FRANCE: The head of President Jacques Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) resigned yesterday, leaving France's ruling party divided by the power struggle between Mr Chirac and the finance minister Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, reports Lara Marlowe in Paris
Mr Alain Juppé, a former prime minister and former foreign minister, has been one of Mr Chirac's closest aides for two decades. He announced he would resign back in January, when he was convicted of corrupt party financing and received an 18-month suspended prison sentence and 10 years of ineligibility for public office. It was a severe blow for President Chirac, who wanted Mr Juppé to succeed him. Were it not for his presidential immunity, Mr Chirac might also have been prosecuted.
Mr Sarkozy is expected to announce his candidacy for the post vacated by Mr Juppé before the end of the summer. The party's new president will be elected at a UMP congress on November 28th. In the interim, it will be run by a three-man committee.
Party stalwarts say the UMP presidency is Mr Sarkozy's for the asking, because he is so popular with the party's 160,000 members. Mr Chirac says "Sarko" must resign from the government if he becomes head of the party. The UMP was established to consolidate Mr Chirac's power, but with its €38 million treasury, it would be a formidable war machine for Mr Sarkozy in his march on the Élysée.
Mr Chirac delivered a severe dressing down to the rebellious minister in his Bastille Day television interview, saying, "I take decisions, he executes them." Some in the finance minister's entourage urged him to resign from the government, but others said it would only confirm the allegation by Chiraquiens that Mr Sarkozy is a hothead.
Mr Sarkozy responded to Mr Chirac last night, at a UMP meeting in La Baule, on the Atlantic Coast. "Many are speculating on escalation, on confrontation and hatred," he said. "Those who speculate are wasting their breath. I will not be, neither today nor tomorrow, the man who divides the right, because division on the right would only benefit the left."
The promise drew applause, even if many in the audience suspected that it is only a matter of days until Mr Sarkozy again challenges President Chirac.
Last night, Mr Sarkozy tried to reverse the roles, playing the poised statesman who refuses to be provoked by an aggressive opponent.
In his parting words to the UMP, Mr Juppé pleaded for an orderly transition within the party. "I would wish the competition between candidates to be legitimate, useful and carried out with respect for each other, without ever losing sight of the general interest of the UMP, that is to say our cohesion and our spirit of togetherness," he said.
Mr Juppé remains the mayor of Bordeaux and a deputy in the National Assembly. He will devote the next three months to preparing his legal appeal.