Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy accused his successor Francois Hollande of a “litany of lies” and said he had “no choice” but to return to politics to offer a credible alternative.
In an interview Sunday with France 2 broadcaster two days after he announced his political comeback on his Facebook page, Sarkozy said the difference between himself and the Socialist, who defeated him in his 2012 bid for reelection, was that he “did not lie.”
“I have certainly many faults and I do not claim to have done everything right, but I did not lie,” said 59-year-old Sarkozy, who is running for the leadership of his conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party.
Hollande, by contrast, had told a “litany of lies” during his campaign for president, Sarkozy charged.
The conservative politician, who announced after his defeat in 2012 that he was quitting politics, said he was spurred to re-enter the fray by the sight of a “collapsing France.”
Sarkozy’s candidacy for the leadership of the UMP is widely seen as a first step towards trying to reconquer the presidency in 2017.
Six years after the start of the global financial crisis France is still battling record unemployment, a ballooning budget deficit and stagnant growth.
Hollande’s failure to turn around the economy have made him the least popular French president in modern times, with an approval rating of 13 per cent, according to some polls.
One recent survey showed far right National Front leader Marine Le Pen beating him in the event the two were left battling it out for president in 2017.
Sarkozy said he did “not want a country that is the world’s fifth-biggest economy to have to choose between …the humiliating spectacle we have today and the prospect of total isolation which is that of the National Front.”
Faced with such a prospect, he said, “not only do I want to (return), I have no choice!”
He is seen as a shoo-in for the party leadership in an election to be held on November 29, but faces a stiffer challenge for the presidential nomination of the UMP.
His most formidable rival is former prime minister, Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppe, whom polls show to be France’s favourite politician.
Sarkozy says his first mission would be to turn around the scandal-plagued UMP and turn it into a “credible alternative” that transcends France’s entrenched left-right political divisions.
As president Sarkozy was himself a polarizing figure. In 2012, he was accused of chasing after FN voters with a right-wing discourse that stigmatized immigrants.
“Age brings a little less energy but more wisdom and more perspective,” he said.
Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, is also dogged by several legal cases. This summer he was charged with corruption and influence peddling in a campaign financing investigation.
Pressed by France 2 about his legal woes Sarkozy asked: “If had the least thing to blame myself for, would I be putting myself out there in politics?”
GNA
