Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
| Nicolas Sarkozy | |
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President-elect of the French Republic |
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| Taking office 16 May 2007 |
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| Succeeding | Jacques Chirac |
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Minister of the Interior |
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| In office 31 May 2005 – 26 March 2007 |
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| President | Jacques Chirac |
| Preceded by | Dominique de Villepin |
| Succeeded by | François Baroin |
| In office 7 May 2002 – 31 March 2004 |
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| President | Jacques Chirac |
| Preceded by | Daniel Vaillant |
| Succeeded by | Dominique de Villepin |
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| Born | 28 January 1955 (age 52) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Political party | UMP |
| Spouse | (1) Marie-Dominique Culioli (married 1982, divorced 1996) (2) Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (married 1996) |
| Children | Pierre, Jean and Louis |
| Alma mater | University of Paris X: Nanterre Sciences Po |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Website | sarkozy.fr |
| France |
 This article is part of the series: Politics and government of France |
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Other countries · Politics Portal |
Nicolas Sarkozy (IPA: [nikɔla saʁkɔzi] — pronunciation ), born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa on 28 January 1955 in Paris, France, is a French politician. He is leader of the UMP, and was elected President of the French Republic on 6 May 2007 after defeating Socialist Party contender Ségolène Royal during the 2007 election, and will take office on the morning of 16 May.
Sarkozy is known for his conservative stance on law and order issues and his admiration for a new economic model for France, suggesting that the country should have a more liberalised economy, inspired by the American and British examples. Until 26 March 2007, he served as the Minister of the Interior of France. His nickname Sarko is used by both supporters and opponents.
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Personal life
Family background
Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa[1] (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál; some sources spell it Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál; Hungarian pronunciation ), and a French mother Andrée Mallah.
Pál Sárközy was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to the lower nobility of Hungary. The family possessed lands and a small castle in the village of Alattyán (near Szolnok), 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest. Pál Sárközy’s father and grandfather held elective offices in the town of Szolnok. Although the Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (nagybócsai Sárközy) family was Protestant, Pál Sárközy’s mother, Katalin Tóth de Csáford (Hungarian: csáfordi Tóth Katalin), grandmother of Nicolas Sarkozy, was from a Catholic aristocratic family.
As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled to Germany[2]. They returned in 1945 but all their possessions had been seized. Pál Sárközy’s father died soon afterwards and his mother, fearing that he would be drafted into the Hungarian People’s Army or sent to Siberia, urged him to leave the country and promised she would eventually follow him and meet him in Paris. Pál Sárközy managed to flee to Austria and then Germany while his mother reported to authorities that he had drowned in Lake Balaton. Eventually, he arrived in Baden Baden, near the French border, where the headquarters of the French Army in Germany were located, and there he met a recruiter for the French Foreign Legion. He signed up for five years, and was sent for training to Sidi Bel Abbes, in French Algeria, where the French Foreign Legion’s headquarters were located. He was due to be sent to Indochina at the end of training, but the doctor who checked him before departure, who happened to also be Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Vietminh. He returned to civilian life in Marseille in 1948 and, although he asked for French citizenship only in the 1970s (his legal status was that of a stateless person until then), he nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into “Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa”. Paul Sarkozy moved to Paris where he used his artistic skills to enter the advertising industry. He met Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy’s mother, in 1949.
Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah, a wealthy urologist and STD specialist with a well-established reputation in the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally called Aaron Mallah and nicknamed Benico, was born in 1890 in the Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece, which at the time had a Jewish majority. According to Jewish genealogical societies, the Mallah family of Salonica anciently came from Spain which they had left in 1492 when the Catholic Monarchs had expelled the Jews. Resettled in Provence, southern France, the family had moved to Salonica a century later. Benico Mallah, the son of a jeweler, left Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, with his mother in 1904 at the age of 14 to attend the prestigious Lycée Lakanal boarding school of Sceaux, in the southern suburbs of Paris. He studied medicine after his baccalaureate and decided to stay in France and become a French citizen. A doctor in the French Army during World War I, he met a recent war widow, Adèle Bouvier (1891–1956), from a bourgeois family of Lyon, whom he married in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy’s grandmother, was a Catholic like the majority of French people. Mallah, for whom religion had reportedly never been a central issue, converted to Catholicism upon marrying Adèle Bouvier, which had been requested by Adèle’s parents, and changed his name to Benedict. Although Benedict Mallah converted to Catholicism, he and his family nonetheless had to flee Paris and take refuge in a small farm in Corrèze during World War II to avoid being arrested and delivered to the Germans.
Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement in Paris and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957 (an MBA and manager of a healthcare consultancy company [2]). In 1959 Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three children. He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second wife.
Early life
During Sarkozy’s childhood, his father refused to give his former wife’s family any financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency and had become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Sarkozy’s grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris. According to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. His grandfather, a Sephardi Jew by birth, was a convert to Catholicism, and Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised in the Catholic faith of his household. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers, is a baptised and professing Catholic. Sarkozy also said recently that one of his role models was former pope John Paul II.
Sarkozy’s father Paul did not teach him or his brothers Hungarian. There is no evidence suggesting that there was an attempt to educate the Sarkozy siblings about their paternal ethnic background.
Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy classmates.[3] He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness of 1.65 m, 5 feet 5 inches, or his family’s lack of money, at least relatively to their 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly neighbours), and is said to have harboured a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. “What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood”, he said later.[4]
Studies
Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded (public) middle and high school in the 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième (equivalent to sixth grade in the US and Year 7 in England and Wales). His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic middle and high school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil, but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. Later he obtained a bachelor’s degree in law from the Université Paris X Nanterre. He attended the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (more commonly known as Sciences Po), but did not graduate because he failed his exam in English [5]. He enrolled himself at Nanterre University in law, already run down some years after May ‘68. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specializing in French business law and family law, skills which he would later put to use in divorcing his first wife and helping his mother take legal action against his father in order to raise alimony [6].
Personal wealth
Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of two million euros, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. [7].
Political career
General traits
Nicolas Sarkozy speaking at the congress of his party
He is generally recognized by the right and left as a highly skilled politician and striking orator. Supporters of Sarkozy within France emphasize his charisma, political innovation and willingness to “make a dramatic break” amidst mounting disaffection against “politics as usual”; some see him as wanting to depart from traditional French social and economic principles in favor of American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered to be somewhat more pro-U.S. than most French politicians.
Since November 2004, he has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France’s major right political party, and he was Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin, with the honorific title of Minister of State, making him effectively the number three man in the French State after President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister. His ministerial responsibilities included law enforcement and working to co-ordinate relationships between the national and local governments, as well as Minister of Cults (in this guise he created the CFCM, French Council of Muslim Faith). Previously, he was a deputy to the French National Assembly. He was forced to resign this position in order to accept his ministerial appointment. He previously also held several ministerial posts, including Finance Minister.
Career
Sarkozy’s political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris (in the Hauts-de-Seine département). A member of the Neo-Gaullist party RPR, he went on to be elected mayor of that town, after the death of the incumbent mayor Achille Peretti. Sarkozy had been close to Peretti, as his mother was Peretti’s secretary. The senior RPR politician in the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organise his campaign. Instead Sarkozy profited from a short illness of Pasqua to propel himself into the office of mayor.[8] He was the youngest ever mayor of any town in France with a population of over 50,000. He served from 1983 to 2002. In 1988, he became a deputy in the National Assembly.
In 1993, Sarkozy was in the national news for personally negotiating with the “Human Bomb”, a man who had taken small children hostage in a kindergarten in Neuilly. The “Human Bomb” was killed after two days of talks by policemen of the RAID, who entered the school stealthily while the attacker was resting.
From 1993 to 1995, he was Minister for the Budget and spokesman for the executive in the cabinet of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Throughout most of his early career, Sarkozy had been seen as a protégé of Jacques Chirac. However, in 1995 he spurned Chirac and backed Balladur for President of France. After Chirac won the election, Sarkozy lost his position as Minister for the Budget and found himself outside the circles of power. It is widely believed that ever since 1995 Chirac has considered Sarkozy’s siding with Balladur as a form of treason, and that the two men now loathe one another.
However, he came back after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary election, as number 2 of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned, in 1999, he took the lead of the Neo-Gaullist party. But it obtained its worst result at the 1999 European Parliament election, winning 12.7% of the votes, less than the dissident Rally for France of Charles Pasqua. Sarkozy lost the RPR leadership.
In 2002, however, after his re-election as President of the French Republic (see French presidential election, 2002), Chirac appointed Sarkozy as French Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, despite the widely acknowledged friction between the two. Following Jacques Chirac’s 14th of July keynote speech on road safety Sarkozy as interior minister pushed through new legislation leading to the mass purchase of speed cameras and a campaign to increase the awareness of dangers on the roads.
Following the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy was moved to the position of Finance Minister. Tensions continued to build between Sarkozy and Chirac and within the UMP party, as Sarkozy’s intentions of becoming head of the party after the resignation of Alain Juppé became clear. It became increasingly apparent that Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Sarkozy commented, “not just when I shave”.[9]
In November 2004 after party elections, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned his position as minister. Sarkozy’s ascent was marked by the division of UMP between sarkozystes, such as Sarkozy’s “first lieutenant”, Brice Hortefeux, and Chirac loyalists, such as Jean-Louis Debré.
Sarkozy was made Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March 2005 to the National Assembly (as required by the constitution,[10] he had had to resign as a deputy when he had become minister in 2002).
On 31 May 2005 the main French news radio station France Info reported a rumour that Sarkozy was to be reappointed Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin without resigning from the UMP leadership. This was confirmed on 2 June 2005, when the members of the government were officially announced.
Raffarin government
First term as Minister of the Interior
Nicolas Sarkozy, here with then prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, meeting with bicycle-mounted officers of the French National Police.
Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Sarkozy was the most popular and also the most unpopular conservative politician in France, according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His “tough on crime” policies, which included increasing the police presence on the streets and introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many and unpopular for many others. However, he was criticized for putting forward legislation which can be questioned as an infringement on civil rights, and adversely affected disadvantaged sections of the population.[citation needed]
Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes tense relationships between the general French population and the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic Church in France with their official leaders or Protestants with their umbrella organisations, the French Muslim community had a lack of structure with no group that could legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy felt that the foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported the foundation in May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français du culte musulman (“French Council of Muslim Worship”), an organisation meant to be representative of French Muslims.[11] In addition, Sarkozy has suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, mostly in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim institutions with public funds[12] so that they are less reliant on money from outside of France.
Minister of Finance
During his short appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy was responsible for introducing a number of policies. The degree to which this reflected libéralisme (a hands-off approach to running the economy) or more traditional French state dirigisme (intervention) is controversial. He resigned the day following his election as president of the UMP.
- In September 2004, Sarkozy oversaw the reduction of the government ownership stake in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.[13]
- Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom decided by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.[14]
- Sarkozy reached an agreement with the major retail chains in France to concertedly lower prices on household goods by an average of 2%; the success of this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease was closer to 1%.[15]
- Taxes: Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF (solidarity tax on wealth). This is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some in the business world and on the Liberal Right, such as Alain Madelin, wanted it abolished. For Sarkozy, that would have risked being categorised by the Left as a gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties.[16] So Sarkozy preferred reducing the ISF with the bouclier fiscal.
Villepin government
Second term as Minister of the Interior
Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior with American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after their bilateral meeting in Washington D.C.
During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Sarkozy was initially more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on his own topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues, since he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party.
However, the civil unrest in autumn 2005 put law enforcement in the spotlight again. Sarkozy was accused of having provoked the unrest by calling young delinquents from housing projects “rifraff” (”racaille”) in Argenteuil near Paris. After the accidental death of two youths, which sparked the riots, Sarkozy first blamed it on “hoodlums” and gangsters. These remarks were sharply criticised by many on the left wing and by a member of his own government, Delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag.[17]
After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection of immigrants, greater tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance government justice measures for young delinquents.
Action as UMP’s leader
Sarkozy currently is the president of UMP, the French conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency, the number of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported a “yes” vote in the French referendum on the European Constitution.
Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes in France’s economic and social policies. These calls culminated in an interview with Le Monde on 8 September 2005, during which he claimed that the French had been misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers to be unrealistic policies.[18] Among other issues:
- he called for a simplified and “fairer” taxation system, with fewer loopholes and a maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50% of revenue;
- he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers who refuse work offered to them;
- he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French state has been living off credit for some time.
Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour of laissez-faire economic policies, although this judgment is made by French standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Sarkozy rejects this label of libéral and prefers to call himself a pragmatist instead.
Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he wanted a reform of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled workers needed by the French economy. He also wants to reform the current French system for foreign students, saying that it enables foreign students to take open-ended curricula in order to obtain residency in France; instead, he wants to select the best students to the best curricula in France.
In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as DADVSI, which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the issue, Sarkozy stepped in and organised meetings between various parties involved. Later, groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Sarkozy personally and unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted strong penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems.
Controversy
Many on the Left have a particular distrust for Nicolas Sarkozy; specific “anti-Sarko” movements have been started
Generally speaking, Sarkozy is a bête noire of the left (see below), and is also criticized by some on the right, most vocally by the supporters of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, such as Jean-Louis Debré, but also by social Catholics such as Christine Boutin; Boutin however, in the end, gave up her presidential bid and became a political advisor to Sarkozy. [3] [4]
Critics have accused him of being an authoritarian demagogue, ready to trade away civil liberties for political gains.[19] Some of these accusations are echoed by French civil rights organisations.[citation needed] He is also accused by the Left of being a populist who favours far-right ideas.[20]
Kärcher remark
Since his famous Kärcher remark, Nicolas Sarkozy has been lampooned about his fondness for cleaning out the riff-raff; here, electoral posters of Sarkozy were posted on a Kärcher car wash
In the midst of a tense period and following a shooting that killed an 11-year-old boy in the banlieue of La Courneuve in June 2005, he quoted a local resident and vowed to clean the area out “with a Kärcher” (nettoyer la cité au Kärcher, Kärcher being a well-known brand of pressure cleaning equipment), and two days before the 2005 Paris riots he referred to the rioters as voyous (thugs) and racaille, a slang term which can be translated into English as dregs or riff-raff, [21] this being criticised as being too hard on the rioters.[22][23]
Separation of powers
As Minister of the Interior, Sarkozy has made bold statements following heinous crimes reported in the media. As a consequence, he has been accused in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary by trying to apply pressure in certain cases. Most famously, he was criticised, not only by the left-wing Syndicat de la magistrature judges’ union, but also by the centrist Union syndicale des magistrats for attacks on the independence of the judiciary.[24]
In September 2005 some youths were acquitted of an arson attack on a police station in Pau for lack of proof and Sarkozy was accused of having pushed for a hasty inquiry—Sarkozy had vowed that the perpetrators would be arrested within three months.[25] On 22 June 2005, he announced to law enforcement officials that he had questioned the Minister of Justice about the future of “the judge” who had freed a man on parole, enabling him to commit a murder.[26] These comments were criticised by both moderate and left-wing magistrates since the decision had been made by three judges.
Sarkozy has personal friendships with some of the most powerful figures in the French business world; for example, Martin Bouygues (from the Bouygues group, owner of the TF1 channel, as well as telecommunications and public works companies) and Bernard Arnault (from LVMH) were his marriage witnesses. His brother, Guillaume, is a senior executive of the MEDEF, the foremost business union in France; in 2005, he renounced running for the top position of that union because he said he did not want to hinder his brother’s political career.
Religion and state
Sarkozy, a Catholic, has caused controversy because of his views on the relationship between religion and state. In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l’espérance (“The Republic, Religions, and Hope”),[27] in which he argued that the young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, arguing for the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society.[28][29] He flatly opposes financing of religious institutions with funds from outside France. After meeting with Tom Cruise, Sarkozy was criticised by some for meeting with a member of the Church of Scientology, which is classified as a dangerous sect in France.[30]
War in Iraq
Nicolas Sarkozy, like almost all French politicians, disapproved of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but was nonetheless critical of the way Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin expressed France’s opposition to the war. Talking at the French-American Foundation in Washington, D.C. on 12 September 2006, he denounced what he called the “French arrogance” and said: “It is bad manners to embarrass one’s allies or sound like one is taking delight in their troubles.”[31] He also added: “We must never again turn our disagreements into a crisis.” This speech, given without the assent of the French president by a member of the French government traveling abroad (Sarkozy was still Minister of the Interior), was criticized by many in France. Jacques Chirac reportedly said in private that Sarkozy’s speech was “appalling” and “a shameful act”.[31]
Regularisation of immigrant families
Sarkozy issued a memorandum (the ‘circulaire Sarkozy’) on 13 June 2006. In this decision sent to all prefects of France (his representatives in the provinces), he proposed to hand some immigration papers to immigrant families with children integrated in French schools. A strict series of conditions were listed in order to accept the regularisation of the situation of these families (proofs of integration in the country, proof of job, etc.). This offer attracted a large number of applications (around 25,000) handed to police services, usually under the advice of charities of specialised social associations. Most of the files were refused because the minister had fixed, beforehand, a number of “about 6000″ files to be accepted, whatever happened. The remaining 20,000 or so people have however been carefully registered in police files, including their personal address and child’s school (one of the criteria was providing school certificates). Some consider the situation to be a possible ‘trap’ for integrated immigrants.
View on genetic predispositions
A few weeks before the first round of the 2007 presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy said during an interview with philosopher Michel Onfray[32] that he thinks disorders such as paedophilia and depression have a genetic as well as social basis, famously stating “I don’t agree with you, I’d be inclined to think that one is born a paedophile, and it is actually a problem that we do not know how to cure this disease”; he also claimed that suicides among youth was linked to genetic predispositions by stating, “I don’t want to give parents a complex. It’s not exclusively the parents’ fault every time a youngster commits suicide.” These claims were criticized by a few scientists, including geneticist Axel Kahn.[33][34]
Marriages, divorce and separation
On 23 September 1982 he married Corsican-born Marie-Dominique Culioli, daughter of a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They have two sons, Pierre (born in 1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Sarkozy’s marriage witness was the prominent right wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent. Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for some years. Culioli continues to be a practicing Catholic and a charismatic and affirms that she still prays fervently for Sarkozy.[35]
As mayor of Neuilly, Sarkozy met Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (great-granddaughter of composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father)[36] At the time, she was then married to TV host Jacques Martin. In 1989, Ciganer-Albeniz left Martin for Sarkozy. After a divorce lasting four months, Sarkozy married her in October 1996 (with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault). They have one son, Louis, born in 1997.
Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Ciganer-Albeniz acting as a sort of chief aide for her husband. On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that Ciganer-Albeniz had left Sarkozy for French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York.[37]. There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin. This led Sarkozy to sue the paper.
In late 2005, the press reported that Sarkozy was in a relationship with Anne Fulda, a journalist from Le Figaro. Finally, in January 2006, a reconciliation with Ciganer-Albeniz took place.[38]
Ciganer-Albeniz and Sarkozy are currently believed to be living together.[citation needed] In early 2006, Sarkozy suggested to the press that he had welcomed Ciganer-Albeniz back from the USA, although the exact circumstances of the reconciliation are not known.[39]
Candidacy for President
Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006
In Toulouse for the 2007 presidential campaign
On 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was chosen by the UMP to be its candidate in the 2007 presidential election. Sarkozy, who was running unopposed, won 98% of the votes. Of the 327,000 UMP members who could vote, 69% participated in the online ballot.[40]
In February 2007 Sarkozy appeared on a televised debate on TF1 where he expressed his support for affirmative action for minorities and the freedom to work overtime, but his opposition to homosexual marriage.
On 7 February, Nicolas Sarkozy finally decided in favour of a projected second, non-nuclear, aircraft carrier for the national Navy (adding to the nuclear Charles de Gaulle), during an official visit in Toulon with Defence Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie. “This would allow permanently having an operational ship, taking into account the constraints of maintenance”, he explained.[41] This new view on the second aircraft carrier issue comes in conflict with a January report, where he was against a second carrier.[42]
On 21 March President Jacques Chirac announced his support for Sarkozy, adding that he had his vote. Chirac pointed out that Sarkozy had been chosen as presidential candidate for the ruling UMP party, and said: “So it is totally natural that I give him my vote and my support.” To focus on his campaign, Sarkozy stepped down as interior minister on 26 March.[43]
During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Sarkozy of being a “candidate for brutality” and of presenting overly hardline views about France’s future.[44] He was also criticized by opponents for allegedly courting conservative voters in policy-making in a bid to capitalise on right-wing sentiments among some communities. However, his popularity was sufficient to see him polling as the frontrunner throughout the later campaign period, consistently ahead of rival Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal.
The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy came in first with 31.18% of the votes, ahead of Ségolène Royal of the Socialists with 25.87%. In the second round, Sarkozy came out on top to win the election with 53.06% of the votes ahead of Ségolène Royal with 46.94%. In his speech immediately following the announcement of the election results, Sarkozy stressed the need for France’s modernisation, but also called for national unity, mentioning that Royal was in his thoughts. In that speech, he claimed “The French have chosen to break with the ideas, habits and behaviour of the past. I will restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.”
First term as president (2007-)
On 16th May, Nicolas Sarkozy will become the 23rd Président of French Republic.
The power transfer from Jacques Chirac is scheduled for the morning of 16 May at the Élysée Palace, where he will be given the nuclear codes of the nuclear deterrence and be presented the Grand Master’s Collar, symbol of his new function of Grand Master of the Legion of Honour. At that point he will become President. A public ceremony in Paris is also planned. The same day, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin will resign. Sarkozy will appoint his first Prime Minister on May 17. In a break with tradition, the first foreign statesman that the new President met following his election was the British Prime Minister Tony Blair on May 11. The first foreign statesman that he is scheduled to meet upon his taking up the office of President will be Germany’s Angela Merkel.
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Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest “Ron” Paul (born 20 August 1935) is a 10th-term Congressman, medical doctor (M.D.), and a 2008 presidential candidate from the U.S. state of Texas. As a Republican, he has represented Texas’s 14th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1997, and had previously served as the representative from Texas’s 22nd district in 1976 and from 1979 to 1985.
Paul advocates the limited role of government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He has earned the nickname “Dr. No” for voting against any bill he believes violates the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Paul is the “one exception to the Gang of 535″ on Capitol Hill. He has never voted to raise taxes or congressional pay. He has always voted against the USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Iraq War.
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Westboro Baptist Church
Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a controversial U.S. church headed by Fred Phelps and based in Topeka, Kansas. It runs the websites GodHatesFags.com,[1] GodHatesAmerica.com and others expressing condemnation of homosexuals, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Swedes, African Americans, Canadians, Americans, and other groups. The organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League,[2] and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[3][4] The group has achieved national notoriety in recent years due to its picketing of funeral processions for soldiers killed in combat, which functions as an extension of the Phelps’ anti-United States beliefs.
While its members identify themselves as Baptists, the Church is an independent church not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations. The church describes itself as following Primitive Baptist and Calvinist principles.
The Church bases its work around the belief expressed by its best known slogan and the address of its primary website, “God hates fags”, and expresses the opinion, based on its Biblical eisegesis, that nearly every tragedy in the world is linked to homosexuality – specifically society’s increasing tolerance and acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. It maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of “sinners”[5] and that homosexuality should be a capital crime.
Purpose
Phelps has stated as his purpose for Westboro:
Our goal is to preach the Word of God to this crooked and perverse generation. By our words, some will repent. By our words, some will be condemned. Whether they hear, or whether they forbear, they will know a prophet has been among them… our goal is to glorify God by declaring His whole counsel to everyone… we hope that by our preaching some will be saved.[5]
The members of Westboro Baptist Church have explained their decision to use the word fag, a largely pejorative term for gay men, in their FAQ:
The word “fag” is a contraction of the word “faggot” (or, “fagot”). When traced through its etymological history, the word “faggot” simply means “a bundle of sticks used as fuel.” See dictionary.com and thesaurus.com (where such words as “fuel” and “brimstone” are used as synonyms). “Scholars” can’t decide when such a word began to be used in reference to homosexuals, so we’ll give the answer here: “I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.” Amos 4:11. The word translated “firebrand” is the Hebrew word “uwd,” which comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to rake together” (or, “to gather together”). In short, the Hebrew word “uwd” is talking about burning sticks of wood that are gathered together. That is what the English word “faggot” means. Amos 4:11 could just as easily be translated “…ye were as a faggot plucked out of the burning…”[5]
It is worth noting that this etymology is unproven, and likely incorrect. (see faggot (epithet) for details)
Westboro refers to itself as a Primitive Baptist church,[2] claiming adherence to the philosophy of John Calvin and to the principles of the Five points of Calvinism.[7]
Though Westboro is not officially identified with the King James-Only Movement, its website quotes the King James version of the Bible and recommends that the reader obtain a King James Bible.
Composition
claims that WBC consists of “about 150 members”.[8] BBC Two claims there are 71 members.[9] A compilation of the names of Phelps’ grandchildren and great-grand-children, combined with his nine “loyal” children and their spouses, though, numbers 90. Individuals who followed Phelps Sr. after he was voted out of his old congregation, Eastside Baptist Church (a traditional Baptist church), consisted of the Hockenbargers (whose offspring later married into the Phelps clan), George Stutzman, Chris Davis (who also married into the Phelps clan) and Theresa Davis (whose relationship, if any, to Chris Davis is unknown). Around 2000, another family (Steve and Luci Drain, along with daughters Lauren, Taylor and Faith and son Boaz) joined the group after Steve Drain, while taping a documentary on religious groups, interviewed several Westboro members and came to accept their theology. The Drains are not related to either the Phelpses or the Hockenbargers, nor to anyone else from the original group.
The Hockenbarger family that left Eastside to follow Phelps is headed by Charles William “Bill” Hockenbarger, allegedly a member of Christian Identity. Hockenbarger has been a friend of Phelps Sr. since the two men were in their twenties. In 2002, one of Phelps Sr.’s grandsons married one of the Hockenbarger granddaughters, with Phelps performing the ceremony. Karl Hockenbarger, the son of Bill Hockenbarger (and also an alleged Identity member) worked for Washburn University (where Phelps Sr. graduated in 1962).
In addition, at the outset several other Eastside members joined Westboro, but after Phelps began his activities (most notably his shooting of a dog that was irritating him[citation needed]), those members returned to Eastside or went elsewhere.
Phelps does not permit Westboro members to marry persons outside the church. As relatively few individuals have joined Westboro, there have been at least two marriages between the Phelps and Hockenbarger clans, resulting in some members having dual genealogical relationships (one member is both the aunt and sister-in-law of another). In the documentary The Most Hated Family in America, the young girls in the church express a disinterest in getting married, because “that’s not what we are about” and “we’re living in the last of the last days, times are very short”.[10]
Shirley Phelps-Roper esq., daughter of Rev. Fred Phelps and an attorney at the Phelps Chartered Law firm, is a prominent member of WBC and often a spokesperson for WBC. For the last couple of years, she has been running the day-to-day operations of the church.
Phelps Chartered law firm
All the principals of the Phelps Chartered law firm [2], a firm founded by WBC founder Fred Phelps, are members of WBC. Phelps Chartered handles most of WBC’s legal work and has received significant awards of attorney’s fees from the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Award Act of 1976 when WBC has been improperly prevented from picketing.[12]
The Westboro compound
The Westboro facility is organized around the edges of a lightly fortified compound, surrounded by ten homes organized in a block at 3701 SW 12th Street in Topeka. The house on the north-west corner of the compound belongs to Phelps Sr., its lower floor serving as the church “meeting hall” (as he refers to it). The other nine houses were once occupied by non-congregants, who moved away either on their own initiative or as a result of not wanting to live near Phelps Sr. and Westboro, and are now occupied by the families of Phelps Sr.’s nine children still associated with Westboro. The properties border an area enclosed by a fence with picketed tops. Inside the compound are U.S. and Canadian flags that fly non-stop (and are lit up at night), in an upside down position.[13] Westboro’s stated reason for flying the flags upside down (given on the frequently asked question page of one of its web sites), is that an upside down flag is “the international sign for distress” and that the U.S. is in distress because “our national support of perversity homosexuality is bringing God’s wrath upon us.”[5] The church website address is prominently displayed on the exterior of Fred Phelps Sr.’s house.
Westboro services, according to its website, are open to the public and begin at approximately 11:30 am (Central Time) on Sunday mornings. Phelps Sr. generally preaches for around forty-five minutes.[14]
The homes share a communal backyard, in the center of which once sat an Olympic size swimming pool; Phelps Sr. previously obtained tax exemption on the cost of maintenance and water by performing baptisms there and writing it off as a baptismal font. Sometime after 2000, the pool was filled in. No official reason has been given, but two theories (neither of which have been confirmed nor contested) have developed. One theory states that, according to Topeka residents, sometime around 2000 one of Phelps Sr.’s grandchildren nearly drowned in the pool and thus it was removed for safety reasons. The other theory holds that the pool was filled in because Westboro lost, or was about to lose, its tax exemption status on it.
The compound also includes a garage separate from the houses, which is used to store an extended cab/extended bed Ford F-150 pickup truck used to transport Westboro’s picketers around Topeka and elsewhere. In one of the many lawsuits that swirl around WBC the Kansas State Board of Tax Appeals ruled that the truck was not used exclusively for religious purposes, because at least 40 percent of the protest signs had a political slant, and would therefore be subject to property tax.[15]
Quotations from Phelps’ sermons
These quotes came from an audio file of sermon clips on satanlovesfredphelps.com.[16]
* “America is doomed and cursed by God irreversibly”.
* “It’s too late to pray for America. It’s a sin to pray for America”.
* “Hurricane Rita is an answer to the prayers of the suffering saints of Westboro Baptist Church”. (Hurricane Katrina has also been cited on other sources)
* “The Lord God Almighty killed [the people who died on 9/11], looked at them in the face, laughed and mocked at each one of them as he cast each one of them into hell”.
* “Nobody that’s intelligent and that fears God will fly the American flag any way but upside-down, the international symbol of distress”.
* “All ye having business before this honorable [Supreme] Court draw nigh, give your attention and ye shall be heard. No, no. Draw nigh and bend over. They’re gonna rape you up the butt”.
* “The President of the United States gets his jollies masturbating horses”. (This was a reference to a joke told by Laura Bush about her husband’s attempt to milk a male horse[17]).
* “The hell with your flag. The hell with your fag army, your fag courts, your fag-run government”.
* “This is the hypocritical, fag-infested, fag-run United States of America and we’re supposed to respect that fag rag flag?”
* “The red on that flag stands for fag rectal blood”.
* “On Pope John Paul II’s watch, the Roman Catholic Church became the church of the holy pedophiles. And sodomite feces replaced the wafer for their communion service. And Sodomite semen replaced the wine that the Pope drinks”.
* “1.07 billion members of that monstrous machine called the Roman Catholic Church. Every last one of them going to hell”.
Activities and statements
See also: Targets of Westboro Baptist Church
The group carries out daily picketing in Topeka (purportedly six per day with fifteen on Sunday, “Lord willing”, per the index page of its main website[18]) and travels nationally to picket the funerals of gay and lesbian victims of murder, gay-bashing or death related to AIDS, as well as other events related or appearing to be related to gay people. They have been known to protest outside theaters in Topeka, under the premise that live theatre (especially Broadway musical productions) is a haven of homosexuality, as well as Kansas City Chiefs football games, and live pop concerts in Topeka. They have also shown interest in picketing productions of the play The Laramie Project.[19] Recently, they have shifted their interest to picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in the Iraq War, believing this to be more of “God’s judgment” on America. The FAQ section of the website states that, in their view, soldiers didn’t join the military out of a sense of patriotism, but because they are “lazy, incompetent idiots” unable to find work elsewhere.[5] Some states, including Kansas, have passed laws prohibiting picketing at funerals. Westboro has also protested funerals of people ranging from Fred Rogers to Coretta Scott King.
One of Westboro’s followers estimated that the church spends $250,000 a year traveling around the world to picket. In the 1990s the church won a series of lawsuits against the City of Topeka and Shawnee County for efforts taken to prevent or hinder WBC picketing. As a result, the church was awarded approximately $200,000 in attorney’s fees and costs associated with the litigation. Otherwise, all of the church’s money comes from the combined income of its congregants and money won in lawsuits against their opponents.
Phelps Sr., his supporters and members of his church attend the aforementioned gatherings, as well as other gay-related events, with signs bearing anti-gay slogans. Phelps Sr. has characterized the AIDS Memorial Quilt as “100,000 living fags slobberin’ around 45,000 dead fags” and declared Elizabeth Taylor, a fundraiser for AIDS research, to be a “world-famous filthy Jew whore.” Other regular anti-gay slogans of Westboro include “Homosexuality = Death,” “Fags Die, God Laughs,” “Matthew Shepard Rots in Hell,” “AIDS: Kills Fags Dead” and “Ellen DeGeneres is a Lesbian Slut.” (The latter was carried at an “Equality Rocks” rock concert and fundraiser; at the event DeGeneres commented that she wasn’t offended so much by the slogan as the fact that they had drawn pockmarks all over her face on the poster.)
A collection of Westboro signs and slogans can be seen at “The signs of the times” web page.
Other slogans are[20]
* God Hates You[21]
* God Hates Your Tears[22]
* God Hates Fag Enablers[21]
* God Is Your Enemy[21]
* Thank God for 9/11[21]
* Thank God for the Tsunami[23]
* Thank God for Katrina[24]
* Thank God for Dead Soldiers[21]
* Thank God for IEDs (improvised explosive devices)[21]
* Thank God for AIDS[5]
* Fag Santa (carried at Christmas time)
* Fag Flag (with an American flag)[21]
* Fags Doom Nations (Image)
* Fags Are Worthy of Death (Image)
* Fags Eat Feces = Scat
* Fag Troops[21]
* Menninger Therapy (complete with two stick figures mounting)
* Repent or Perish[25]
* Dyke nuns and Fag Priests (carried outside Catholic churches)
* God Hates PS3
* Fags Play PS3
* Dyke Sows Wed Here (complete with pictures of pigs in wedding dresses covered with feces; carried at lesbian weddings)
* Brides of Satan (referring to lesbian weddings)
* Don’t Worship the Dead[21]
* Disney Fags (used during Disney on Ice at the Expo Center.)
* Your Pastor Is A Whore[21]
* Semper Fi Semper Fag
When Kevin Oldham, a gay musician, died of AIDS in 1993, Phelps Sr. sent a photo of Kevin to his parents. The photo contained the caption: “Kevin Oldham: Dead Fag”.[26]
The group came into the national spotlight in 1998, when they were featured on CNN for picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man from Wyoming who was beaten to death by two young males. Though Phelps Sr. claimed that Shepard’s murder was unjust (and the Westboro’s website states that Shepard’s murderers face the same fate as Shepard – eternity in hell unless they repent), his overt activism against Shepard’s sexual orientation, regardless of the mourning of Shepard’s family and friends (he called Shepard’s mother, Judy, a whore and a “mother from Hell” during the memorial service and told her she’d “soon be joining Matthew”), to some had the appearance of a tacit endorsement for Shepard’s murder.
On Westboro’s website, Phelps Sr. maintains a “Perpetual Gospel Memorial” to Shepard. There is a similar memorial to lesbian dog-attack victim Diane Whipple. Some direct quotes/images from the Shepard page:
* A photograph of Matthew Shepard’s face with animated flames dancing across it. When the cursor is moved across his face, viewers with a sound card will hear screams and a high-pitched voice shrieking “For God’s sake, listen to Phelps!”
* A counter which displays how many days Matthew Shepard has “Been in Hell”.
* “WBC does not support the murder of Matthew Shepard: ‘thou shalt not kill.’ Unless his killers repent, they will receive the same sentence that Matthew Shepard received – eternal fire. However, the truth about Matthew Shepard needs to be known. He lived a Satanic lifestyle. He got himself killed trolling for anonymous homosexual sex in a bar at midnight”.[27]
On January 25, 2004, Phelps picketed five churches (three Catholic and two Episcopalian) and the Federal Courthouse for allegedly legalizing same sex marriages in Iowa. Two women married in Vermont had their marriage mistakenly annulled by a federal judge in Sioux City, Iowa. The ruling was quickly reversed. The community response was to hold several counter-protests and hold a large multi-faith service in the town’s city auditorium.[citation needed]
The group has also picketed Billy Graham revivals, alleging that the evangelist will burn in Hell for failing to propagate the “God Hates Fags” doctrine. In October 2004, the group protested Graham’s mass meetings, calling the 85 year-old preacher a “Hell-bound false prophet”.
In press releases, WBC referred to Topeka mayor James McClinton as a “wife-beating tyrant”. McClinton, who is black, was portrayed in the press release as a gorilla in a suit with a swastika armband.[28]
A WBC member picketing the memorial in Buckhannon, West Virginia
A WBC member picketing the memorial in Buckhannon, West Virginia
On January 15, 2006, Westboro members protested the memorial of 2006 Sago Mine disaster victims claiming that the mining accident was God’s revenge against America for its tolerance of homosexuality.[29] Footage of the protest, including several members dancing, was later shown on Fox News.
In July 2005, the Westboro Baptist Church declared its intention to picket the memorial service of Cpl. Carrie French in Boise, Idaho. French, aged 19 years old, was killed on June 5 in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where she served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat Team’s 145th Support Battalion. Her death is seen by the church as divine punishment of the United States. Phelps Sr. was quoted as saying, “Our attitude toward what’s happening with the war is [that] the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime.”[30]
The Westboro Baptist Church declared its intention to picket the funerals of other soldiers as well and did so in August 2005. A group from the church protested at the funeral of Spc. Edward Myers, a soldier from St. Joseph, Missouri, who died in Iraq. Shirley Phelps-Roper (one of Phelps Sr.’s daughters and main author of the WBC Epics and Hate Letters) told a television reporter, “Who would serve a nation that is Godless and has flipped off, defiantly defied, defiantly flipped off, the Lord their God?” She then reiterated her belief that Myers was burning in Hell.[31]
After University of Missouri coach Kyle Hawkins “came out” as openly gay, WBC members announced plans to picket the University and all Missouri’s lacrosse games.[citation needed]
In the wake of the tragic Amish school house shooting, members of Westboro Baptist Church planned on picketing the funerals of the five girls killed in the shooting. Their signs were going to call the girls “whores” and that they are “burning in hell”. In an attempt to stop them, news radio personality/host Mike Gallagher attempted to dissuade them. After first rejecting a monetary offer, Gallagher offered them an hour of unrestricted airtime on his show. WBC accepted, and the picket was called off.[32] On October 5, 2006, members of WBC were “hosts” of the Mike Gallagher’s radio show, with Gallagher giving periodic warnings to viewers that they (the members of WBC) did not represent the views of him or the station.
In February of 2007, the WBC threatened to picket the funeral of ten Bardstown, Kentucky family members who died in a fire as well as a similar one in Tennessee where four children died in a fire. In both instances, fliers were sent to the communities stating that God “hates” both states “for promoting sodomy and immorality” and for the states “rabidly persecuting” the church. However, on the Friday before the Bardstown funerals, the church elected to use an hour of radio time to promote their message.[33]
Recently the WBC has also been picketing against Sweden because the pastor Åke Green was convicted for hate speech after having called homosexuality a cancer in one of his sermons. WBC has also been sending abusive faxes to Princess Madeleine of Sweden.[3]
On the day of the April 16th 2007 campus massacre on the Virginia Tech campus, the Church declared its intent to protest the funerals of the students killed. This was announced on the Church’s www.godhatesamerica.com website. On April 19th 2007, GoDaddy, the Internet registrar responsible for that website and its associated domain had suspended its registration, returning a “whois” DNS server entry of “suspended for spam and abuse”. Within hours, however, the domain had been restored.[citation needed] In a deal similar to that struck for the victims of the Amish school shooting, Gallagher and the Church have independently announced that the Church has agreed to not protest these funerals in lieu of three hours of unrestricted airtime on his show.[4][5]
Criminal record
In 1993, Charles F. Hockenbarger, Karl Hockenbarger, Timothy Phelps, Jonathan Phelps, Phelps Sr. and Margie Phelps were brought up on a variety of criminal charges stemming from information gathered following a raid of Westboro. Several charges were later dropped; the trials that followed saw every member of Westboro Baptist Church over the age of fifteen testifying in the defense of their family and fellow congregants; over 100 defense witnesses were called in all. Timothy Phelps, Charles F. Hockenbarger and Karl Hockenbarger were all found not guilty. Jon Phelps was found guilty of witness intimidation and misdemeanor battery, and has defended the actions that led to that arrest and guilty verdict as recently as October 11, 2006 on Midweek Politics, while Margie Phelps was found guilty of filing a false report and Phelps Sr. was found guilty of disorderly conduct as defined by aggravated intimidation of a witness; all three lost their appeals. All six filed lawsuits against the city and took their cases to appeals court, where their lawsuits were dismissed.
Fred Phelps’ grandson Benjamin Phelps, convicted of assault and disorderly conduct in 1995. He was the person who informed his grandfather about the existence of the Internet and made the first “GodHatesFags” page
Fred Phelps’ grandson Benjamin Phelps, convicted of assault and disorderly conduct in 1995. He was the person who informed his grandfather about the existence of the Internet and made the first “GodHatesFags” page
In 1995, Phelps Sr.’s eldest grandson, Benjamin Phelps,