FRANCE: Prime minister Dominique de Villepin's government survived a no-confidence motion over the Clearstream scandal yesterday. Only 190 deputies voted for the motion; it would have taken 289 votes to bring down the government.
But fierce indictments by the socialist leader François Hollande and the leader of the centre-right UDF, François Bayrou, showed how low Mr de Villepin's prestige has fallen. And the absence of many UMP deputies during the debate symbolised the split within the ruling party.
"This is no longer a government; it's a battlefield," Mr Hollande said, referring to hostility between Mr de Villepin and the second-ranking member of the government, the interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
In January, Mr Sarkozy filed a lawsuit for defamation, 15 months after he learned that Mr de Villepin asked French intelligence services to investigate the presence of his name on a list of account-holders who were believed to have received kick-backs from an arms deal.
The list was fake, but Mr Sarkozy's suit was seen to target Mr de Villepin and has plunged the government into its third major crisis in six months.
"This government was built around a hateful rivalry," said Mr Bayrou, referring to Mr de Villepin and Mr Sarkozy. "One suspects the other of creating the [ Clearstream] affair to destroy him. The other suspects the first one of blowing it apart to destabilise him. This hateful rivalry has rotted everything." For the first time in the history of the UDF, its leader voted with the opposition left against the right-wing government - a development that led some to call Mr Bayrou a traitor.
Mr Bayrou recounted a scene in the European parliament in Strasbourg on Monday, during a debate on Romanian accession. Romania was criticised for its flawed rule of law and suspicion of corruption. "The Romanian representative stood up and said: 'what would you say to me if what is happening in France happened in Romania?'" Mr Bayroun said.
Mr Hollande listed specific irregularities committed by the prime minister: that Mr de Villepin, then minister of foreign affairs, asked a general from the defence minister's cabinet to carry out a secret investigation without telling his boss; that Mr de Villepin did not notify the justice system, as required by law, of his investigation into the Clearstream lists; that Mr de Villepin subsequently asked the domestic intelligence service DST to carry out a second investigation, without telling them that Gen Philippe Rondeau had already found the lists to be a fabrication; that the personalities whose names wrongly appeared on the lists were not informed that they had been cleared.
Bernard Accoyer, a de Villepin loyalist and head of the UMP group in the National Assembly, denounced what he called "the inquisition opposition" and "the ayatollahs of the left" whom he accused of scheduling the noconfidence motion to hide their own divisions.
Speaking last, Mr de Villepin accused Mr Hollande of calling the vote "in the name of slander, in the name of lies, in the name of rumour". The prime minister went through a litany of his government's "achievements" in employment, security, justice, immigration, education and promoting solidarity among the French.
Mr de Villepin and his mentor, President Jacques Chirac, apparently hope that now that Jean-Louis Gergorin and Imad Lahoud, both former high-ranking employees of the defence contractor EADS, have been identified as the source of the fake account-holders' lists, the scandal will subside. But there is no explanation as to why Mr Gergorin, a friend of Mr de Villepin, would have fabricated the lists.
In an attempt to stanch almost daily revelations, the government has initiated an inquiry into 18 alleged violations of the secrecy of judiciary proceedings by French media in the past month.