By G. Dunkel
October 31, 2025

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy began a 5-year prison sentence Oct. 21. He was convicted of conspiring to use money from the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in his 2012 reelection campaign. He lost that year’s run-off election by a close vote.

In 2011, Sarkozy ordered French jets to attack Gadhafi’s government in Libya as the first step in a massive NATO intervention, with the U.S. being the major player. The NATO war tore Libya apart, destabilized much of North Africa and the Sahel and resulted in the murder of Gadhafi. None of the NATO warmakers were tried for this crime.

Sarkozy is also known for his gratuitous insults against youths of the suburban housing projects who were rebelling against police brutality. He was the minister of the interior at that time, 2005.

After Sarkozy’s one presidential term ended in 2012, he developed a very profitable consulting and advising business using his connections to some of the biggest French companies, according to the Oct. 21 issue of the influential newspaper Le Monde. His conviction in 2025 was the result of an extensive examination of his fraudulent activities over many years.

Sharpened class struggle

While the details of his conviction focus on fraud and corruption, that a former president was jailed is a reflection of the intensified class struggle in France and how this sharpens the conflict within the pro-capitalist parties vying for office.

Sarkozy’s connections got him a private cell with a TV; since he is a former president (the first French president to be incarcerated), he has two bodyguards, but he still is in prison. His closest supporters claim that French presidents should be above the law. The French Communist Party in an official statement said the law applies to everyone and Sarkozy was treated justly.

Current President Emmanuel Macron is in a weak position to grant Sarkozy clemency. (Sarkozy had endorsed the current banker-president.) Macron’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is just hanging on by the thinnest of margins.

Lecornu had to resign Oct. 6 after losing a vote of no-confidence in Parliament. Macron appointed him for a second time on Oct. 10. Lecornu survived a new no-confidence vote only because the Socialist Party abstained after he promised to suspend the detested pension reforms. (The Socialist Party is socialist in name alone. It has frequently directed the government at the service of the imperialist French ruling class.)

The French parliament is divided into three, nearly equal parts: a popular left called the New People’s Front, a center including Macron’s party Renaissance and the right wing, which includes Marine Le Pen’s party, the National Rally along with Sarkozy’s party, the Republicans.

The government will not survive a vote if the left and right both vote against it.

The Socialists claim its opposition is what forced the government to suspend the very unpopular pension reforms, which are really cuts to pensions. The big union confederations in France — the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) — point instead to the months of general strikes and mass mobilizations  that they held against the pension cuts.

The budget Lecornu is proposing funds the suspension of the pension cuts with cuts in other services and higher taxes. The CGT has called for a “mobilization” against his planned 2026 budget starting Nov. 6 and continuing for several days.

CGT Secretary-general Sophie Binet told the media: “This budget is very dangerous. It absolutely must be fundamentally amended.” (connexionfrance.com, Oct. 16)