknamed Sarko. As of 2006, he is the head of the conservative party UMP and Minister of the Interior. He is a declared candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in the 2007 election.
General traits
Supporters of Sarkozy within France emphasise his charisma, political innovation and willingness to "make a dramatic break" amidst mounting disaffection against "politics as usual"; opponents see him as an authoritarian populist fishing for the radical voters of the Front National through pushing hardline "law and order" policies and anti-immigration legislation. In addition, he has been criticized for his departures from traditional French social values in favour of American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered to be somewhat more pro-US than most French politicians. He is generally recognized by the right and left as a highly skilled politician and orator.
Since November 2004, he has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France's major centre-right political party, and he is Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin, with the honorific title of Minister of State, making him effectively the number three man in the French State after President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister. His ministerial responsibilities include law enforcement and working to co-ordinate relationships between the national and local governments. Previously, he was a deputy to the French National Assembly. He was forced to resign this position in order to accept his ministerial appointment. He previously also held several ministerial posts, including Finance Minister.
Personal life
Background
Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of Pál nagybócsai Sárközy and Andrée Mallah. Pál nagybócsai Sárközy (some sources spell his name Pál Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy) (Hungarian pronunciation(help·info)) was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to the lower aristocracy of Hungary. The family possessed lands and a small castle in Alattyán (Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county), 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest.
As the Russians entered Hungary in 1944, the family fled the country. Pál nagybócsai Sárközy crossed Austria and Germany with great difficulty in the chaos that was Central Europe at the end of the Second World War. Eventually, he arrived in Baden Baden, near the French border, where the headquarters of the French Army in Germany were located, and there he met a recruiter for the French Foreign Legion. He signed up for five years, and was sent for training to Sidi Bel Abbes, in French Algeria, where the French Foreign Legion's headquarters were located. Upon returning to civil life in Marseilles in 1948, he acquired French citizenship and his name was officially Frenchified into "Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa".
Paul Sarkozy moved to Paris where he used his artistic skills to enter the advertising industry. He met Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy's mother, in 1949. Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benoît Mallah, a wealthy doctor (or surgeon) with a well-established reputation in the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benoît Mallah was originally a Sephardic Jew from Thessaloniki, Greece. According to Jewish genealogical societies, the Mallah family of Salonica anciently came from Provence in southern France, which they had probably left at the time of the Jewish expulsions in the Middle Ages.
Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957 (now a researcher in biology).
In 1959 Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three children. He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second wife.
Early life
During Sarkozy's childhood, his father refused to give his former wife's family any financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency and had become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Sarkozy's grandfather, Benoît Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, the wealthiest commune immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris. According to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. However, his grandfather, a Sephardic Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism and married a Roman Catholic woman, was said never to have passed on his own religious roots to his grandchildren, having embraced Catholicism when he migrated to France in the beginning of the 20th century. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers, is a baptised and professing Roman Catholic.
Similar to his maternal grandfather, his father Paul Sarkozy never taught him or his brothers Hungarian, or made any effort to teach them about their ethnic background.
Sarkozy has said that his father's abandonment shaped much of what he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy classmates. He did not feel fully French at the time (his father is said to have told him once that a Sarkozy never could become President of France, that such things happened only in the United States), suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness, his family's lack of money), and harboured a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood," he said later.
Studies
Sarkozy was enrolled in the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic middle and high school in the 17th Arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil. Later he obtained a bachelor's degree in law from the Université Paris X Nanterre. He attended the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (more commonly known as Sciences Po), but did not graduate. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specialising in French business law.
Marriages
On 23 September 1982 he married Corsican-born Marie-Dominique Culioli, daughter of a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They have two sons, Pierre (born in 1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Sarkozy's marriage witness was Charles Pasqua.
As mayor of Neuilly, Sarkozy met Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (great-grand-daughter of Isaac Albéniz through her mother, and who also has Russian roots through her father), who was then married to TV host Jacques Martin. In 1989, Ciganer-Albeniz left Martin for Sarkozy. After a difficult divorce of his own, Sarkozy married her in 1996. They have a son, Louis, born in 1997.
Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Ciganer-Albeniz acting as a sort of chief aide for her husband. This was fairly unusual: in general, French politicians seek to separate their public lives from their personal and family lives.
On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that Ciganer-Albeniz had left Sarkozy for Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of the Publicis Events company (who had organised the UMP meeting in 2004.) It was then reported that she had done so after obtaining proof that Sarkozy had cheated on her, reportedly meeting mistresses while pretending to be jogging in a Parisian park while he was Minister of the Interior, and in other situations [1]. This led Sarkozy to sue Le Matin [2].
According to several French and Swiss newspapers, Sarkozy was assumed to be in the process of divorcing his wife, and was in a relationship with Anne Fulda, a journalist from Le Figaro. Finally, in January 2006, a reconciliation with Ciganer-Albeniz took place and they are currently living together again.
Political career
Sarkozy's political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a very wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris (in the Hauts-de-Seine département). He went on to be elected mayor of that town, after the death of the current mayor and having profited of the illness of Charles Pasqua serving from 1983 to 2002. In 1988, he became a deputy in the National Assembly.
In 1993, Sarkozy was in the national news for personally dealing with the "Human Bomb," a man who had taken small children hostage in a kindergarten in Neuilly. The "Human Bomb" was killed that day by policemen of the RAID, who entered the school stealthily while the attacker was resting.
From 1993 to 1995, he was Minister of the Budget and spokesman for the executive in the cabinet of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Throughout most of his early career, Sarkozy had been seen as a protégé of Jacques Chirac. However, in 1995 he spurned Chirac and backed Balladur for President of France. After Chirac won the election, Sarkozy lost his position as Minister of the Budget and found himself outside the circles of power. It is widely believed that ever since 1995 Chirac has considered Sarkozy's having sided with Balladur as a form of treason, and that the two men now loathe one another.
In 2002, however, after his re-election as President of the French Republic (see French presidential election, 2002), Chirac appointed Sarkozy as French Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, despite the widely acknowledged friction between the two.
Following the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy was moved to the position of Finance Minister. Tensions continued to build between Sarkozy and Chirac and within the UMP party, as Sarkozy's intentions of becoming head of the party after the resignation of Alain Juppé became clear. It became increasingly apparent that Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Sarkozy commented, "not just when I shave" [3].
In November 2004 after party elections, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned his position as minister. Sarkozy's ascent was marked by the division of UMP between sarkozystes, such as Sarkozy's "first lieutenant", Brice Hortefeux, and Chirac loyalists, such as Jean-Louis Debré.
Sarkozy was made Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor) by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March 2005 to the National Assembly (as required by government habits, he had had to resign as a deputy when he had become minister in 2002).
On 31 May 2005 the main French news radio station France Info reported a rumour that Sarkozy was to be reappointed Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin without resigning from the UMP leadership. This was confirmed on June 2, 2005, when the members of the government were officially announced.
Raffarin government
Minister of the Interior
Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Sarkozy was the most popular conservative politician in France, according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His "tough on crime" policies, which included increasing the police presence on the streets and introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many. However, he was criticised for putting forward legislation that some felt infringed on civil rights, and adversely affected disadvantaged sections of the population.
Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes-tense relationships that the general French population has with the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic Church in France with their official leaders or the Protestants with their umbrella organizations to speak for them, Islam, with its lack of structure did not have any group that could legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy felt that the foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported the foundation in May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français du culte musulman ("French council of Muslim worship"), an organisation meant to be representative of French Muslims [4]. In addition, Sarkozy has suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, mostly in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim institutions with public funds.[5]
Minister of Finance
During his appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy introduced a number of policies mixing libéralisme (a hands-off approach to running the economy) with some intervention. In September 2004, he oversaw the reduction of the government ownership share in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.[6]. However, he also backed a partial nationalisation of Alstom decided by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003 [7]. He also reached an agreement with the major retail chains in France to lower prices by an average of 2%; the success of this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease was closer to 1% [8]. Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF ("solidarity tax on fortune"), which is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some in the business world and on the Right, such as Alain Madelin, want it to be abolished, but such an action by Sarkozy would risk being categorised by the Left as a gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties [9].
Second term as Minister of the Interior
During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy was initially more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on his own topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues, since he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party.
However, the 2005 civil unrest in France put law enforcement in the spotlight again. Nicolas Sarkozy made a number of tough declarations, first blaming the unrest on "hoodlums" and gangsters. After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection of immigrants, better tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance government justice measures for young delinquents. See Response to the 2005 civil unrest in France.
In spring 2006, Nicolas Sarkozy was to present a bill to Parliament which would reform French immigration rules and procedures.
Action as UMP's leader
Sarkozy currently is the president of UMP, the French conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency, the number of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported the Yes in the French referendum on the European Constitution.
Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes in France's economic and social policies. These calls culminated in an interview with Le Monde on September 8, 2005, during which he claimed that the French had been misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers to be unrealistic policies [10]. Among other issues:
- he called for a simplified and "fairer" taxation system, with fewer loopholes, and a maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50% of revenue;
- he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers who refuse work offered to them;
- he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French state has been living off credit for some time.
Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour of laissez-faire or conservative economic policies, although this judgment is made by French standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Sarkozy rejects this label of libéral and calls himself a pragmatist instead.
Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he desired a reform of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled workers needed by the French economy. He also wants to reform the current French system for foreign students, claiming that it enables foreign students to take open-ended curricula in order to get residency in France; instead, he wants to select the best students to the best curricula in France.
In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as DADVSI, which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the issue, Sarkozy stepped in and organized meetings between various parties involved. Later, groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Sarkozy personally and unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted strong penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems.
Criticisms
Sarkozy's political views have been the subject of some controversy. Generally speaking, he is the bête noire of the left (see below), and is also criticised by many on the right, most vocally by the supporters of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, such as Jean-Louis Debré, but also by social Catholics such as Christine Boutin as regard his repressive discourse.[citationneeded]
Critics on the Left have accused him of being an authoritarian demagogue, ready to trade away civil liberties for political gains. Some of these accusations are echoed by French civil rights organisations (which are generally politically left-wing). He is also accused of being a populist who favors far-right ideas.[citationneeded]
His political style, which relies heavily on communication [11], is highly criticised by some, as are the controversial statistical figures he uses. Responding to 2005 Paris riots in the banlieue of La Courneuve, he vowed to clean the area out "with a Kärcher" (nettoyer la cité au Kärcher), Kärcher being a well-known brand of pressure cleaning equipment), and referred to the troublemakers as voyous, and racaille, a slang term which can be translated into English as dregs or riff-raff; this was criticised as demeaning for the people that Sarkozy was supposed to help, and potentially stoking unrest.[citationneeded]
As a Minister of the Interior, Sarkozy systematically has made bold statements following heinous crimes reported in the media. As a consequence, he has been accused in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary, by trying to apply pressure in certain cases.[citationneeded]
In September 2005, some youths were acquitted of the arson of a police station in Pau, for lack of proof, and Sarkozy was accused of having pushed for a hasty enquiry — Sarkozy had vowed that the perpetrators would be arrested within 3 months [12]. On 22 June, 2005, he announced to law enforcement officials that he had questioned the Minister of Justice about the future of "the judge" who had freed a man on parole, enabling him to commit a murder [13]. These comments were criticised by both moderate and left-wing magistrates, especially since Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior and a former attorney, must have been aware that this decision had been taken by 3 judges.
Sarkozy has personal friendships with some of the most powerful figures in the French business world; for example, Martin Bouygues (from the Bouygues group, owner of the TF1 channel, as well as telecommunications and public works companies) and Bernard Arnault (from LVMH) were his marriage witnesses. His brother, Guillaume, is a senior executive of the MEDEF, the foremost business union in France; in 2005, he renounced running for the top position of that union, supposedly in order not to hinder his brother's political career.
Sarkozy was an elected official in one of the most wealthy and exclusive suburbs of Paris; as a minister, he pushed for tax breaks that critics contend benefit the wealthiest at the expense of the poor. As a consequence, critics contend that, despite his claims to care about the "common peop e" of France, he is too much under the influence of the most privileged sections of society.[citationneeded]
His political connections in the Hauts-de-Seine also are controversial. Sarkozy is close to Patrick Balkany, another right-wing politician, who was convicted of misuse of public funds, and also accused of misusing firearms. His mentor (and witness to his first wedding) was Charles Pasqua, who has been accused in a variety of corruption scandals but not convicted.[citationneeded]
Sarkozy, a Roman Catholic, has caused controversy because of his views on the relationship between religion and state. In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l'espérance ("The Republic, Religions, and Hope") [14], in which he argued that the young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, including the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society [15] [16]. There has also been controversy over his attitude to the Church of Scientology — which has itself been the subject of significant controversy in France — after meeting with Tom Cruise [17].
Sarkozy calls for ambitious reforms of the tax system. Left-wing opponents contend that those reforms are little more than tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the burden on common people will not be eased.[citationneeded]
Ambition for the future
As of 2005, many think that Sarkozy is the French Right's best hope for the next presidential election in 2007. Polls often credit him with being one of France's most popular politicians. His precise electoral platform is unknown at this point, but Sarkozy's various 2005 declarations give a confident idea of its probable general lines. It is conjectured that he will run on a platform of lower taxes and flexible labour markets; this has been presented as representing a move towards the social and economic model of the United States of America, particularly in the press of that latter country [18][19][20], which used to present Alain Madelin in a similar favorable light.
On the other hand, Sarkozy's presidential ambition does not sit well with Chirac. Chirac once hoped to promote Alain Juppé as his successor. However, this plan collapsed when Alain Juppé was condemned by the criminal court of Nanterre for corruption
in January 2004. Subsequently Chirac started to push Dominique de Villepin. Villepin became popular in France
for eloquently expressing France's opposition against the Iraq war in 2003. But this popularity totally collapsed due to Villepins
unsensible handling of the CPE-reform and his supposed involvement in the Clearstream scandal. As of May 2006, Sarkozy is the sole credible presidential candidate on the right wing.
Thus the key barrier to Sarkozy's ambitions is the left-wing opposition. They are likely (and have started) to portray him as a political showman "cozy with big business". They also state that Sarkozy has given tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations, and that he preys upon the security fears of citizens and uses the police forces for publicity purposes. Perhaps the best help that Sarkozy can receive in that respect is the disarray and conflicting ambitions that plague the French Socialist Party, which has been in open crisis since the defeat of the proposed European Constitution in a referendum. However, the election of Ségolène Royal as nominee of the Socialist party for the 2007 election gives the conservatives a clear and popular opponent.
Timeline of career
- 1977, becomes councillor in the town of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
- 1977, member of the central committee for the RPR.
- 1978 – 1979, national youth delegate for the RPR.
- 1979 – 1981, president of the national youth delegates under Jacques Chirac for the presidential election of 1981.
- 1983, becomes mayor in the town of Neuilly-sur-Seine
- 1988, national secretary of the RPR, in charge of youth and teaching issues.
- Co-director of the list "Union pour les Élections européennes".
- 1992 – 1993, secrétaire général-adjoint du RPR, chargé des Fédérations. (Assistant secretary of the RPR in charge of the militants organisations)
- Since 1993, member of the RPR political office.
- 1993 – 1995, Minister for the Budget in the cabinet of Edouard Balladur.
- 1995 – 1997 spokesman for the RPR.
- 1998 – 1999, Secretary General of the RPR.
- 1999, interim president of the RPR.
- 1999, head of the RPR-DL electoral list of the European elections in June
- May 2000, elected President of the committee of the RPR for the département of Hauts-de-Seine
- 2002 – March 2004, Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
- March 2004 – November 2004, Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry in the cabinet of Jean-Pierre Raffarin
- November 2004, elected the new head of President Jacques Chirac's governing UMP party.
- June 2005, Minister of State and Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Dominique de Villepin
Quotations
- Merit and labour are values that should be rewarded more and more. We must applaud and be thankful to the France that gets up early.
- To be a young Gaullist is to be a revolutionary! (National meeting of UDR in Nice, June 1975)
- The Chiraquian EEG is flat. This is no longer [Paris] City Hall, this is the antechamber of the morgue. Chirac is dead, only the 3 last shovelfuls are needed. (before the 1995 presidential elections)
- We live in a world where people don't all have the same scruples, where all blows can be given, and where, in order to down somebody, all means can be used. Nothing will lead me astray from the path that I have chosen. (Le Monde, 2005)
- How can one be fascinated by those fights of obese guys with brylcreemed buns? Sumo is not an intellectual's sport! (Hong Kong, 9 January, 2004; Jacques Chirac has a taste for watching sumo)
- June 2005: following these two declarations, Nicolas Sarkozy was reprimanded during the Council of Ministers by president Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin
- We shall clean the Cité des 4000 [in La Courneuve] with a Kärcher
- The judge who freed Mrs. Cremel's murderer will pay for his mistake.
- Success and social promotion are not some right that anybody can claim after queuing at some [government office]. It is better: it is a right, a right that one can merit because of one's sweat. (Summer meeting of the Young Populars in La Baule, 4 September 2005)
- All these squatted habitations, all these buildings must be closed in order to prevent those tragic events, and this is what I asked the Prefect of Police because these people are poor human beings who are housed in inacceptable conditions. After accepting people to whom, sadly, we cannot propose work or housing, we end up in a situation that results in tragedies like these. (France Inter, 30 August 2005, after several cases where poor black immigrant families from Africa had died when the derelict buildings in which they lived burnt down)
- Answering a woman asking him if he would help them "to get rid of this rabble": You've had enough, haven't you? Enough of this rabble? Well, we're going to get rid of them for you. (Comments preceding the three weeks of urban violence, 25 October 2005)
- The worst risk is not to take one.
- If living in France bothers some people, they should feel free to leave a country they don't like ( UMP meeting 22 April)
Trivia
- Sarkozy caused quite a stir when he posted a comment on the blog of film director Mathieu Kassovitz, who has been critical of his policies.[21]
- In December 2005, he had the distinction of being possibly the first major French politician to do an interview by Podcast.[22]
- According to a recent study [23], Nicolas Sarkozy is the focus of 42 % of the "buzz" or comments generated by political blogs in France.
- Opponents have compared him to the over-ambitious cartoon character Iznogoud.
References
- ↑ Bleu Blanc Blog, 27 May 2005
- ↑ Le Matin, 12 July 2005
- ↑ Broadcast of "France 2", 19 November 2003
- ↑ JO associations, 28 May 2003
- ↑ WorldWide Religious News
- ↑
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