At it again

The highest office in the land might give the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, immunity from prosecution, but it certainly doesn’t prevent him from suing whenever he sees fit.

Sarkozy is suing the Internet site of the left-of-centre weekly news magazine Nouvel Observateur. 

It reported that the president had sent a text message to his former wife, Cecilia, just eight days before he got hitched to his new wife Carla saying “Si tu reviens, j'annule tout,” or “If you return I’ll cancel everything.”

He apparently never received a response.

It’s the first time ever an incumbent president has taken a civil case against the press to the courts but as of Thursday that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Two cases in two weeks is not bad going for a president who surely has better things to do with his time and keeps bemoaning the fact that his private life is getting too much coverage.

Earlier this week he won the symbolic sum of €1 in damages in a case he and his new wife, Carla, brought against Ryanair for the infringement of their personal image after the budget airline used a photograph of the couple in one of its advertisements in a national daily.

This time around Sarkozy is suing for forgery and use of stolen goods. According to his lawyers the information is a forgery, an alteration of the truth and punishable by three years imprisonment and a fine of €45,000.

Surely forgery would imply that the apparent text message is a fake and never actually existed, which opens up the question of course as to how something that never existed could be stolen. But that’ll be one for the courts to decide.

A win would presumably help Sarkozy top up his piggy bank.

Now it might seem unusual that a serious weekly such as Nouvel Observateur would publish such a story, albeit on its website. While it’s perhaps partially a reflection both of the changing face of the media and the influence of the Internet, it’s also indicative of the new celebrity status of politicians here in France, especially since Sarkozy came to office last May.

The simple fact is that if editors slap a picture on the front cover of Sarkozy, Carla, Cecilia, or even the Socialist party opponent he defeated in last year’s presidential elections, Segolene Royal, it’s guaranteed to increase circulation. Even more so if it’s accompanied in the inside pages by a racy story about their private lives.

Everybody it seems is interested and yet nobody is.

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