France's Sarkozy sails into storm over luxury holiday

[EV_Ares]

05-08-2007, 22h30
PARIS (AFP)

French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy addresses journalists before jogging near the southern Maltese town of Delimara, 09 May 2007. Sarkozy has defiantly rejected criticism of his holiday on a luxury yacht owned by a billionaire businessman friend.
(AFP/File)

France's new right-wing leader Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday defiantly rejected criticism of his holiday on a luxury yacht owned by a billionaire businessman friend.

"I don't see why there is a controversy," he told journalists as he jogged on the Mediterranean island of Malta, saying the holiday had not cost the French taxpayer a penny. "I have no intention of apologising."

The president-elect flew to Malta with his wife Cecilia and their 10-year-old son Louis on Monday to relax and prepare his new goverment after his weekend election victory over the Socialist Segolene Royal.

They arrived there on a Falcon jet belonging to industrialist Vincent Bollore and then boarded a 60-metre (200-foot) yacht also owned by Bollore.

But the secretive high-budget retreat quickly drew flak from political opponents and the media who saw in it a sign of bad taste and a suggestion he would be beholden to big business.

(entire article @ link below)

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=175286

[Tyler Durden]

1. What can you say about a clueless attitude like that?

I swear, the "Politician as Rock Star"/"I can do whatever I want" stuff might just work for US. What did Claudius say?

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out!"

Maybe it will have to get much worse before the Proletariat of the world figures out that the right wing Capitalist Pigs want to eat THEM.

[mainegreen]

2. And so it begins....

:puke:

[Cerridwen]

3. "Now watch this drive"

My first thought on reading about a newly elected president heading off on a luxurious holiday paid for by a rich industrialist was our "own" white house occupant as he appeared in "Fahrenheit 9/11" in which, while being interviewed by the "press" during his vacation, he segues from being "dedicated to fighting terrorism" to clutching his golf club and saying:

"Now watch this drive"

Seems they may have something in common? My sympathies to the French if they have their own version of the "Connecticut Yankee" play-acting as a drugstore cowboy.