Sarkozy's son stirs interest

More than 100 journalists from all over the world sought accreditation to a routine meeting of a county council just to the west of Paris yesterday. Normally, only four local journalists would bother to turn up.

A routine meeting? Well, not exactly. One of the members of the Hauts de Seine council is a tall, blond, handsome young man, who bears a startling resemblance to Prince Charming in the Shrek films. His name is Jean Sarkozy.

Jean, the 23-year-old son of the President, has, it appears, become an overnight media sensation in Japan, where he is seen as a beautiful, devious "manga" prince come to life. Much of the rest of the press pack will descend on unlovely Nanterre to witness the first public act in a tangled and absurd affair which has shaken the trust of the French people in their President.

Nicolas Sarkozy reaches the halfway point of his five-year presidency in a couple of weeks' time. His carefully constructed public image as a "different" kind of French politician is falling apart.

The Hauts de Seine council, dominated by the President's cronies, was expected to rubber-stamp Jean Sarkozy's bid to become the political leader of the body which manages Europe's largest office development, La defence. This is generally acknowledged to be a first move towards the elevation of "Prince Jean" to the leadership of the council of what is France's wealthiest departement, or county.

Any suggestion that this is a bad idea in a Republic which guillotined inherited, aristocratic privileges more than 200 years ago has been waved away by President Sarkozy as an attack on his family. Jean Sarkozy is the second son of the President's first, of three, marriages. He is repeating, for the second time, his second year as a law student. His father suggests that Jean has risen like a political rocket entirely through his own extraordinary abilities.

Some parliamentarians place the blame for this and other controversies on President Sarkozy's allegedly populist-inclined aides in the Elysee Palace. Some of them also blame Carla Bruni.

The first lady, a self-proclaimed and unabashed limousine lefty, has muddled Mr Sarkozy's true instincts, they suggest. The arrival of Bruni late in 2007, when the President appeared to be floundering after the collapse of his second marriage, has reshaped Mr Sarkozy - in some respects literally.

The first lady devised a diet and fitness programme which made the President look even leaner and hungrier than before.

Politically, her influence is real, but limited. She has some input on human rights and cultural issues, but sources say that she should not be blamed for the President's apparent incoherence on economic subjects, which leave Bruni-Sarkozy cold.

The power of Sarkozy's personality - his refusal to brook contradiction by even his closest friends and allies - has now been revealed as a source of great weakness.

None of his ministers or aides have dared, sources say, to suggest that allowing his 23-year-old, inexperienced son to be fast-tracked to the head of La defence might be seen as an insult in a country which officially worships Egalite.

Sarkozy promised to make France into a can-do, genuinely egalitarian country, not a country run by, and for, a narrow Paris elite. He is now in danger of being seen, even by his supporters, as an emperor who looks after his own. The damage runs very deep.

- INDEPENDENT