JEAN SARKOZY, the 23-year-old son of the French president, was yesterday at the centre of a political storm over his nomination as chairman of the public body that runs La Défense, the financial and business district on the edge of Paris.
Jean Sarkozy’s nomination to oversee the agency known as Epad, which has ambitious plans to turn La Défense into a rival to the City of London, was condemned by opposition parties as “nepotism”, while a petition against his nomination had gained 28,000 signatures.
Although there is no evidence that Nicolas Sarkozy had a direct hand in his son’s nomination, Ségolène Royal, the former Socialist presidential candidate, said the president’s duty was to “consider the general interest of the country rather than worrying about placing his son”.
Jean, the eldest of Mr Sarkozy’s sons, launched his own career as a local politician two years ago and his rise has been stellar. Shortly after becoming a member of the district council for Hauts-de-Seine, in the west of Paris, he took over as local head of the centre-right UMP group.
Now he appears poised to join Epad’s board as the local government representative later this month before being voted its chairman by the board later this year, as the local council member usually is. The process effectively constitutes a formal nomination by the local council.
He is in line for the post even though he is still a student, retaking his second year of law at the Sorbonne, with no obvious qualifications apart from his elected office. “I ask to be judged on my actions and the results, not on my background,” he has said.
President Sarkozy has been careful to avoid giving his son an obvious helping hand. But Jean Sarkozy’s decision to base himself in Neuilly – a rich Parisian suburb that was his father’s electoral fief for nearly two decades – has prompted accusations of a political succession engineered from the Elysée palace.
Jean Sarkozy’s rise has added to the widely held perception that republican France is really a monarchy without a crown.
Patrick Devedjian, a government minister who is the serving president of La Défense’s development body, took a swipe at his probable successor.
“For souls nobly born, valour does not await the passing of years,” he said, citing the 17th century dramatist Corneille. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)