From former president to the future prisoner: Sarkozy’s conviction divides France

Nicolas Sarkozy is back where he was – dominating the news and dividing the nation.

Thirteen years after leaving his duties, he is about to become the first former French president to be sent to prison after obtaining a five -year term for criminal conspiracy.

And the circumstances are full of the same sulphurous affirmation which used once to mark each of their movements.

Fees of his conviction in the “Libyan silver” trial on Thursday, he spoke with an incandescent rage of the “unlimited hatred” of which he said he was still a victim.

From the moment he became champion of the right, Sarkozy was convinced that he had been the target of a left cabale in the judiciary and the French media.

And with this sentence – he thinks – came a more undeniable proof.

Why, his supporters ask, did the court erased him from three of the four accusations against him: illegal funding of the party, embezzlement of Libyan funds and corruption?

Why did the court only condemned him of the last accusation-the “tote” of “criminal association” (often launched on members of drug gangs when the investigators have nothing else to continue)?

And why – having condemned him for this slightest accusation – Did the court then gave him such a humiliating and draconian punishment? Not only did they send a 70 -year -old man to five years in prison, but it was shocking 20 years after the offense.

They also stipulated that the sentence was not “suspensive” – ​​in other words, they said that he would go to prison even if he made a call, even if in French law while waiting for a call, he is still innocent.

Just when you thought the old passions for and against man were starting to fade, suddenly, they are back with revenge.

Many will feel a certain sympathy with Sarkozy – not necessarily that he is entirely without guilt in this case of looking for money from the Libyan campaign.

But they will see a certain truth in his claims of victimization: that there are indeed in the establishment of Paris “Politico-Mediatic-Judicial” which hates the former president and is delighted to bring him down.

However, browse another objective, and Sarkozy is not a hard-heady-head, but a selfish and very influential political operator who has always pushed the law to its limits in order to be done.

If not, why would there be such a litany of prosecution against him? Otherwise, why would Sarkozy have already been convicted of two other corruption accusations – once for trying to undergo a judge and another time for illegal campaign funding?

And if the court has now decided to throw the book into him in the Libya case, it may be because the accusation of trying to obtain electoral funds from a foreign dictator is actually quite serious.

Everything is relevant today, because even if Sarkozy is no longer the influential figure that some do, the arguments concerning this affair echo through the Ruin Salle which are French politics.

The right and the extreme right occupy its cause, crying for a fault in terms of the leftist judicial outfit. Marine Le Pen – She herself prohibited from presenting herself to the presidency due to a “without suspension” clause in her own conviction at the beginning of this year – was the first to denounce “injustice”.

And the left considers all this as more evidence of the privilege of rich men – the powerful becoming more powerful by happily ignoring the law.

Nicolas Sarkozy has long left his duties, and there is no prospect of his return. It is a figure of the past. But his case exposes divisions in a very divided country.