French farce could be a tragedy for Sarkozy

PARIS - In a country where "il n'est pas sérieux" is an insult and the ability to laugh at oneself is often deemed a weakness, there is no crueller fate for a French politician than to become the butt of jokes.

With that in mind, those looking for a barometer of President Nicolas Sarkozy's standing should head to a theatre close by the Elysée Palace.

A new play, Le Président, Sa Femme et Moi (The President, His Wife and Me), which opened to good reviews last month, is a sharp-tongued portrayal of France's head of state and his model-turned-singer wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

The comedy features a President Thomas Barowski as a diminutive, arm-waving maniac in stack heels, dwarfed by his celebrity-obsessed, guitar-playing wife, Isabelle Martini-Barowski.

"It's a farce, it's popular, funny, modern vaudeville, a boulevard comedy inspired by the odd spectacle served up by the Elysée," says author Bernard Uzan.

The "odd spectacle" is a lengthening litany of titillating tales and gaffes that have mired Sarkozy in a reputation for incompetence and cronyism with less than two years left in office. As France heads into the summer holidays, Sarkozy's approval ratings are just 26 per cent, an all-time low for a French President, according to one poll.

"It can't go on like this," leading Socialist opposition legislator Pierre Moscovici said yesterday. "In any other country, the Government would have fallen and there would be elections."

After massively borrowing to haul France out of financial crisis, Sarkozy began to retrench. But he chose to ratchet pressure on budgets in small steps and talk up frugality rather than demand austerity. To set the tone, he cancelled the Elysée's Bastille Day garden party and ended presidential hunts of wild boar on state-owned land, a privilege of kings that had survived the 1789 Revolution. He also told Prime Minister Francois Fillon to crack down on official parties, planes and limousines. But in the best vaudeville fashion, Sarkozy's appeal for sobriety and belt-tightening fell foul of some extraordinary antics by his own ministers.

Development Minister Alain Joyandet spent €116,500 ($210,000) to hire a private plane to fly him to Martinique for talks on how to help poor, quake-hit Haitians. In another episode, Christian Blanc, minister in charge of the development of the Paris region, spent €12,000 ($21,700) of taxpayers' money on Cuban cigars in just 10 months.

After initially defending the ministers, Sarkozy has given the pair the chop, but many analysts surmise this to be a desperate attempt to save a key lieutenant, Labour Minister Eric Woerth.

Woerth's wife, Florence, worked for a firm which managed the fortune of France's wealthiest woman, Liliane Bettencourt. According to conversations taped by her butler, Bettencourt, heiress to the €17 billion L'Oreal fortune, allegedly schemed to stash away €80 million in Swiss bank accounts while also making big donations to Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Movement.

All this looks bad for Woerth, who as minister for the budget is tasked with cracking down on tax evasion by the ultra-rich - the same people he is courting, as treasurer of the UMP, to fund Sarkozy's 2012 election campaign.

The Socialists are clamouring for a parliamentary inquiry into this apparent conflict of interest. Woerth himself strongly denies any wrongdoing.

For Sarkozy, the problem is a nightmare. The trusty Woerth is in the frame to lead the President's offensive after the summer lull, to push the legal retirement age from 60 to 62. Hundreds of thousands of people have already taken to the streets to protest at the reform.

"The Elysée is gambling that, by September, it will all be water under the bridge and everyone will have forgotten because of the holidays," a senior UMP source said gloomily. "It's not a good bet, because many people have seen this affair as the way to hurt Sarkozy and they won't give up. Woerth is going to end up in the meat grinder."