Nicolas Sarkozy, who ruled France as a tough-talking right-wing president from 2007 to 2012, is seen by supporters as a dynamic saviour but by detractors as a vulgar populist mired in corruption.
A second criminal conviction issued Thursday, this time for illegal campaign financing during his 2012 election bid, six months after a guilty verdict in a graft trial, has dealt a new blow to any ambition of “Sarko” returning to frontline politics.
However even if the career of the energetic former “hyper-president” may now be shadowed by legal disgrace, he is likely never to go to jail under the terms of both verdicts.
Since failing to win a second mandate in 2012 and then losing out on his party’s nomination in 2017, Sarkozy has been submerged in legal problems but has still retained support on the right.
During his five-year term, Sarkozy, now 66, took a hard line on immigration, security and national identity.
After winning the presidency at age 52, Sarkozy was initially seen as injecting a much-needed dose of dynamism, making a splash on the international scene and wooing the corporate world.
But his presidency was overshadowed by the 2008 financial crisis, and he left office with the lowest popularity ratings of any postwar French leader up to then.
He pulled out all the stops in an ultimately doomed bid to defeat Socialist Francois Hollande for a second term in 2012, and his latest conviction relates to the financing of that campaign.
– ‘Special link’ –
That defeat made him the first president since Valery Giscard d’Estaing (1974-1981) to be denied a second term and Sarkozy famously promised: “You won’t hear about me anymore.”
But that prediction turned out to be anything but true, with ongoing legal problems and his marriage to former top model Carla Bruni keeping Sarkozy in the spotlight.
Few were surprised when he returned to frontline politics, in 2014 winning the leadership of the conservative UMP party, since renamed The Republicans. But he failed to win the party’s nomination for another crack at the presidency in 2017.
He has remained hugely popular on the right and lines of fans queued in the summer of 2020 to have him sign his latest memoir, “The Time of Storms”, which topped best-seller lists for weeks.
“I have a special link with the French. It may stretch, it may tighten, but it exists,” he said.
Even now, with no clear candidate on the right to take on President Emmanuel Macron in 2022, Sarkozy remains a rallying figure for many within The Republicans and he may yet have a role to play in the campaign.
Meanwhile, key figures in Macron’s centrist but increasingly right-leaning government, such as Prime Minister Jean Castex and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, are former Sarkozy allies.
But Sarkozy will be tainted by a number of unwanted firsts: while former French president and his mentor Jacques Chirac was also convicted of graft, Sarkozy is the first French former head of state to be convicted twice and first to be formally given non-suspended jail terms.
– ‘Get lost’ –
Born on January 28, 1955, the football fanatic and cycling enthusiast is an atypical French politician.
The son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Sarkozy has a law degree but unlike most of his peers did not attend the exclusive Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the well-worn production line for future French leaders.
Sarkozy has a pugnacious style seen as an asset by admirers but a liability by detractors who fault his apparent lack of self-control.
Few have forgotten his visit to the 2008 agriculture show in Paris, when he said “get lost, dumbass” to a man who refused to shake his hand.
But even after his two convictions a litany of other legal woes remains ahead.
Sarkozy was also charged over allegations he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi for his 2007 election campaign.
And in January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.
Sarkozy denies the allegations and has accused the judiciary of hounding him.
