Replies to post #174013 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

I sure hope Mr. Hollande takes that run off and everything I read says ........oh YES he is ...;) ... ... oh, I am so looking forward to see Angela work without her magnificent french poodle ... ;) I was surprised at how silly she is & has been towards Mr. Hollande...AND how openly she is promoting Nicolas .... refusing to meet with with him is shocking ... as she WILL MEET with him .. in the NOT too distant future .. IF there is a clean election ....

I can't wait .. !!!! ... ..

............

[StephanieVanbryce]

François Hollande builds lead as Nicolas Sarkozy allies admit writing is on the wall

Poll saying socialist could win by 14 per cent leaves right wing in despair

John Lichfield Thursday 19 April, 2012



Confronted with plunging polls and deserting allies, President Nicolas Sarkozy faces the prospect of a rout in the two-round French presidential election starting this weekend, with senior members of his government already said to be certain of defeat.

Supporters of the front-running Socialist candidate, François Hollande, could scarcely contain their euphoria when they gathered in Lille for their last big rally on Tuesday night before French electors go to the polls on Sunday. They interrupted the candidate's speech endlessly with chants of "François president, François president".

"You are well informed," Mr Hollande quipped. "It is possible we are going to win. It's not certain... but, yes, I feel the hope rising."

New polls published yesterday suggested that Mr Hollande, 57, was leading the field of 10 candidates in the first round with up to 29 per cent of the vote. He had extended his lead over Mr Sarkozy to between two and four points. In voting intentions for the two-candidate, second round on 6 May, Mr Hollande now leads the President by a "landslide" margin of 14 to 16 per cent.

In a series of damning, private remarks, reported by the Le Canard Enchainé newspaper, senior members of President Sarkozy's government said that defeat now seemed inevitable.

"The carrots are cooked," the Prime Minister, François Fillon, was quoted as saying. "[Sarkozy's] strategy of campaigning on hard-right issues was a serious mistake." The former centre-right prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was reported to have said privately: "There is no chance of us winning."

The President has also suffered a series of desertions. It was reported earlier this week that the former President Jacques Chirac intended to switch sides and vote for Mr Hollande. A clutch of former Sarkozy ministers and supporters, from the right, left and centre of French politics, have also declared they will vote for the socialist. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadéla Amara, two of Mr Sarkozy's ministerial recruits from the Left after his 2007 election and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin.

The President has fought an energetic but erratic campaign. He began by warning that France needed tough medicine to escape recession. But he then switched to a hard-right message to reclaim votes from Marine Le Pen's National Front.

In recent weeks, Mr Sarkozy warned that French "identity" was menaced by a tide of illegal immigration, Islamist terrorism and halal meat. Last Sunday, he stole abruptly – and without acknowledgement – Mr Hollande's argument that the European Central Bank should be allowed to pump reflationary cash into Eurozone economies (a policy that Mr Sarkozy had opposed with Germany).

Mr Sarkozy's sharp right turn propelled him into a narrow lead in first- round opinion polls but that support now appears to have dribbled back to Ms Le Pen. In polls published yesterday, she regained third place with around 17 per cent of the vote.

The hard-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose lurid anti-capitalist rhetoric has illuminated an uninspiring campaign, fell back to fourth place with around 13-14 per cent.

Through all these twists and turns, Mr Hollande has held his nerve. At the Lille rally, he said he would bring a three-part approach to the economic crisis: "responsibility" (deficit cuts, mostly through tax rises); "growth" (EU capital investment programmes and the reflationary printing of euros); and "solidarity" (help for poorer people and poorer EU countries).

Still, the limitations of "Hollandism" were apparent. He failed to fill a giant pop-concert venue from which most seats had been cleared. The crowd of 15,000 cheered his rhetoric against "big finance" but became fidgety as Mr Hollande explained the minutiae of his plans.

The Socialist top brass, seated nearby, were, however, two steps ahead of Mr Hollande. Their chatter was not about the first or second rounds but the "third round": who would be "in" and who would be "out" in the first centre-left government for a decade. The favourite to be Mr Hollande's prime minister is the Socialist party leader, Martine Aubry, daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors.

Mr Hollande and Ms Aubry briefly held up one another's arms in a victory salute at the Lille rally. However, their stiff body language suggested the prime-ministerial choice has yet to be made.

Presidential election: How the voting works

The opening round of the presidential election this weekend is the first of four polling days in just over two months. On Sunday, French voters will choose between the 10 candidates. The top two go on to the second round on 6 May, after which the winner will hold office for five years, not seven as used to be the case.

He (never yet she) will be the ultimate arbiter of French policy but will not run the government day to day. To do that, the President will choose a Prime Minister. He, or possibly she, will seek to win a parliamentary majority in the lower house of parliament.

These "legislative elections" will be fought, once again over two rounds, on 10 and 17 June.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/franois-hollande-builds-lead-as-nicolas-sarkozy-allies-admit-writing-is-on-the-wall-7658083.html

yes, we know you are not here right now, BUT YOU WILL BE BACK! hopefully .. . Francois will WIN with a BIT of LUCK! .. . and we will celebrate !!!!! ........have FUN!

[fuagf]

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to jail for corruption

"France's Sarkozy hit by defections and poll plunge
[...]
Amara, one of the left-of-centre figures Sarkozy recruited to government in the first years after his 2007 election, joined Corinne Lepage, an ecologist former environment minister in a previous centre-right government, who said she would back Hollande because Sarkozy had lurched too far to the right."

h/t blackhawks - Trump Says Prison Time for Ex-President of France Sets Horrible Precedent
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=162229582

Sarkozy found guilty of corruption and influence peddling but is unlikely to spend time in prison


The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy leaves court in Paris after being found guilty on Monday of corruption
and influence-peddling. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

Kim Willsher in Paris Tue 2 Mar 2021 00.16 AEDT
Last modified on Tue 2 Mar 2021 04.02 AEDT

When the verdict came, it reduced the Paris court to a stunned silence: Nicolas Sarkozy .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/nicolas-sarkozy .. was guilty of corruption and influence peddling, and sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended.

France’s president from 2007 to 2012 had played an “active role” in forging a “corruption pact” with his lawyer and a senior magistrate to obtain information on a separate investigation into political donations, the leading judge declared, and there was “serious and concurring evidence” of collaboration between the three men .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/nicolas-sarkozy-graft-trial-prosecutors-call-for-four-year-sentence .. to break the law.

The conviction and sentence were dramatic, unexpected and historic. Sarkozy, 66, had repeatedly declared his innocence and dismissed the charges as an “insult to my intelligence”.

It is, however, unlikely he will spend a day in jail. His lawyer has announced he intends to appeal, a process that would lead to a new trial, and a one-year prison sentence can be served outside jail under certain conditions, including the wearing of an electronic bracelet or limited home confinement.

Sarkozy did not comment as he left the court but his wife, the supermodel turned singer Carla Bruni, on Instagram described the verdict as an “injustice”.

“What relentless nonsense my love,” she wrote. “The battle continues, the truth will out.”


https://www.instagram.com/p/CL4MaUflZkd/?utm_source=ig_embed

While Sarkozy was not banned from holding public office, the verdict, delivered on Monday afternoon, is likely to quash his hopes of returning to public life in time for next year’s presidential election. His centre-right Les Républicains (LR) party has been struggling to come up with a credible candidate since Sarkozy’s former prime minister François Fillon was engulfed in scandal .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/29/francois-fillon-found-guilty-of-embezzling-public-funds .. during the 2017 presidential race, opening the way for Emmanuel Macron to win.

At his trial last year, the court heard how Sarkozy instructed his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, to offer the senior magistrate Gilbert Azibert a cushy job on the Côte d’Azur in return for information on an investigation into whether he had received donations from the ailing L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

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The Bettencourt case was eventually dropped .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/07/nicolas-sarkozy-corruption-charges-dropped-liliane-bettencourt-donation , but by then an investigation into corruption and influence peddling had been opened.

The judge Christine Mée, the president of the tribunal, said there was serious evidence of a “corruption pact” between Sarkozy, Herzog and Azibert. Herzog, aged 65, and Azibert, 73, were given similar sentences of three years, two suspended.

The case, based on telephone taps, became known as the “Bismuth affair”; Paul Bismuth was the name the former president employed in connection to two burner telephones used to communicate with Herzog.

French detectives began monitoring Sarkozy’s communications in September 2013 as part of an investigation into claims he had received an illegal and undeclared €50m donation from the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to fund his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

What they heard from the recorded conversations pointed investigators in a new and unexpected direction. They revealed the former president and Herzog were “secretly” communicating using mobile telephones registered under false names.

Additional wiretaps on these phones picked up conversations suggesting Sarkozy had been in contact with Azibert, then a member of the cour de cassation – the highest court in France .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/france – via Herzog to request confidential information about the Bettencourt case.

Sarkozy, who is embroiled in several legal cases, has repeatedly denied accusations of any wrongdoing in all past and present investigations.

He spent years attempting to have the Bismuth charges thrown out and the case dismissed. Herzog argued the secretly recorded conversations between him and Sarkozy were covered by client-lawyer privilege and could not be used as evidence.

Before his trial last year .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/23/nicolas-sarkozy-in-court-in-paris-to-face-bugging-affair-charges , Sarkozy had said he welcomed the hearing as a chance to “clean my name”.

“I am combative. I have no intention of being accused of things I haven’t done. I’m not corrupt and what has been inflicted on me is a scandal that will rest in the annals. The truth will out,” Sarkozy told BFMTV.

The former president is expected to appear in court later this month in yet another case, the “Bygmalion affair .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/14/fraud-claims-nicolas-sarkozy-2012-campaign ”, in which he is accused of overspending on his 2012 re-election bid.

He is also being investigated on allegations of influence peddling and “laundering of crime or misdemeanour” related to consulting activities in Russia.

Sarkozy supporters have accused French judges of making the former president the target of an unfair and relentless legal crusade.

He is the first former president to appear in court on criminal charges. His predecessor Jacques Chirac was charged and convicted, receiving a two-year suspended sentence, over fake jobs at City Hall when he was mayor of Paris – but was spared taking the stand because of ill health.

At the end of his two-week trial last year, Sarkozy’s said: “This case has been for me the stations of the cross. But if that was the price to pay for the truth to come out, I am ready to accept it … I still have confidence in the justice of our country.”

Herzog was also convicted of breaching the rules of professional secrecy between him and his client. Herzog and Azibert have announced they will appeal against their conviction.

After the verdict, Damien Abad, the president of LR’s parliamentary group, tweeted ..

Aujourd’hui, je veux de nouveau témoigner toute mon amitié à l'égard du Président @nicolassarkozy. Sa vie est une succession d'épreuves qu'il n'a eu de cesse de surmonter avec énergie et courage. Une nouvelle fois, il saura le démontrer. J’en suis certain.#Sarkozy

— Damien Abad (@damienabad) March 1, 2021

: “Today I want to again express my friendship with President Nicolas Sarkozy. His life has been a succession of trials that he has never ceased to overcome with energy and courage. Once again he will prove this. I am certain of it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/01/former-french-president-nicolas-sarkozy-sentenced-to-three-years-for-corruption