Sarkozy’s Wife Steps Up to Bat

Remember our recent post on the “dismay” the EU expressed over Libya’s cyncial plan to extort money from the West for the Bulgarian nurses? As you may recall, the threat was extort or execute. The best the West could do was wring its collective hands and cry “no fair.”

Now the EU is whingeing about the French President’s wife butting in and trying to take the glory:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy came under attack from the left-wing opposition today for trying to steal the limelight by sending his wife Cecilia to Libya in the Bulgarian nurses’ affair.

Socialist Party (PS) deputy Benoit Hamon said Sarkozy wanted to take credit for securing the eventual release of the six medical workers, while the real responsibility lay with the European Union (EU).

“You can’t at the same time say you want to beef up Europe’s diplomatic muscle, and then try to steal the victory just when the EU’s about to pull something off — and all so that Madame Sarkozy can strut around on the republican stage,” he said.

Notice that the cry is still “no fair!” These people never left high school.

They whine on:

Cecilia Sarkozy arrived in Tripoli yesterday along with Claude Gueant, secretary-general of the presidency, and EU foreign affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

It was her second visit to Libya to try to win the freedom for the five Bulgarians and one Palestinian convicted of infecting children with HIV/AIDS.

“It is extraordinary that just because Mr Sarkozy wants to find a role for his spouse, the EU should have to drag along the wife of the president in a difficult negotiation,” Hamon said.

Pierre Moscovici, a former PS European affairs minister, said Sarkozy was pursuing a strategy of “the cuckoo in the nest”.

“He’s laying his eggs in someone else’s nest. Because basically France has played no part in all of this,” he said.

There’s nothing in the story at Business Day that expresses anyone’s concern for the fate of the nurses. It’s all about elbowing one another out of the way.

These are not serious people. They are seriously narcissistic. It must send chills through the poor nurses to think they are pawns in the EU’s childish vying for the limelight. I guess that’s what you do when you can’t really fight: you scratch one another’s eyes out like a bunch of chorus girls…

First he’s not allowed to jog, now his wife is supposed to stay home and bake cookies. As I said, these are people without gravitas.

Give me a break.


Hat tip: The Baron


[That’s enough of this tripe. Nothing further.]