France: Reflections on things past

Date: 07/02/04

Jacques Chirac's future plans are upset by the conviction of his one-time protege, and former prime minister, Alain Juppé

AT FIRST glance, it might seem a narrow past affair of a has-been ex-prime minister. But the conviction last week of Alain Juppé in a political-corruption trial has far-reaching implications, despite his defiant decision to remain in elected office pending an appeal. It leaves wide open a power struggle on France's centre-right. And it raises fresh questions about the future of President Jacques Chirac.

Grabbing 20 minutes of prime-time television news on February 3rd, Mr Juppé said he was “shattered” by the verdict. Before it, hacks in the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, of which Mr Juppé is president, were discussing which portfolio he might take when he returned to government. But his conviction, for allowing party workers to be paid by Paris's town hall while he was treasurer and Mr Chirac was mayor, was unequivocal. Mr Juppé received an 18-month suspended sentence and was ruled ineligible for elected office for ten years, a harsher penalty even than the prosecution had demanded. He had, the court said bluntly, “deceived the trust of the people.”

The Juppé camp has not hidden its indignation. On television, Mr Juppé portrayed himself as a victim, insisting: “I don't deserve this.” His supporters have queued up to sing his virtues and criticise the sentence. “It's not as if he was filling his own pockets,” said one stunned colleague. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, called the verdict “provisional”. Mr Chirac, visibly taken aback, praised Mr Juppé's “exceptional quality, competence, humanity and honesty”, and invited him to dine tête-à-tête at the Elysee.

Mr Juppé had earlier promised that he would withdraw from public life if convicted. The pleas from Mr Chirac and others persuaded him to fight on. He will now remain a member of parliament and mayor of Bordeaux during his appeal, and he will give up the leadership of the UMP only at its annual congress in November.

Mr Juppé's startling defiance reveals two underlying concerns. The first is the succession to the presidency, for which Mr Juppé has long been groomed. The disarray in the party this week exposes starkly that there is no plan B. Mr Juppé may not have been in government, but he has been a backstage mastermind. A good early guide to Mr Chirac's decisions are Mr Juppé's declarations. Before the president proposed a ban on religious signs in state schools, Mr Juppé advocated one. He has been busy building up the UMP, a party created from the merger of previous centre-right parties, including Mr Chirac's Rally for the Republic (RPR). In short, Mr Juppé was well-placed for a comeback - and perhaps for the presidency in 2007.

That path now looks all but blocked. The prospect of his conviction being over-turned on appeal, a process that could take up to a year, is slim. It is true that Roland Dumas, a former head of the constitutional council, had his conviction in an earlier corruption trial reversed on appeal. But Mr Juppé's case looks trickier. His defence rested not on a denial of the facts - that employees paid by the town hall were actually working for the RPR - but on his supposed ignorance of them. Yet during the trial, which also involved other town hall bosses, the court heard testimony from Mr Juppé's own former cabinet head that “everybody knew”. Mr Juppé was the party's secretary-general as well as the town hall treasurer.

He may have a better chance of securing a lighter sentence, but that will still leave him with a tough fight to win back public confidence. A Paris-Match poll this week showed that, although a majority considered his sentence “severe”, 58% did not want him to have any future political role. The cool technocrat was already unloved for his heavy-handed efforts to force through reforms in 1995-97. His political resuscitation now looks extremely unlikely.

Which leaves la chiraquie, the president's political machine, in a bind. The strongest alternative UMP candidate is the one they most fear and distrust: Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister. Mr Chirac has never forgiven him for backing a rival candidate, Edouard Balladur, for the presidency in 1995. But Mr Sarkozy is now the most popular politician on the right: last month, 56% rated him as a presidential candidate, next to 51% for Mr Chirac and only 35% for Mr Juppé. The Chirac camp remains determined to thwart his ambitions. Hence the pressure on Mr Juppé to stay in office and clear his name.

The absence of credible alternatives from within the Chirac camp touches the second big concern. If nobody else can stop Mr Sarkozy, and Mr Juppé's ineligibility is confirmed, Mr Chirac may decide to run for a third presidential term himself. This could deal with two inconveniences at once: the Sarkozy threat and the legal charges that may yet be brought against Mr Chirac. If Mr Juppé is guilty, in an affair about which “everybody knew”, what possible defence could his boss offer?

The president's immunity from prosecution while he is in office evaporates when he steps down. The mainstream opposition has been slow to jump on this, but a few voices are now being heard. Liberation, a left-leaning newspaper, wrote this week of the “berlusconisation of Chirac”. Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist MP who has campaigned to get Mr Chirac into court, declared that “if justice had been able to go all the way, Jacques Chirac would not be currently at the Elysee.” Meanwhile Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front, which stands to do depressingly well in next month's regional elections, is relishing the affair, lambasting the UMP's “arrogant dishonesty”.

In some ways, the Juppé verdict points to a renewed robustness in the French judicial system. Not that no efforts were made to interfere in the trial. Three separate inquiries have been set up - by parliament, the justice ministry and Mr Chirac - into allegations of interference reported by Catherine Pierce, the presiding judge. Some speculate that the inquiries are just a political bid to throw the verdict into doubt, but the court insists that it reached its verdict in “total impartiality”. The judgment also comes shortly after top bosses in the Elf corruption trial were put behind bars. Increasingly, it seems, nobody in France is beyond the reach of the law - except, of course, Mr Chirac.

Jacques Chirac's future plans are upset by the conviction of his one-time protégé, and former Prime Minister, Alain Juppé

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