Jacques Goes on the Attack

If attack is the best defence, then President Jacques Chirac must be feeling a bit defensive these days. With the first round of France’s presidential election set for April 21, the incumbent went into offensive mode last week by announcing his intention to seek re-election. And he did it in true Chirac style: big on gesture, short on ideas. “I am driven by passion,” he said on national television. “I love France, and I love the French. I want to be the candidate of union and renewal.”

Chirac has lots to feel defensive about. His seven-year term has been punctuated by policy U-turns and dogged by corruption scandals. The allegations have ranged from involvement in illegal kickback schemes to misuse of public funds. To cap it all, an ipsos poll published two weeks ago showed Chirac’s lead over likely Socialist challenger Prime Minister Lionel Jospin trickling away.

Chirac insisted that his declaration had been planned for some time, but just how long is the subject of some debate. Chirac’s original battle plan — drawn up by his daughter and P.R. supremo Claude — replicated the tactics used by Socialist President François Mitterrand to foil an earlier Chirac bid in 1988. Back then, Mitterrand remained regally above the fray until four weeks before the election, when he launched a blistering campaign focused on a united France. Mitterrand trounced Chirac with 54% of the vote in the second round runoff, the biggest presidential majority of the past two decades. But Chirac’s scheme went out the window two weeks ago when fresh polls showed him and Jospin running neck and neck. Chirac’s dilemma was complicated by the return of Didier Schuller, who gave himself up to magistrates investigating alleged corruption by Chirac’s Rally for the Republic (rpr) party.

The issues on which Chirac plans to fight remain vague. All he had to offer last week was a precarious balancing act between “freeing the French from the

straitjacket of excessive regulation” and

“re-establishing the authority of the state.” Perhaps Chirac’s biggest problem, though, is that he has no record on which to run. Ever since he spectacularly misjudged the mood of the country in 1997 — dissolving Parliament and losing his right-wing majority in the National Assembly in the subsequent election — France has effectively been ruled by Jospin’s left-wing coalition.

Chirac’s candidacy declaration was overshadowed by questions related to the Schuller case. “I have never heard of this affair,” Chirac said, his leg bouncing nervously under the table. “I may have happened to be in the same place as him, but I didn’t know him personally.” The following day, Le Monde published a photograph of Chirac — then mayor of Paris — shaking hands with Schuller at city hall. According to a poll published in the daily newspaper Le Parisien, 67% of people found Chirac’s denial unconvincing.

Schuller — who ran the housing department in the rpr-controlled Paris suburb of Hauts-de-Seine from 1989 to ’94 — fled France in 1995 after a bungled attempt to intimidate and blackmail investigating magistrate Eric Halphen. At the time, Halphen was heading an inquiry into alleged illegal rpr funding from kickbacks on public-housing contracts in the district. Halphen quit the judiciary in January, complaining that his seven-year investigation had been repeatedly sabotaged. Before leaving his Caribbean hideaway, Schuller told journalists that he intended to explain how “the system which magistrates have been investigating is not that of Councilor Didier Schuller, but that of a political party, the RPR.”

Schuller’s testimony is expected to back up allegations made by Jean-Claude Méry, a real-estate promoter and ex-rpr official, in a videotaped confession recorded before his death from cancer in 1999. As a covert funding organizer, Méry explained how — while Chirac was mayor of Paris — tenders for public works contracts in the city were systematically rigged in return for kickbacks. “We only worked on the orders of Mr. Chirac,” said Méry, who described handing over $665,000 in cash in Chirac’s presence when he was Prime Minister in 1986.

More personally damaging for Chirac — who fought his 1995 campaign on narrowing the gap between rich and poor — was the investigation launched in 2000 into the $412,000 of public money he spent between 1992 and 1995 on personal trips for himself and his entourage. One weekend in New York for Chirac and daughter Claude — including Concorde flights and limo service — cost French taxpayers $16,000, paid in cash.

The probe into Chirac’s role in this case, like the alleged rpr slush funds, has run into a procedural brick wall. In January 1999, the Constitutional Council ruled that an acting President cannot be tried by a criminal court. “Chirac is the only candidate who needs to be elected to escape his legal destiny,” said Socialist Deputy Arnaud Montebourg. “If he’s not elected, he will immediately be served a summons by three investigating magistrates.”

Chirac may not be in any imminent legal danger, but the whiff of sleaze hanging over him poses a threat to his political future. Things look set to get worse on March 6, when ex-magistrate Halphen publishes a book recounting the political pressure he faced while investigating the alleged rpr slush funds.

For the moment, Chirac’s supporters are presenting a united front. A trio of right-wing deputies issued a statement last week accusing the Socialists of orchestrating an “avalanche of personal attacks” on Chirac. The Socialists refute the charge. “We don’t need to remind voters about Chirac’s problems,” says a senior party official. “If the French public were to vote someone to the presidency despite all these accusations and evidence of wrongdoing, it would pose serious questions about the health and functioning of our democracy.”

After Chirac’s candidacy announcement, polls showed his prospects improving despite doubts over his honesty. “If the President of the United States were found to have been dishonest, it would be irreparable,” says René Rémond, president of the National Foundation of Political Science. “But our Latin tradition is more indulgent. I don’t think voters will pay much attention to these corruption scandals.” However astonishing that may sound, France is a notoriously cynical place. When the second-round election results are declared on May 6, they won’t just name the country’s new President — they’ll reveal just what the French expect from their elected officials.