Friends and allies of Nicolas Sarkozy were quick to lambast his shock prison sentence on Monday for corruption as baseless and to drop heavy hints of a politically-motivated French justice system.
If anything, the verdict — which, it should be stressed in the interests of the presumption of innocence, is still subject to appeal — is proof of the reverse.
It was long assumed in France that when a senior politician was in a legal fix, a quick phone call from on high to a pliant prosecutor would resolve the problem. After all, top prosecutors were answerable to the justice ministry and thus in theory beholden to them.
That apparent impunity helps explain the deep French distrust of the political establishment that helped give rise to the Macron presidency.
Indeed for decades, even when top politicians’ names were cited in corruption cases, they had an uncanny habit of avoiding the courts leaving the middle-men to take the flak.
Certainly that was the case for Jacques Chirac, whose former prime minister Alain Juppé carried the can for his boss when he was found guilty in 2004 of a jobs-for-the-boys scam at Paris city hall, which illicitly paid the salaries of 175 Chirac party activists. Mr Juppé avoided prison and his sentence ended up relatively light.
The courts finally caught up with Mr Chirac in 2011 when he was on his last legs and suffering from dementia. He was handed a two-year suspended sentence, with the judge ruling he should avoid jail due to his age, infirmity and “eminent responsibilities” as former head of state.
Many assumed the same would apply to Mr Sarkozy.
However, he received no such leniency on Monday with the presiding judge saying he had “gravely damaged public trust” in the judiciary.
So what changed?
Is the end of impunity nigh over in France for top politicians?
Credit: Christophe Ena/AP
In many ways a hapless president, Mr Sarkozy’s Socialist successor François Hollande is seen by many as stopping the rot.
The Right may claim they have been unfairly targeted, but judges and prosecutors were said to be pleasantly surprised when they were granted carte blanche to go for Jérôme Cahuzac, Mr Hollande’s tax tsar who was found in 2012 to have hidden an offshore bank account from the very tax authorities he led.
Mr Hollande did nothing to save him, instead enacting a series of reforms calling for “total exemplarity” from the political class.
That new era or transparency saw Mr Sarkozy’s former premier Francois Fillon swiftly charged with embezzlement in 2017, thus scuppering his presidential bid.
Last year, he was sentenced to five years in prison, three suspended, on charges of creating a fake job for his British wife, Penelope, using €1m in taxpayer’s money. She received a three-year suspended sentence. The pair appealed.
For all his faults, Emmanuel Macron has toed a similar line, enacting further reforms to improve the “morality” of French political life. The higher standards have already tripped up some of his own centrist allies.
All that said, claims that Mr Sarkozy is finished politically may prove premature.
The appeal against the ruling could drag on for years and he may be acquitted of a string of other corruption allegations, including one that he received £45m in cash from ex-Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to fund his 2012 re-election bid. He has denied wrongdoing.
But the verdict is without doubt another terrible blow to the French mainstream Right, already maimed by Mr Macron in the last presidential elections and desperately seeking a prodigal saviour.
And as in many aspects of French society, the floodgates are opening on a range of long-taboo issues — not just political corruption tolerated by a cozy elite but also the lifting of an unhealthy omertà on sexual harassment, abuse and incest.
They will not be closed any time soon.
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