Nicolas Sarkozy is the first French President to be convicted of offenses during his term in office. The Republican was sentenced to one year without parole for illegal campaign funding. But neither the guillotine nor a cellar in the formerly notorious Bastille threatens him. The 66-year-old will serve his sentence in house arrest, his movements will be monitored by electronic ankle cuffs. Sarkozy will be able to get over the quarantine in luxury, one is used to hard curfews in Paris by now. As is so often the case in great politics, those responsible are not punished for their great sins or crimes, but for specifically verifiable crimes.
Sarkozy saves the essence of the rule of law, even when his party friends protest. The conservative applicants for the 2022 presidential candidacy, Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand, assured Angela Merkel’s long-term political partner of their “friendship”. The party’s parliamentary group leader, Bruno Retailleau, lamented the “unusual and excessive harshness” of the judgment. But everyone involved knows that the case is about a petitesse: The consequences of the investigations by the tax prosecutor’s office could be much more serious. She is investigating whether illegal money from Libya’s then President Muammar al-Gaddafi flowed into the election campaign. It’s about several million. Sarkozy then started a war to silence Gaddafi. Civil war has raged in Libya ever since. For this development, however, Sarkozy does not have to fear any indictment or punishment.