(Image Source: Euronews.net)
BY NOE GANDILLOT
You're watching multisource politics video news analysis from Newsy.
Jacques Chirac’s trial began... without Jacques Chirac. A Paris judge ruled France’s former president was too ill to attend his own corruption lawsuit. Euronews has the details :
“The judge has accepted a request by the 78 year-old that he’d be represented by his lawyers. (...) According to Chirac's doctors, the former Head of State suffers memory lapses and other symptoms that could indicate the onset of Alzheimer's."
Right-wing French politicians were quick to react to the news. They express concerns and emotion about Chirac’s deteriorating health condition. French Minister of Foreign Affairs Alain Juppé told conservative paper Le Figaro :
“It seems that his condition has gotten worse. You know the ties of friendship between Jacques Chirac and I. Therefore, I am sad to see to see the decline in his health.”
Jacques Chirac is the first French president to go to court since World War II. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in jail. The BBC notes, the charges against him precede his time in the top office.
“The charges go back decades, to the days where Jacques Chirac was the longest ever serving mayor of Paris. For 12 years, he was protected by presidential immunity. But the allegations never went away that he’d used public money city funds to pay members of his political party.”
This is not the first time Chirac has escaped a court appearance. France’s left-wing paper Liberation criticizes the former president’s tendency of using all legal recourses to elude justice :
"For 15 years, everything has been done to buy time and prevent the former President from going to court. (…) This case has been a poison for French politics and needs to be settled, once and for all.”
To the Economist, this trial reveals the flaws of French justice.
“The real scandal is not that an ill man should be excused from attending his own trial. It is that it has taken such a long time for the French justice system, despite persistent efforts by investigating magistrates, to get the former president anywhere near a courtroom.”
This case has reopened the controversy about presidential immunity in France. Socialist front runner to 2012presidential elections François Hollande declared he would put an end to the policy if he’s elected.
Transcript by Newsy.
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