A bad season for French politicians
This fall, French politicians have succumbed to a malady worse than swine flu: judicial entanglements.
Former president Jacques Chirac has just been indicted by an investigating magistrate on corruption charges. According to the magistrate’s allegations, while Chirac was Paris mayor (starting in 1977), up to 21 staffers were on the city payroll even though they were not actually working for the city. If the case goes to trial and results in a conviction, Chirac risks up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine up to 150,000 euros.
A Chirac protégé, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, just finished a trial himself, on charges of defamation and conspiracy arising from a smear campaign that targeted Nicolas Sarkozy.
The allegations in both cases are bizarre.
In Villepin’s case, someone made up phony bankng records that purported to show that figures, such as Sarkozy, held bank accounts abroad. This was supposed to have cast suspicion on the figures in connection with kickbacks on arms sales; why else would someone have a bank account in another country?
In Chirac’s case, no one accuses the former president of enriching himself or friends. Nor does anyone claim that the city hall staffers had no-show jobs, receiving pay without working. The charges instead allege that the work done did not match exactly the staffers’ job descriptions. Some of the employees did work that was more political than municipal. Others worked outside Paris.
I take corruption seriously and recognize that it does exist in France, but believe that both cases reveal a lack of prosecutorial discretion. I’m inclined to think that investigating magistrates and prosecutors became enchanted with their targets. I’m worried that in an effort to prove that all are equal before the law, with favoritism for none, eccentric cases have been made to stand in for more serious offenses. Above all, I’m concerned that the French criminal code is so extensive that almost any conduct, viewed in a certain light, can be made to suggest wrongdoing, or conspiring in wrongdoing, or benefitting from wrongdoing.


Plastic silverware (or plastic cutlery) risks spending a protracted afterlife as landfill, but it does have some benefits: lightweight, easy to transport, sanitary if wrapped.
For the end user, arguably nothing. A consumer has to look, very closely, at the underside of the plastic cutlery to discern the Starck Studio provenance. (In my photo, I’ve circled the brand in red.)
Paris is hosting an exhibition that will appeal to visitors interested in world cultures: