French government takes a break

You know summer is well and truly in full swing when the country's politicians pack up their bags and head off on their hols.

This year the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has given government ministers a three-week break.

Set aside the weather, disregard perhaps that it's the silly season for television and in particular for news, with so-called lighter stories dominating the bulletins.

Don't even think about the traffic chaos predicted for this weekend as juilletists (those who traditionally take their break in July) pack their bags and head home to be replaced by aoutiens (August holidaymakers) searching for sun: the two clogging motorway lanes, filling the airports to bursting point and battling for position at the major railway stations in the annual "crossover".

No, the real point of interest is how the country will manage for a couple of weeks as government ministers go on vacation.

Have no fears, this isn't a list of ALL 39 ministers and their chosen destinations. Instead it's a brief and less-than-serious look at where some of them are planning to spend the next few weeks, remembering all the time that a reported 51 per cent of French cannot afford to go away on holiday this year.

First up (of course) is the one person who isn't strictly speaking a minister; Sarkozy.

After his recent "malaise" - or "nerve attack" as it was first reported by some media outlets - he'll probably find it a little easier than might otherwise have been the case to follow doctors' advice and scale down his activities.

He'll be spending a quiet couple of weeks with his wife, Carla, at his parents-in-law's little pad in Cap Nègre in the south of France.

Not among his list of visitors presumably will be Jacques Laisné, the former prefect of the department of Var, where the Bruni-Tedeschi house is located.

Laisné lost his job a couple of months ago in the "septic tank" affair, in which he reportedly reneged on a promise to Sarkozy sort out a dispute over whether to replace the existing system of septic tanks with mains drainage and sewage system.

You can read more about that here.

Perhaps the minister who faces the toughest job come September when there'll be La Rentrée (the time when everyone gets back to work and schools reopen after the summer break) is the health minister, Roselyne Bachelot.

Without specifying exactly where she'll be passing her time, Bachelot has promised to remain "a maximum of one hour" from her ministry, ready to tackle any threat there might be from the expected H1N1 outbreak.

Another couple of government members for whom you could well spare a thought perhaps are the minister of finance, Christine Lagarde, and the minister of employment, Xavier Darcos.

They'll both be reportedly taking along work with them.

Ah such is the life for those in office.

And then there's the minister of industry, Christian Estrosi, who has recently faced a number of ongoing disputes, most notably the threat of of workers at the bankrupt New Fabris car factory in Chatellerault, southwest of Paris, to blow up the factory.

He says he'll only be taking long weekends because anything else would "be unreasonable".

Some though can apparently afford time for a proper holiday, and a couple of them could even bump into each other.

Both Eric Woerth, minister of budget, and the newly-appointed junior minister of housing, Benoist Apparu, will both be spending their time in the same place; Corsica in the Mediterranean.

And if they're very lucky they could enjoy a tête-à-tête-à-tete with the general secretary of their party ( Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, Union for a Popular Movement,UMP), Xavier Bertrand, who is also scheduled to be staying on “L'île de Beauté” or the island of beauty.

Sarkozy, along with many of his ministers look set to be following the French habit of tending not to travel abroad (90 per cent of them holiday in France). But there is an exception.

The prime minister, François Fillon, will once again travel south to Tuscany in Italy.

Oh well, there's always one, isn't there?

Sarkozy and the affair of the "transferred" local official

Forget affairs of state, don't dwell on economic issues and ignore the recent results of the European elections, the ever-ready French president, Nicolas Sarkozy also has time to take care of domestic affairs of the household variety - or so it would seem.

And if things don't always go according to (his) plan, then he always has the option of having someone "replaced" "moved" or "fired".

Take the case of Jacques Laisné, the prefect of the department of Var in the south of France.

According to the French online site, Mediapart, Laisné has been fired because he failed to resolve an issue in which Sarkozy had a personal interest - that of the septic tank at the home belonging to a certain Mr and Mrs Bruni-Tedeschi.

If the names sound familiar then perhaps that's because they are in fact the parents of Sarkozy's wife, Carla. In other words the president's in-laws.

They live in Cap Nègre, a rather swanky part of the country on the Med and have for quite a while been embroiled in what is basically a local quarrel over whether to replace the existing system of septic tanks with mains drainage and sewage system.

While the Bruni-Tedeschis are in favour of the changeover most of the rest of the other house owners have steadfastly refused to agree, saying it would be too costly an undertaking.

So into the row stepped the president.

Apparently while Sarkozy was busy in his role as the Big Cheese of the European Union last August, he managed to find time to squeeze this all-important family matter into his busy diary - just before a trip to Russia to sort out that country's dispute with Georgia.

He paid a couple of visits to local meetings on the matter, agreeing that the state would stump up some of the readies and even hauling in Laisné to his in-law's pad to "seal the deal".

All well and good except that in the meantime Laisné apparently has done a volte face.

"He has changed his point of view on the matter to one which is much more in line with our thinking and less under the instructions of Mr Sarkozy," Jacques Huetz, a fellow property owner and one of those in favour of keeping the system of septic tanks, told Mediapart.

And according to the online site it didn't take long for Sarkozy to react. Laisné is no longer the prefect of the department.

But wait. Lest you be thinking that this tale is yet another expression of the French president's displeasure at the refusal of a local official to "toe the line", you would be wrong.

At least, that's according the interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie,

Questioned on the matter on national radio on Monday, Alliot-Marie said that there was a completely reasonable explanation as to why Laisné was no longer prefect.

"Every week there are prefects up and down the country who change jobs and are transferred elsewhere," she said.

"As far as Mr Laisné is concerned he's not a 'career prefect' and in fact comes from the French audit court," she added.

"His transfer is not a sanction of any sort, he'll simply be returning to his area of expertise."

And to the suggestion that Sarkozy had in fact had Laisné fired, she had the briefest of replies.

"Pure fantasy," she said.

So there you have it. Laisné hasn't been sacked, he's just moving somewhere (as yet not revealed) to take up a new post doing more or less what he was doing before becoming prefect.

A completely credible explanation for what has happened surely?

Well it would be, were it not for the sense of déjà vu involved.

It wouldn't be the first time a local official has found himself out of a job at the seemingly at the president's behest.

Rewind to September 2008, when Dominique Rossi, the chief of security on the island of Corsica was fired just two days after the house of the actor Christian Clavier had been peacefully occupied by nationalists.

Clavier just happens to be a close personal friend of the French president.

And in January this year Jean Charbonniaud, the prefect of la Manche, found himself "transferred" elsewhere (read demoted) after just six months in the job following a rather fraught visit to the region by the French president during which protesters didn't exactly make Sarkozy feel at home.

Coup de karcher a Cap Nègre
par rdzg