Take your holidays at home, Sarkozy tells ministers

PARIS - After staking out the high ground following his election in 2007 as a President with "irreproachable" standards, Nicolas Sarkozy is struggling to convince French voters that his Government is any less sleazy or cronyistic than predecessors.

Sarkozy is resorting to ever greater stridency to regain support after his Prime Minister and Foreign Minister each accepted free plane trips and other perks while holidaying in Tunisia and Egypt as their loathed regimes began to totter.

The President himself is being accused of enjoying a jet-setting life at the taxpayer's expense.

Sarkozy told a Cabinet meeting yesterday that ministers "should now give preference to France for their holidays" to avoid giving any impression of conflict of interest.

"We urgently have to encourage a culture of ethics in French public life," Sarkozy declared in a communique issued by the Elysee presidential palace.

The President was expected to pound out the same message in a TV appearance today.

The appeal for probity, patriotism and purse-tightening comes amid a string of scandals that have helped drive Sarkozy's opinion-poll approval to just 34 per cent - the lowest ever for any President in modern French history.

Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie is under pressure to quit after using a private jet provided by a tycoon tied to now-ousted President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali to take her family on trips while on holiday in Tunisia in December.

An eight-year ministerial veteran who is a powerful figure in the neo-Gaullist wing of Sarkozy's party, Alliot-Marie was already in a weak position on the grounds of incompetence.

She not only failed to spot the tide of unrest that drove Ben Ali from power: she even offered, almost until the very last day of his regime, the help of "our world-renowned security forces" to quell the protests through non-violent means.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon - whose popularity is attributed to his reputation for honesty - used a plane and accepted hotel accommodation and a boat on the Nile provided by President Hosni Mubarak when he and his family holidayed in Egypt at the New Year, the press reported.

Then there is Sarkozy himself. Last weekend, he climbed aboard "Air Sarko One," the newly acquired presidential Airbus, to fly to a European summit in Brussels, which lies just 80 minutes away from Paris by TGV train.

After the meeting, Sarkozy and his model-singer wife Carla Bruni took a 16-seat presidential jet to spend a private weekend in New York, where he has a son from a previous marriage, according to the satirical weekly le Canard Enchaine. The Falcon 7X jet costs nearly 10,000 ($17,770) per hour of flight if the crew, fuel, maintenance costs and airport fees are factored in, it said.

Alliot-Marie rounded on her critics for "insulting" her and contended she had done nothing wrong: "When I am on holiday, I am not Foreign Minister."

Fillon said he had not breached the ethical code for ministerial trips.

Sarkozy's office said the President had already reimbursed 3500, equal to the cost of two round-trip airline tickets, in line with the rulebook.

If none of the trips has been strictly illegal, they have been politically disastrous for the President, stirring memories of his sermons on morality and meritocracy, his criticism of the tainted records of his predecessors ... and his own fondness for the company of rich and powerful men. During the Christmas holiday break, while Alliot-Marie and Fillon toured Tunisia and Egypt, the Sarkozys relaxed in Morocco at the Jnane Lekbir palace, owned by King
Mohammed VI.

The Elysee communique did not say whether future presidential holidays abroad would now be canned.

For the Socialist opposition, still bitterly divided after the 2007 defeat, Sarkozy's problems have been a windfall. "The rot in public spiritedness has now reached the very top of government," said Socialist Party spokesman Jean-Marc Ayrault, who demanded tougher laws to tackle conflicts of interest. "France's image has been extraordinarily damaged," said Francois Bayrou, a centrist leader.

But Roland Cayrol, director of the Centre for Studies and Analysis think-tank, said a bigger threat was public disillusionment with all mainstream politics, rather than just the present government - and the outcome could be reflected in next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.

"We are not that far off from the public saying 'to hell with them, they're all corrupt'," he said. "This sort of across-the-board anger and suspicions about the honesty of politicians strengthens the don't vote lobby and the National Front," France's resurgent far-right party, he said.