Sarkozy’s one-man show

When the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, took to the “stage” at his official residence, the Elysée palace, on Tuesday, it wasn’t so much the long-promised press conference as a chance for the man to address the nations and indeed the world’s media with his vision of what he felt they needed to know.

With his government’s ministers sitting silently in the front row like stuffed suits and suitesses – this is after all the era of parity within government – Sarkozy delivered a completely orchestrated two-hour, one man show. He was in his element and easily upstaged the assembled 500 or so hacks.

Mind you the international mob were only interested in one issue – and it didn’t take that long before Sarkozy gave them the answer he wanted. Yes his relationship with Carla was serious, he stressed. They had decided not to hide it from the world, and as far as wedding bells were concerned…..”well the press would probably find out after it happened, if it happened,” he smirked.

A challenge set, and one to be met, as the headline writers chase after both stories and the former top model-turned-singer herself over the next month or so.

Sarkozy handles the French media like a true professional and he loves to be in control of the news agenda. So on reflection it should perhaps not come as a surprise that he managed in a sense to out-scoop the very profession that should be doing the scooping.

His announcement that he planned to scrap advertising on public television and radio sent the assembled journalists and their bosses into fits of apoplexy and hurried non-statements for the rest of the day. Nobody, apparently, saw it coming.

The revelation was of seismic proportions if the navel-gazing column inches and airtime in the following 24 hours were anything to go by. Sure journalists love interviewing each other for “expert” opinions and even better adore stories about themselves and the media, but this time they appeared to go into overdrive.

The “shockwaves” went further. Shares in private broadcasters surged – one of them (TF1) is interestingly enough owned by one of Sarkozy’s cronies. And even the foreign press, albeit the business and technology sections, managed to drag its interest away from Carla for a moment to comment on the proposed internet tax – part of Sarkozy’s solution for meeting the shortfall in funding public broadcasting that will result from dropping advertising.

But such was the pique of the French media at having been outmanoeuvred that it all but allowed what might have been the president’s most important comment to slip by virtually unnoticed.



When asked directly whether he intended to get rid of the 35-hour working week by the end of the year, Sarkozy responded with a simple “yes” – and nobody asked a follow-up question as to how or why!

Perhaps Sarkozy was a little surprised by his own daring as a day later he back-pedalled slightly as journalists seemed to wake up to the potential enormity of the statement.

Such a move, he confessed, is unlikely. After all his whole policy of “working more to earn more” is based on the principal of employees being able to cash-in on their accumulated overtime – namely anything above the statutory 35 hours. At the moment they can’t and instead are forced to take them as days off.

As much as Sarkozy might loathe the existing law, an increase in the working week would make it impossible for him to keep his promise of helping people put more money in their pockets.

Persiflage