It is no secret that modesty is not exactly the most striking trait in the personality of the former President of the Republic, but it is very likely that Nicolas Sarkozy himself would have been dizzy listening to the praises for him that all the speakers pronounced during the first public gathering of the Association that bears his name.
Of course, the audience (about 2,000 people, mostly seniors, despite the heat, had traveled to this pleasant location that is the Cimiez Gardens) was already won over to the cause of “Nicolas”.
But, frankly, the whirl of fabrications by the (too) many speakers (with former minister Nora Berra brilliantly rebranded as a presenter, alongside the more reserved Yves Foulon, a neo-deputy from Aquitaine) gave an air of living beatification to Nicolas Sarkozy.
This tone rendered some childish passages of the speeches by some speakers caricatural, obviously in search of what Virgil called “qui candore nive anteirent” (those who seek to be whiter than snow).
And, if you add to that the plaintive criticisms of his “banal” successor and, more generally, the government policy of the “bunglers”, it must be said that this meeting “among friends, among us”, as the organizers had presented it, seemed to represent act I, the manifesto of a new political movement (the Sarkozy generation?) already looking forward… all the way to the presidential election of 2017.
Declarations putting Nicolas Sarkozy’s legacy into perspective were heard from the heavyweights of the UMP (Jean-François Copé and François Fillon by message): But do these two not have national destiny ambitions, positioning them as potential competitors of the former President of the Republic if…?
We must not forget those of the allied representatives (the short-lived Christine Bouttin for the Christian Democrats or the local Deputy Rudy Salles for the New Centre).
And then came the turn of the quadras, the future protagonists of the “uninhibited” right (according to Jean-François Copé), mentioning Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Nadine Morano, Xavier Bertrand, Bruno Le Maire and the local from the region Eric Ciotti who expressed their gratitude to a man who sometimes built, often energized, their political careers (just think of Nadine Morano, deputy, minister, and today just a regional councillor) and who engaged in a sort of group therapy, such is the cult at their idol!
Could this August 25th be the D-day of Nicolas Sarkozy’s return to political life? It is, at any rate, the wish expressed by the event’s organizer, Christian Estrosi, on behalf of all present.
Now, the word and the action are to the one who must have “the will to once again serve France and the French” as invoked by Brice Hortefeux, the president of the association in his speech that concluded the day.
To be continued…
