WAS RACHIDA Dati, France’s former justice minister, stripped of her chauffeur-driven car and bodyguards for showing public disloyalty to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government?
It doesn't take much for the Parisian media to show an interest in the glamorous Ms Dati – once one of the cabinet's most high-profile stars, now in exile in the European Parliament – but when the weekly Le Canard Enchaînéhit the news-stands yesterday, the press indulged themselves by running big with the latest scandale.
According to the paper, Ms Dati provoked the president’s ire when she went on television after the ruling UMP’s loss in the first round of recent regional elections and called on the government to “return to basics”.
Watching on television in the Elysée Palace, the president – who had instructed that the party leadership talk up its chances for the second round – began to seethe. “What’s she doing there?” he reportedly asked. “We didn’t see her at all during the campaign, and now here she is in front of the cameras.” As the story goes, Mr Sarkozy then called the head of the national police and told him to withdraw Ms Dati’s official car and bodyguards immediately.
The former minister received the news before she had even left the TV studio.
It took a call from Ms Dati for her to be allowed keep her Peugeot 607 for the evening, but the next morning she had to relinquish the car, the bodyguards and even a mobile phone she had been given by the interior ministry, Le Canard reported. Apparently Ms Dati’s right to these privileges should have expired late last year, but she had been allowed to hold on to them at her request.
As French media gorged on the story yesterday, the daily Libérationoffered a variation when it suggested that interior minister Brice Hortefeux had issued the order to withdraw the car.
Inconsequential as it might be, the story says quite a bit about France’s abiding interest in the enigmatic Ms Dati, the daughter of north African immigrants who became the face of Mr Sarkozy’s push to add diversity to French politics after his election in 2007.
In late 2008, the then 42-year-old caused a stir when she announced she was pregnant but declined to say who the father was. She then made headlines when she returned to her ministerial desk five days after giving birth.
With criticism of her management style mounting – some advisers quit, complaining of her authoritarian ways – she was removed from government and given the consolation prize of a seat in the European Parliament.
It is a job she is widely believed to dislike, and she is rumoured to be interested in running for mayor of Paris in 2014.
In the meantime, all is not lost for Ms Dati. She may have had to relinquish her Peugeot 607, but as mayor of the salubrious seventh arrondissement in Paris, she is entitled to an eco-friendly, if somewhat cosier, Toyota Prius.