France election 2012: Nicolas Sarkozy booted out of office having exhausted France

He went on to build a half-female “rainbow” cabinet, which included
a high-profile left-wing foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, and France’s
first senior minister of North African origin, the glamorous Rachida Dati.

But soon his private life was making the headlines. He became the first French
president in office to divorce; his second wife Cécilia left him after a
desperate struggle to woo her back from her lover. A month later, he met
supermodel and singer Carla Bruni, who famously claimed that “monogamy
bores me”. The pair were married within months.

Meanwhile, Mr Sarkozy caused offence after being filmed telling a man who
refused to shake his hand to “get lost, you stupid bastard”.

Hervé Gattegno of Le Point, said: “He became a reality TV president,
a bizarre mixture of ordinary man and media star, whose daily life was a
permanent show. It should come as no surprise if, in the end, the public
eliminated him like a vulgar Star Academy candidate.”

Foreign leaders were perplexed at his hands-on style, with Angela Merkel said
to abhor his tactile Latin manners. Relations with British leaders were
generally good, but that did not stop him telling David Cameron to “shut
up” at a European summit.

He made his international mark, returning France to NATO’s military command
for the first time since 1966, negotiating a ceasefire in a 2008 war between
Russia and Georgia, and leading Western military action in Libya last year.
Mr Sarkozy was energetic in the G20 and G8 during the economic crisis,
forming a “Merkozy” duo with the German Chancellor to avert the
demise of the euro.

He faced off mass protests in France to pass a reform raising the official
retirement age from 60 to 62, and made good a promise to only replace half
of retiring state workers. He passed a law banning the burka.

But it was rough ride for an electorate used to the state cossetting its
citizens. One Sarkozy friend, who declined to be named, conceded before the
result: “Economically, I want him to win because Hollande will be a
disaster for France. But for the sake of social stability, it is better if
Sarkozy loses.”

There were other flaws that also grated on the majority.

A key faux pas was to try to make his son Jean, a 23-year-old law student,
head of the public body in charge of La Défense, Paris’ business district.
The plan was scrapped amid claims of nepotism. His camp got bogged down in
illegal party funding allegations involving L’Oréal billionaire Liliane
Bettencourt and more recently Muammar Gaddafi. He has been accused of using
state intelligence services to spy on journalists looking into the
Bettencourt affair.

In the campaign, critics accused him of pandering dangerously to the far-Right
by harping on about national identity, linking immigration to crime and
claiming that National Front leader Marine Le Pen was “compatible with
the republic”.

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