Barely eight months separate the two confessions

Barely eight months separate the two confessions. "I have not thought of evil, I referai more", it is defended these days, with a kind of candor, Michèle Alliot-Marie. "I recognize that I had underestimated this conflict of interests," had sighed Florence Woerth at the revelation of his hiring as Manager of fortune of Liliane Bettencourt, while her husband, Eric Woerth, was Budget Minister and Treasurer of the UMP. Even if the words "conflict of interests" were not released in the case of Michèle Alliot-Marie, the question cannot be avoided when a Minister of State, Minister for Foreign Affairs, on holiday in Tunisia with his companion, he also Minister, a plane private belonging to a businessman close to the Government deemed Ben Ali, while the regime began to be challenged by the street. This may be politically pest when, according to opinion polls, the French reached the degree zero of tolerance that they interpret as small compromises between friends.

Historically, there is a form of denial to the conflict of interest among politicians: in their eyes, it cannot exist because the State is that of the general interest. Of course. But "from the beginning of the 1990s, instead of the left-right divide moved in the French sense of dissonance more in stronger between the people and the elites." On the one hand, the mass of the citizens that can switch from one day to the next in the exclusion; "the other men's policies which, far from defending the general interest, represent their particular interest", says political scientist Stéphane Rozès, teacher at Sciences po and HEC. Force deny malaise, it is is encysted glochidial in French society and it is infected with the economic crisis. According to the last barometer on "political trust" realized by OpinionWay to the Centre of political research at Sciences po (Cevipof) and the Institute Pierre-Mendès-France, published at the beginning of February, 56 of the French don't trust today in the right or left to govern.

Nicolas Sarkozy had analyzed the political crisis by promising in the presidential campaign "a perfect Republic." "I want to change the Republic: more simple, more local", he wrote. However, "as soon as the episode on the yacht of Bolloré, Nicolas Sarkozy has developed a first knife blow the presidential symbolism of the general interest", notes Stephane Rozes. "In each qualitative balance of Nicolas Sarkozy, the gap between the promise of a perfect Republic and the practice of power under its quinquennium arrive just after the employment and the purchasing power in broken promises", said Frédéric Dabi, Director of the opinion of the FIFG. The pollster said that the MAM case is added to a list which has been increasing since the beginning of the quinquennium: case of the Epad, the cigars, Christian white paid 12,000 euros in the accounts of his Ministry, even in the licence to build the Villa of Alain Joyandet, Fadela Amara, Christian Estrosi housing case... When business, the pollster, "public opinion had the impression of an erasure of boundaries between policy carried out under Nicolas Sarkozy and the world of money".

Today, the Tunisian episode of Michèle Alliot-Marie, from the Interior to the Justice and Foreign Affairs, reached the last bastion of confidence: through it, this is the image of the sovereign Minister who is wounded. And, in the end, it is Sarkozy himself that is likely to suffer: "since the beginning of the quinquennium, the French were certainly a bad image of Nicolas Sarkozy, economic and social policy Jig by the tax shield, but they still trusted the head of State for the whole of the sovereign areas: security, foreign policy...". "The controversy over Mrs Alliot-Marie travel reaches head-on", note Gaël Sliman, the Deputy Director of BVA. Commanded by the President of the Republic in full case Woerth-Bettencourt, the report "for a new ethics of public life", prepared under the authority of Jean-Marc Sauvé, Vice-President of the Council of State, clearly the danger: presented to Nicolas Sarkozy on January 26, he advocates a very large firm in the prevention and sanction of conflicts of interest to "ensure not only the rule of law"", but more generally the constituent values of living together". Nicolas Sarkozy announced a law before the end of the year. Perilous: contrary to the habits, it may be, as suggested by some members of the majority, "to market" in a set of proposals. The report in question is indeed a cohesive, dealing with both prevention and enforcement. Calling to punish any public actor put in a situation affecting "its independence, impartiality or objectivity", the rapporteurs define, for the first time, the conflict of interest as "private interference between a mission of public service and the interest of a person who contributes to the exercise of this mission." At the basis of this rule that can be understood by all, Eric Woerth, for example, could never be both Budget Minister and Treasurer of the UMP. By providing simple and clear rules of transparency and incompatibility, report finally offers the opportunity to get out of the era of the denial and the suspicion to enter the rigour and the right. The same for all. Anxious to "présidentialiser" from the perspective of 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy should end these proposals and draw all the consequences.