Paul from Paris

Cardinal Richelieu founded the Académie française in 1635, under the reign of Louis XIII.

Its 40 members defend the French language: their unending effort to define words, with a common meaning and spelling, contribute to national unity.

The Académie française enjoys special prestige among the honor societies that French culture has produced. It has only 40 members. Membership is permanent; “academicians” are even nicknamed “immortals”. A new member is elected by the sitting members, but anyone can request membership. Members are entitled to wear a green outfit suggestive of what a bullfighter might wear, and to bear a ceremonial sword (religious figures are exempted from sword-bearing).

“Academicians” historically have been a diverse group. But given the society’s mission to defend language, many of its members have been writers, especially illustrious writers of the day. For this observer, as literature has increasingly become equated with entertainment, the number and stature of writers in the Académie française has declined. And the decline of writers has led to the ascendancy of another group: politicians.

Simone Veil

The member most recently inducted is Simone Veil, a French politician who has long enjoyed popularity or celebrity. The back story: deported from France to Auschwitz at age 16, Simon Veil went on to a career in the civil service and politics, culminating as health minister in the mid-70s. Acting later on the European stage, Simon Veil became president of the European Parliament. Simon Veil is a woman accustomed to receiving honors.

Simone Veil’s best-known political action was her support for legalized abortion; the law that made abortion legal in France carried her name. In mainstream French discourse, legalized abortion falls under the umbrella of feminism or women’s rights. A prime example of the cultural divide that can separate Americans and French, abortion rights aren’t polemical. The issue isn’t contentious; it’s closed.

I asked people whether they thought Simone Veil’s induction to the Académie française had anything to do with abortion, and no one in my informal poll thought it did. My American eyes did glimpse one small sticker, affixed to a street sign (of a parent and child walking together), by an anti-abortion group that criticized “the entry of the culture of death” at the Académie française.

Where do I vote?

France held the first round of regional elections yesterday (14 March). A final round of voting will take place next Sunday. The main points I take away from the vote are:

• Most voters didn’t vote: 56.3% of registered voters stayed home.
• In most regions, the second round of voting next Sunday will be a classic left/right showoff between the labor and conservative parties, in other words between the governing UMP party and its historical rival, the socialist party.
• Most candidates ran campaigns as personality contests. They failed to educate voters about what the regions do and how their party plans to act.
• The culture of celebrity that surrounds the couple now in the Elysées palace did not enrich the debate. As a report in the London Times explains, rumors of marital woes and affairs, much-reported in the international press, originated with a young intern at a movie company who was trying to see how quickly a story about Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni could gain traction in the media.

François Delattre, embroiled in controversy?

How was such a thing possible? I knew François Delattre to be the former French consul general in New York, currently the French ambassador to Canada. A diplomat, levelheaded, not one to court or to spark controversy.

FD, the mayor

It turns out that I’d confused François Delattre with a homonym. I hardly thought the name common, but there is at least one other François Delattre. The other François Delattre is the conservative mayor of Franconville, a city in the Paris area. He’s a rotund fellow, grayer and heavier than his homonym, the diplomat.

François Delattre, the mayor, caused controversy over upcoming regional elections. No one in France seems to know or care what the regions are or do, so the campaigns tend to focus on the personalities of slate leaders (voters choose a slate, generally aligned with a political party but identified by the name or slogan of the slate leader). Negative campaigning is common.

François Delattre, the conservative mayor, made a series of remarks about the labor party standard-bearer in the Val d’Oise district, where Franconville is located. The labor party standard-bearer is named Ali Soumaré, a thirty-something black man, active in local politics. Apparently, Delattre can’t stand Soumaré, and said this about him:

• “At first, I thought he was a player on the PSG reserve team. But he’s actually the party head from Villiers-le-Bel.” (decoding: the PSG is the Paris football/soccer team; Villiers-le-Bel was a center of urban rioting a few years go.)
• “His candidacy is an outrage for democracy.”
• “An experienced recidivist delinquent.”

Ali Soumaré

Delattre, the conservative mayor, produced copies of convictions in support of his characterization of Soumaré as a repeat offender.

The convictions include: aggravated theft, aggravated theft with violence, battery, driving without a license, and rebellion against a law enforcement officer.

Media reports often included an unflattering photo of Soumaré (at left) with this rap sheet.

The initial reaction to these allegations looked, to my eyes, like confusion. Soumaré first said that he needed to talk with his lawyer. Then commentators pointed out that some recent charges were still pending, and that other convictions were subject to appeal. A debate then ensued about how Delattre came to possess copies of court judgments, and whether criminal convictions were confidential or otherwise protected.

Ali Soumaré

Then the truth emerged. Yes, Ali Soumaré had been convicted of aggravated theft, in 1999. A “youthful error”, according to Soumaré, who says he “paid his debt to society”. As for the many other convictions, all were attributable to one or more homonyms: François Delattre had confused Ali Soumaré with others who have the same name and the misfortune of being defendants in criminal proceedings.

The error seems hugely embarrassing to the conservatives. Their standard-bearer, Valerie Pécresse, has been spending time explaining and apologizing for Delattre’s blunders. Watching her, she seems uncomfortable.

For his part, Ali Soumaré (pictured, at left, from his campaign materials) has become a household name. In a campaign where personality and name recognition mean everything, I suspect that labor party officials are jubilant.

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.