Chirac breaks silence on political scandal
French President Jacques Chirac yesterday broke his silence to denounce a “dictatorship of rumours” at the heart of a political scandal tarnishing his government, and he rebuffed calls to sack his prime minister.
Chirac said he has “full confidence” in Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, suspected of having sought to smear a rival and leading hopeful in next year’s presidential elections, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
It was the first time Chirac had spoken personally on the spiral of rumours and insinuations of dirty tricks that have monopolised French political life for weeks and which are overshadowing the end of Chirac’s four decades in politics.
Chirac, 73, is not expected to seek a third term in 2007.
The French leader, speaking in a televised address, suggested that electoral politics are fuelling the scandal.
He warned that it could further disillusion voters, making them “despair of politics”, and play into the hands of extremists, who have already been climbing in polls.
“The Republic is not the dictatorship of rumours, the dictatorship of false accusations. The Republic is the law,” Chirac said. Judges investigating the matter must establish “all the facts”. “I hope this will be done in calm and as quickly as possible,” he added.
The opposition Socialists kept up their drumbeat of calls for Chirac to take responsibility and resign himself. Parliament will debate a Socialist no-confidence motion next Tuesday.
The scandal centres on suspicions that Villepin, Chirac’s loyal and long-time aide, ordered a spmaster in January 2004 to secretly investigate Sarkozy, possibly to turn up dirt to spoil his electoral ambitions.
Villepin insists that he did not, but the claims have further weakened the once high-flying politician whose apparent hopes of standing himself in the presidential elections were all but dashed this spring, when he suffered the indignity of having to withdraw a proposed labour reform that sparked massive protests.
While Villepin denies having ordered a probe of Sarkozy, he has said that he asked veteran intelligence officer General Philippe Rondot to look into allegations that a French sale of frigates to Taiwan in 1991 was tainted by corruption.
In 2004, a judge also probing that defence contract received anonymously sent lists naming people who supposedly earned kickbacks from the sale.
Sarkozy was among those named. The judge eventually determined that the lists were fake. Sarkozy believes they were sent in the hope of tarnishing his name.
French judges, joined in the fervid atmosphere of recent weeks by French reporters, are racing to determine who sent the lists.
This week, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine claimed to have identified the alleged culprit: Jean-Louis Gergorin, an executive vice-president at the European Aeronatic Defence and Space Co, or EADS, a defence and aeronautics giant.
Gergorin, who has denied being the list-sender, has refused to comment. He has not been called in for questioning or placed under investigation. His lawyer, Paul-Albert Iwens, said by telephone that he remains at the disposition of judicial officials.
EADS yesterday announced that Gergorin had resigned from his duties “in order to devote himself to his defence in the best possible conditions”.
Chirac’s office denied another claim in Le Canard Enchaine that he held his own secret bank account in Japan.
The judge investigating the frigate sale told French radio that Gergorin asked to meet him secretly in April 2004, and that he began receiving the lists of alleged accounts days later.
