De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? (What Is Sarkozy the Name Of ?)

It’s now been a year since Nicolas Sarkozy, by a wide margin, swept into France’s presidential palace with promises of sweeping reforms of everything from the country’s finances to its national character. You will remember the trajectory. After a skittering rise that saw him in and out of power, he took control of the UMP, Jacques Chirac’s electoral machine. In the 2005 post-EU-referendum cabinet reshuffle he unexpectedly ended up back in his old job at the interior ministry, where his nightly television interventions during that year’s awful suburban riots made him a national star. When the 2006 student protests over the Contrat premiè€re embauche delegitimated his only remaining rival, the prime minister Dominique de Villepin, Sarkozy won his party’s nomination and eventually the presidency by making the election a referendum about himself.

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