🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Sarkozy (Back) in Trouble

27/08/2023 - Ségolène Royal announces leadership bid, Nicolas Sarkozy is sent back to court, and Niger ejects French and Western diplomats

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This week

• 💪Ségolène Royal announces leadership bid

• 👨‍⚖️Nicolas Sarkozy sent back to court

• 🇳🇪Niger ejects French and Western diplomats

💪Ségolène Royal announces leadership bid

Ségolène Royal in 2007 (Photo by Guillaume Paumier)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have some fascinating news for you this week, but before we get to that, a story from the NUPES coalition.

With all of the parties currently jostling internally to figure out who will be where on the electoral lists for the European elections next year, who will ally with who, and which parties will band together in naked bids for survival, one politician just went for it.

Ségolène Royal, Parti Socialiste (PS) candidate for the 2007 presidential elections, former deputy of the assemblée nationale (1988–1992, 1993–1997, 2002–2007), former minister, and formerly Élisabeth Borne’s boss, is now attempting to lead the LFI / NUPES’ European list.

Speaking at La France Insoumise (LFI) summer university, she announced her intentions to lead a left-wing union list headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, ignoring the fact that Europe Ecologie - Les Verts (EELV) and the French Communist Party (PCF) are running their own lists.

In what appears to the socialists and ecologists as an attempt to destabilise the equilibrium of the left (with Mélenchon’s support), which has slowly begun to slip away from him as his behaviour begins to sabotage relations with the PS.

While the initial noise from LFI was supportive, it was very quickly tempered by members of the party. Manon Aubry, Royal’s political rival who beat her in the 2008 election to become First Secretary of the Parti Socialiste, poured cold water over the idea.

“We never said that LFI supported Ségolène Royal” she retorted dryly, while Mélenchon’s entourage went in the other direction, announcing that the far-left firebrand and Royal were “in agreement for a vision on the future of France.”

Whether this will happen or not is, as always, not guaranteed. While Royal is looking for a comeback to the political front after some damaging anti-COVID vaccine politics that tainted her brand as she veered into conspiracy, there’s no certainty that she will be allowed to do this.

Mélenchon, like most of the parties in France, is using the European elections as a test run for the 2027 Presidential election, and the messages, strategies and tactics here will represent a pivot towards what the major topics will likely be in 3 years time when the campaign begins.

With Mélenchon being desperate for an electoral victory, he is entirely dependant on a coalition to maintain some form of leadership over the political field, with polls showing his LFI party only winning between 8-11% of the total vote otherwise, the same as the PS and EELV.

👨‍⚖️Sarkozy sent back to court

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (Photo by the European Peoples Party) and former Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi (Photo by the U.S. Navy)

Things just keep getting worse for the former French President.

Having gotten into hot water just last week over his calls for a rapprochement with Putin’s Russia, and having picked a fight with President Emmanuel Macron live on TV just this Wednesday on TF1, he’s now received more bad news.

This Friday, 25 August, it was announced that Nicolas Sarkozy and twelve other defendants would be sent back before a criminal court over the allegations of "illegal financing of the electoral campaign", "passive corruption", "concealment of embezzlement of public funds", and finally, "criminal association."

This follows a ten-year investigation into the accusations, which could lead to severe punishment in the form of several years of prison time, and follows previous convictions for “corruption” and “influence peddling” in the Sarkozy-Azibert case and the Bygmalion affair.

At the core of this investigation was the allegation that Nicolas Sarkozy had illegally funded his 2007 Presidential campaign with funding sources from Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi’s government, and the judge’s report made a statement that it "appears that a corruption pact [was agreed] between Nicolas Sarkozy and Muammar Gaddafi for the purpose of financing the election of the former”.

With the judges making it clear that there were sophisticated tools being put in place to render the funding undetectable, it appears that the judges have found enough evidence and proof to begin aggressively targeting Sarkozy, which can only be a bad sign for his future.

Not only this, but several other notable politicians have been targeted, including:

• Claude Guéant (UMP) - Former secretary general of the Elysée and former Minister of the Interior

• Eric Woerth (Renaissance/Les Républicains) - Current Deputy for l’Oise, former budget minister, and former treasurer of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign

• Brice Hortefeux (Les Républicains) - Current MEP, former Minister of the Interior, and former advisor to Valérie Pecress for the 2022 Presidential election

The case has very clearly become serious, and the potential for political spillover is there, most notably for President Macron’s political party, Renaissance.

However, there’s no telling where the case may go from here, and what potential punishments could be handed, so we need to wait and see for future developments.

What we do know is, not only is Nicolas Sarkozy in trouble legally, but politically, he’s going out of his way to make as many enemies as possible with his comments on Ukraine, Russia and other key topics

🇳🇪Niger ejects French and Western diplomats

Deposed Nigerian President Mohamed Bazoum (Photo by Benhamayemohamed)

With the ongoing instability in Niger, and the recent French support for a potential ECOWAS intervention, Niger’s junta, the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland (Le Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie), is ratcheting things up.

Just this week, the Niger Junta gave the Ambassadors of France, Germany, Nigeria, the United States of America, and the Ivory Coast 48 hours to leave the country, with the following documents being published:

Series of expulsion notices for the French, German, Nigerian, American, and Ivory Coast ambassadors

However, there was serious confusion immediately after the announcement, with various Niger-linked accounts then spreading information that some of these announcements were fakes, and that only the French ambassador had been ordered to leave.

This was despite the documents being shared by the Official Tchiani facebook account. and being confirmed by Agence France Press (below)

Agence France Presse confirming Niger expulsion orders for various diplomats

Confusion aside, the French ambassador to Niger, Sylvain Itté, was supposedly expelled due to not responding to an invitation from the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but in reality, it’s due to the ongoing conspiracy theory targeting the French state.

In an attempt to shore up it’s own position, the Junta led by General Abdourahamane Tiani, has spread the idea that France is aiming to intervene militarily in Niger to not only place the former elected President, Mohamed Bazoum, and restore constititonal order alongside ECOWAS, but also to reclaim access to nuclear material.

This is despite France so far only announcing it’s support for an ECOWAS intervention to reinstate Bazoum.

With Niger being one of the key countries in the French operations in the Sahel to combat Islamists such as Al-Qaeda, Daesh (The Islamic State) and other forces, the ongoing collapse of alliances and regimes across the region, France finds itself in a peculiar geopolitical position that it’s attempting to find a way out of.

With 1,500 French soldiers being stations in Niger since 2013, and with the Junta demanding they be removed out of a fear that they could be used against them, the situation is becoming increasingly tense, and could veer into some form of conflict if not managed correctly.

Not only this, but the coup, alongside others in the region, are categorically weakening the ability of these states to fight the extremist insurgencies across the region, as well as emboldening the insurgents that are seeking to impose their own forms of religious states.

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