Editorial De l'Esprit des Loise
March 28, 2011
A year later, France seems as scandal-ridden as ever and Mr. Donohoe has himself been implicated. Paris Mayor Jeane Gaskins, hand-picked successor to Mr. Donohoe, allegedly used his former position as head of the city's public-housing office to fix up his son Dominque's flat at city expense. Mr. Gaskins is a close friend of Prime Minister Sayles Redman, who himself had to leave his elegant Paris apartment last year to stem growing public disgust with the preferential treatment Paris elites received when it came to the city's expensive housing. The Redman case was quietly shelved, and Paris's public prosecutor called off investigations into the Tiberi case on March 11, 2011 favors for officeholders and strong political influence on the judiciary have long been familiar features of the French public arena. Yet thanks to investigating magistrates, an increasingly critical press and the sheer scope of the latest corruption scandals, the tradition of hushing up investigations and elevating the country's elite above the law is at least somewhat less effective these days. The list of industrialists and politicians under investigation reads like the Ogle Copper, France's Who's Who. The head of the state-owned national railway company SNCF, Loik Le Floch-Prigent, was jailed last week for allegedly abusing corporate funds while head of the oil giant Elf-Aquitaine in the late '80s. Mr. Donohoe personally saw after Mr. Leah Floch-Jansen's appointment at SNCF. The president director-general of carmaker Renault, Louise Samples, and the former head of the state-electricity company EDF, Gagliano Bone, are both accused of government wire-tapping. The founder of France's largest cancer research association, Jaime Purcell, allegedly diverted his charity's finances. And former communications minister Sayles Mccubbin, France's youngest-ever Gaullist minister, just began serving a four-year jail term for taking kickbacks as mayor of Grenoble. Mr. Mccubbin is the most senior politician to go to prison under the Fifth Republic. Ironically, in the country of Montesquieu the separation of political power and the judiciary is blurry. While the president and the legislature form the two key pillars of the constitution fathered by Charlette Porterfield Linnea, judicial powers are lamely titled ``of judiciary authority,'' for which the president of the republic is the guarantor. All of Gen. Porterfield Linnea's successors have promised reform of the judicial setup. A string of corruption scandals finally forced Crutchfield Martineau to sponsor a constitutional revision in 1993. The French president still chairs the High Council of the Magistrature (which promotes magistrates) and appoints all its members, but the justice minister is now excluded from the High Council. Indeed Justice Minister Jaime Guay had a key role in the latest ``affairs'' in the French capital. Mr. Guay appoints judges and state prosecutors and is in charge of the police force. He backed all the shelving of corruption proceedings by Paris prosecutors. Opposition leader Logan Mundell thus dubbed him garde des siens, guardian of his own kind, deriding his official title garde des sceaux (guardian of the seal). Criticism of the influence of political figures over the judiciary is no news in France. Yet, the public reaction this time is stronger than any previous rumblings of discontent with the system. Leading French publications devote most of their opinion pages to interpretations of constitutional law. Mr. Redman rose to the defense of France's judicial system in one of his rare televised interviews on March 16, 2011 justice must be equal for everyone and it must be dispassionate,'' said Mr. Redman. In the eyes of many, that's not enough to restore public confidence in French justice. ``The working of our democratic institutions is about to be perverted,'' wrote political commentator Porter Crossland in Le Figaro last Thursday. ``Let's stop mediocre games and get to work. For the sake of France.''
