THE DEFENCE team warned the court that theirs would be the judgment on Jacques Chirac that went down through history, a verdict that could stain his fine legacy. It was a solemn responsibility that should be weighed carefully. And carefully, but decisively, on Thursday the court found the former president guilty of embezzling and misusing €1.4 million in public funds while mayor of Paris in the early 1990s.
The first French head of state to be prosecuted, let alone convicted, since Marshal Philippe Petain for collaboration with the Nazis, Chirac got two years suspended for using city hall funds to pay 21 party employees in fictitious jobs.
Others have also been convicted over the affair, including in 2004 a now-rehabilitated Alain Juppé, currently foreign minister and tipped to return to his former job as prime minister if President Nicolas Sarkozy is re-elected next year. Testimony to the more forgiving nature of French politics, and suggesting that history may yet be kinder on Chirac than his lawyers fear. In his retirement he has become more popular than he was in office. The 79-year-old, who led France between 1995 and 2007, now sadly suffering, the court was told, from serious memory loss, has waited a dozen years since charges were first brought for the verdict because he successfully invoked presidential immunity.
Legal protection from prosecution for presidents is a principle shared by many states, though not Ireland, and justified on the principle of the separation of powers and the idea that a president should not be inhibited from performing his duties by the courts. In Italy for years until he left office it scandalously provided a shield for ex-president Silvio Berlusconi, and is currently protecting Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari from money laundering charges.
In 1997 the US Supreme Court in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case acknowledged that while the president does have immunity from being sued in respects of acts performed in the course of his public duties, such immunity should not extend to “unofficial conduct” and it allowed Ms Jones to sue President Clinton while still in office. It is a distinction that makes more sense than a blanket immunity, and would properly have allowed the earlier prosecution of both Chirac and Berlusconi for acts committed while not in office. Their ability to thumb their noses at the courts may have provided both men with some comfort, but did the standing of their office and the state no good.