PARIS (AP) - Nearly two years after a national election famous for its intense rivalry between Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and Segolene Royal on the left, the feud is back in the news and getting nastier.
Sarkozy’s party said Saturday that Royal, the candidate he defeated in a runoff vote for the presidency in 2007, “needs psychological help.” That comment by Frederic Lefebvre, spokesman for Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party, was a mere addendum in a statement devoted largely to castigating the leftist daily Liberation. And that newspaper touched off the whole uproar by quoting Sarkozy as allegedly insulting other world leaders.
“This newspaper, which increasingly resembles a pamphlet, is losing its credibility after having lost its readers,” the statement by the UMP spokesman said.
As for Royal, the statement said, “There remains one assiduous reader, Segolene Royal, who _ I was right _ truly needs psychological help!”
How did the dog-eat-dog world of politics become even nastier than usual?
Liberation had quoted Sarkozy denigrating world leaders, from Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero _ “perhaps not very clever” _ to President Barack Obama _ “has never run a ministry in his life.”
The remarks were allegedly made at a Wednesday lunch bringing together lawmakers from left and right, and reported Thursday, quoting lunch participants, under the headline “Sarkozy Sees Himself as Master of the World.” Newspapers in Britain and elsewhere picked up the alleged remarks, and on Saturday Liberation, which delights in uncovering the Sarkozy administration’s bloopers, vaunted its scoop.
Worse still, Royal, working to raise her profile after losing the battle for Socialist Party leadership, said she personally apologized in writing to Zapatero for Sarkozy’s alleged slip.
The presidential Elysee Palace denied the reported remark. However, that made the report no less damaging because Sarkozy is to make a state visit to Spain on April 27-28.
Royal apologized in a letter to Zapatero, assuring him “that these words concerned neither France nor the French,” according to Royal’s political Web site, Desirs d’Avenir.
Royal’s excuse followed a public apology she made on a trip to Senegal earlier this month on behalf of France for a remark in a July 2007 speech by Sarkozy in Dakar about Africans’ failure to have “sufficiently entered into history.”
There has been no denial of Sarkozy’s alleged remarks about other leaders, for instance, that Obama has a “subtle mind … (but) has never run a ministry in his life” or German Chancellor Angela Merkel who “rallied to (Sarkozy’s) position.”
The UMP party spokesman said that Liberation’s “attitude is simply scandalous …. contributing to tarnishing the image of our country.”
If Royal has an apology to make, it should be, “in the name of Liberation,” Lefebvre said.
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Associated Press writer Julien Proult in Paris contributed to this report.
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