"Junket shame stirs a Sarkozy warning" by Jenny Barchfield, Associated Press / February 10, 2011
PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is awkwardly trying to stamp out a controversy over his ministers taking sun-and-sea holidays paid for by the Egyptian government and a Tunisian businessman.
Egyptians are living in poverty while the government picked up the tab for.... sigh.
Some top French politicians have made a habit of planning vacations around the largesse of foreign governments or influential tycoons. But the longstanding practice has come under scrutiny after revelations that the prime minister’s family Christmas holiday was funded by Egypt’s government, and the foreign minister vacationed in Tunisia, hitching a ride on a businessman’s jet to avoid violent antigovernment protests there.
French media had a field day yesterday, running front-page photos of Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie with headlines such as “Fillon Government Experiencing Heavy Turbulence.’’
Sarkozy told ministers at a Cabinet meeting yesterday to prioritize France when picking holiday destinations. But in a political faux pas of his own, Sarkozy said any invitations by foreign governments must be approved by the prime minister — the same man who vacationed on Egypt’s dime....
Accepting junkets by foreign governments — a longtime political perk — took on tone-deaf overtones after the newspaper Le Canard Enchaine revealed that Alliot-Marie vacationed in Tunisia amid violent popular protests that toppled the North African nation’s autocratic leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Puts me in mind of all the AmeriKan pols running over to Israel.
Alliot-Marie acknowledged accepting a ride in a private plane owned by a Tunisian businessman during the 2010 year-end holiday.
She insisted the man was a personal friend who was victimized by Tunisia’s fallen regime, not a supporter.
Still, critics used the ill-timed trip as evidence of Alliot-Marie’s cozy relations with Ben Ali and suggested that was why she was slow to speak out in support of antigovernment protesters.
Unless those protesters are in France. Then it's a problem.
Alliot-Marie also came under fire for offering French police know-how to Tunisian security forces while the number of demonstrators killed by Tunisian police mounted.
The opposition called on her to resign, but she has resisted.
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FLASHBACK:
"Minister is urged to resign over Tunisia trip" by Steven Erlanger, New York Times / February 4, 2011
PARIS — France’s new foreign minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, is facing renewed calls for her resignation, and once again the problem is Tunisia.
Alliot-Marie and her partner, Patrick Ollier, a government minister in charge of relations with Parliament, vacationed in Tunisia between Christmas and New Year’s, when small antigovernment demonstrations were under way and some protesters had died.
Even worse, her opponents say, she and Ollier took a flight on a private jet owned by Aziz Miled, a Tunisian businessman who is in a partnership with the family of the country’s former president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was forced from office by the protests.
The flight was reported by the French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine.
Miled, as an associate of Ben Ali’s brother-in-law Belhassen Trabelsi, is on a list of people subject to an assets freeze by Swiss authorities.
Alliot-Marie, 64, angrily rejected calls from the Socialist opposition for her resignation and said that Miled, who made a fortune in tourism, was a friend who offered space on his jet for a trip he would have taken in any event....
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