France’s right-wing presidential front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy was forced on Wednesday to deny a report that he had agreed to shield President Jacques Chirac from a corruption probe in exchange for his backing.
”It’s grotesque, it’s hurtful and it’s untrue,” Sarkozy, the candidate of the governing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), said of the report in Le Canard Enchaine satirical weekly, which was also denied as ”baseless” by Chirac’s office.
”I deny it in the firmest and fullest terms,” Sarkozy said during a campaign swing through the north Paris suburb of Villepinte.
Quoting sources close to Chirac, the weekly reported that ”in exchange for Chirac’s support for his candidacy, Sarkozy made a commitment, if he wins, to avoid any judicial backlash for Chirac”, whose immunity from questioning by magistrates ends a month after he steps down on May 16.
Corruption cases
Rather than a specific amnesty for corruption, Sarkozy would introduce a provision as part of a new anti-crime Bill that would set a 10-year limit on the time a judge has to close a case, the weekly said.
That measure would close the book on three corruption cases that date back more than 10 years, when Chirac was mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995, according to Le Canard Enchaine.
Two cases deal with the illegal use of Paris city funds to pay staff and sympathisers of Chirac’s Rally for the Republic (RPR) party, the predecessor of the governing UMP.
A third case surrounds a Paris printing firm that is suspected of rigging public tender contracts and of funding the RPR via the mayor’s office.
The opposition Socialist Party issued a statement formally requesting that each candidate make a formal pledge, if elected, to ”not silence, meddle with or grant an amnesty in any ongoing judicial case”.
Last month, justice officials said Chirac (74) would be questioned after he leaves office in May by a judge looking into the illegal party-funding scheme, although no date had been set.
Chirac gave his official endorsement to Sarkozy’s bid for the presidency last month, shortly after announcing that he would be stepping down after 12 years in office and not seek a third term.
Once close allies, the two men fell out after Sarkozy backed a rival candidate in the 1995 presidential election. Sarkozy (52) went on to wrest control of the UMP from Chirac, becoming its president in 2004.
Sarkozy is currently the favourite to win France’s presidential election, taking place in two rounds on April 22 and May 6, ahead of Socialist Ségolène Royal, the centrist Francois Bayrou and the anti-immigration far-right leader Jean-Marie le Pen.
Controversial comments
The potentially damaging report came as Sarkozy faced a volley of attacks for comments in which he argued that paedophilia was a genetic trait — described by Royal on Wednesday as ”very dangerous” and the sign of ”a very alarming view of humanity”.
Sarkozy used the trip to Villepinte, where he attended a ceremony for new French citizens, as a chance to hammer home his message on ”national identity”, which he has turned into a chief campaign theme despite accusations he is fishing for far-right votes.
The rightwinger argues that newcomers to France should respect core values such as secularism and male-female equality — but has also been at pains to stress his own immigrant roots to deflect charges of xenophobia.
In the hour-long ceremony, he told participants that France ”will give you everything, so long as you know how to respect and love it”.
”Into this family, this family of France that welcomed my grandfather and my father, I welcome you in turn,” said the candidate, who was born in France to a Hungarian father and French mother of Greek Jewish origin.
Royal’s Socialist Party issued a statement attacking Villepinte’s mayor for ”transforming a French citizenship ceremony into an electoral meeting” and urging the candidate to ”step outside the walls of the town hall” and visit the town’s rougher neighbourhoods.
Sarkozy — whose tough rhetoric on law and order made him a hate figure in many areas — has mostly stayed away from the suburbs during the campaign. — AFP
