San Francisco Frontiers - Sarkozy: divisive French ex-president beset by legal woes

The pugnacious politician on Monday goes on trial on charges he used illegal campaign financing from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi to fund his victorious 2007 presidential election campaign, accusations he vehemently denies.

The trial is just the latest legal headache for Sarkozy who in December was definitively condemned by France on influence-peddling charges after his final appeal was rejected by the Court of Cassation.

He was sentenced to one year in prison, the first time a former French head of state has been given such a sanction, although he is due to serve the time wearing an electronic bracelet outside of jail.

Defiant as ever, Sarkozy said he was "not ready to accept the profound injustice that is being done to me" and added he would use to the sole remaining legal path -- the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg -- to prove his innocence.

Last year, a Paris appeals court confirmed a conviction against Sarkozy in another illegal campaign financing case, ruling said he should serve six months prison, with another six months suspended. That verdict can still go to a higher appeals court.

- Macron meetings -

The series of legal woes have left the formerly omnipresent "hyper-president", who now regularly seeks to bend the ear of incumbent Emmanuel Macron, more than ever a behind-the-scenes political player far from the limelight where he once basked.

Sources have told AFP that Sarkozy held talks at the Elysee Palace late last year in a bid to persuade Macron not to appoint veteran centrist Francois Bayrou as prime minister. Sarkozy is widely known to despise Bayrou.

After a long hesitation, Macron went ahead and named Bayrou.

During his own five-year term, Sarkozy, now 69, took a hard line on immigration, security and national identity.

After winning the presidency at age 52, he was initially seen as injecting a much-needed dose of dynamism, making a splash on the international scene and wooing the corporate world.

But Sarkozy's 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.

Sarkozy failed to win a second mandate in 2012 in a run-off against Socialist Francois Hollande, a bruising defeat over which he remains embittered more than a decade on.

- 'Special link' -

The 2012 defeat made Sarkozy the first president since Valery Giscard d'Estaing (1974-1981) to be denied a second term, prompting him to famously promise: "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 supermodel 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 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.

Key figures in Macron's increasingly right-leaning government, such as Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, are former Sarkozy allies.

But Sarkozy is 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 the first to be formally given 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 admirers are gladdened by his ability to show defiance even in crisis.

"I've got used to enduring this harassment over the past 10 years," he said.

K.Hernandez--SFF