2009 YEARENDER: In 2009, Sarkozy became human, all too human

Dec 31, 2009, 14:30 GMT

Paris - On November 24, a senator from the ruling French UMP party committed a serious breach of political decorum: he publicly contradicted his political boss, President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Just hours after Sarkozy said that he would never reverse his decision to reduce the VAT on restaurant bills from 19.6 per cent to 5.5 per cent, Senator Philippe Marini was quoted by the online edition of the weekly Le Point as saying that if restaurateurs did not lower their prices, 'It's possible to reverse the 5.5 per cent VAT.'

The issue may be a minor one, but the flagrant, public repudiation of Sarkozy raised eyebrows because it would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

But it has been that kind of year for the president, who has seen his mantle of political invincibility fray and increasingly finds his iron-fisted rule challenged by his own supporters.

On November 23, it was announced that the outspoken minister for sports, Rama Yade, would get her wish to stand on the UMP's list in her home area of Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris, in the March regional elections, and not be forced to run for a seat in the northern suburb of Val-d'Oise, as Sarkozy had wanted.

The announcement stunned observers. The 32-year-old Yade had loudly protested the move to Val-d'Oise, saying it smacked of 'ethnic parachuting', since the region has a large immigrant population and she is black. She stubbornly resisted, and the president gave in.

The move had been seen as punishment for Yade's public criticism of what is regarded as the biggest blunder of Sarkozy's presidency, the candidacy of his 23-year-old son Jean to head the public body managing Europe's largest business district, La Defense.

But her comment, that it risked alienating 'the little people,' was tame compared to the storm of outrage Jean Sarkozy's candidacy provoked from opposition politicians, the French media and even abroad.

When polls showed that a large majority of the French were against the appointment, when the opposition's accusations of nepotism were echoed by observers in countries as far away as China and the affair threatened to become a media circus, Sarkozy did what he had vowed never to do in the affair, he climbed down.

'This is an important moment, perhaps a turning-point,' centrist Francois Bayrou crowed.

Perhaps it was. A senior official with the UMP told the weekly L'Express, 'This is the first time that I feel that he has been hurt. He knows he committed an error.'

Shortly thereafter, Sarkozy blundered again. A few days before traveling to Germany for the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he wrote on his Facebook page that he had been in the city on November 9, 1989, when the Wall fell.

To prove it, he posted a photo showing him chipping away at the Wall with a small hammer.

But a number of journalists smelled a rat, and a subsequent investigation appeared to prove that he could not have been in Berlin on that day, but had in fact traveled there one week later, on November 16.

Now, in the most serious challenge to his authority, Sarkozy is facing a revolt within his own ranks against his plan to do away with a local business tax and his ambitious proposal to reform the country's complex territorial administration.

Two powerful conservatives and putative Sarkozy allies, former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and the head of the UMP parliamentarians, Jean-Francois Cope, are spearheading the resistance to these proposals.

'What is happening to him?' cried a recent front-page headline of the French weekly Le Point, accompanying a photograph of a dour-looking Sarkozy in the rain in Berlin.

The French president's political decline could actually be traced back to the fainting spell he suffered on July 26 while jogging near his private residence outside Paris.

A few days later, following a brief hospital stay, he appeared before journalists looking ill and uncharacteristically shaky.

'I ran out of gas, the way it can happen to anyone,' he said at the time. 'I'm a human being.

It was the first sign of weakness by the seemingly indefatigable, invulnerable Sarkozy since he took office, and in hindsight it could also be regarded as a sign of things to come.