A very little man, a Hungarian, but elected to be President of a once great country

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...rs-rumours.html

Rachida Dati blamed for Sarkozy affairs rumours

Former French cabinet star, Rachida Dati, has had her government security team withdrawn after being blamed for spreading rumours about the state of Nicolas Sarkozy’s marriage.

Henry Samuel in Paris

Published: 11:05PM BST 31 Mar 2010

The president is said to believe his former justice minister, now an MEP, started talk that his wife was having an affair with Benjamin Biolay, a pop singer, while he was seeing his ecology minister, Chantal Jouanno.

She has now been deprived her of her chauffeur-driven limousine and three bodyguards in mysterious circumstances.

Sarkozy has dismissed the affair allegations as idiotic “rantings” but is said to be privately bent on finding out who was behind them.

It is understood he took “retaliatory action” against Miss Dati, 44, the night his ruling Right-wing UMP party suffered a drubbing in the first round of regional elections on March 14.

The president was sitting at the Elysée Palace watching the fallout from his electoral debacle on the television, when Miss Dati appeared on France 2 — the French BBC1— and appeared to criticise his strategy.

Mr Sarkozy suddenly saw red, not simply because of her mild criticism, but because he suspects the former justice minister of spreading, or even starting, rumours about the state of his marriage.

He is understood to have instantly picked up the phone and ordered Frédéric Péchenard, France’s national police chief, to cut off Miss Dati’s limousine graciously provided by the interior ministry, her driver and police bodyguards “within the hour”.

Miss Dati learned of the order while still in the television studio. One of the guards is said to have told her: “Sorry Madame, we’ve got to go home — orders from on high.”

Once outside, Miss Dati phoned Mr Péchenard and managed to negotiate keeping the Peugeot 607 and the bodyguards for the evening. The next day, however, they were gone and she also had to return her mobile phone paid for until then by the interior ministry.

Miss Dati yesterday confirmed that the car, driver and bodyguards had been removed, although as mayor of Paris’s 7th arrondissement, she still has access to a Toyota Prius.

However, she said that she did not think Mr Sarkozy had directly given the order. The culprit was, she said, Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister – one of her worst enemies and the president’s oldest friend. He subsequently called to apologise, she added, but she put the phone down on him.

Miss Dati made history in 2007 when Mr Sarkozy made her the first Muslim woman to hold a top ministerial position. She was introduced to the president by his second wife, Cecilia, who described her as “my sister”.

Relations with his new bride, Carla, however, were strained, with one biographer claiming that the first lady strolled round the Elysée apartments with Miss Dati, and stopped by the presidential bed to murmur: “You’d have liked to have occupied that, wouldn’t you?” Although Miss Dati obediently pushed through radical judicial reforms, Mr Sarkozy eventually grew tired of her glitzy penchant for haute couture, and speculation over her love life.

She announced her pregnancy in September 2008, but refused to name the father, sparking a series of denials, including one from Jose Maria Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister. Last January, five days after the birth of her daughter, Zohra, by caesarean section, Miss Dati returned to work to try to keep her job, incurring the wrath of feminists.

Mr Sarkozy ousted her from the cabinet but offered her a post as MEP. She grudgingly accepted but was instantly under fire for complaining that the European Parliament was beyond her boredom threshold. “I just can’t take any more. I think I’ll go crazy before I’ve finished my term,” she said within earshot of a microphone.

Miss Dati is sticking it out, however. Earlier this month, she went to Iraq to observe elections.

As she strolled down the Tigris river in Baghdad, she rebuked a cameraman who dared to point his lenses at her high-heeled feet.

“It’s not very cool to film my shoes,” she said.

(I really do not think this person is fit to be president of his local milk cooperative, let alone of France)

A mayor gets a Toyota Prius?

It all sounds a bit....."Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives".

People have so little to amuse them.

Gettalife.........<deleted>

People have so little to amuse them.

Gettalife.........<deleted>

Don't worry, you amuse us all the time

I thought you were talking about me when I first read the thread title