The political-financial scandals in France

[Hannah Bell]

With the indictment of ex-President Jacques Chirac, paving the way for the first-ever trial of a French president, investigations of France’s political-financial scandals have developed into a full-blown governmental crisis. Chirac’s indictment comes after ex-Interior Minister Charles Pasqua’s sentencing to one year in prison without parole in the Angola arms sale scandal and the month-long trial of ex-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in the Clearstream affair...

The indictment of a former head of state is only one indication of the explosiveness of the situation. Pasqua reacted to his sentence by stating that his actions were known to Chirac, Edouard Balladur (a one-time ally of current President Nicolas Sarkozy), and the late Socialist Party leader François Mitterrand, who was president from 1981 to 1995. Pasqua demanded the lifting of the state secrets privilege in all investigations of political-financial scandals.

The scandals, emerging in the late 1980s and 1990s, involved a series of massive kickback schemes. They reflected the growing contradictions of the post-war French political order—-between public ownership of key industrial concerns and the drive of executives and politicians to amass ever-larger fortunes and finance unpopular, right-wing parties; and between French imperialism and its rivals, notably the US, which were exerting ever greater pressure on France...

Sarkozy came to office in 2007, planning to use these affairs to his advantage against his factional rivals around Chirac. Speaking of the Clearstream affair, he famously told a meeting of Lagardère Group executives in 2005: “There will be blood on the walls. When I come to power, we will hang them all from butchers’ meat hooks...”

In the political climate created by Sarkozy’s targeting of Villepin, the judiciary has responded by escalating the crisis. Sentencing Pasqua to prison without parole, it went beyond the penalty recommended by the public prosecutor. By indicting Chirac, the judiciary is pushing Sarkozy’s campaign towards its logical conclusion: an all-out settling of accounts within the establishment, played out in the courts.

This struggle reflects the powerful imperialist interests at stake in the policy changes carried out by Sarkozy vis-à-vis his predecessor Chirac, who held office from 1995 to 2007...

To the extent that political struggle remains limited to factional battles within the bourgeoisie, they inevitably tend towards reactionary settlements at the expense of the workers—both in France and in countries targeted by French imperialism.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n06.shtml