It is not a bad idea, it appears, if top-notch politicians get incarcerated, at least for some days, so as to understand what prisons, or those that are now euphemistically called correctional homes, actually mean for an inmate. In fact, it is exactly this word that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy used to describe his recent 20-day stint in the prison of La Santé in Paris, in a new book he penned.
Ironically, ‘La Sante’ in French means ‘health’ or ‘wellness’, the implication being that the mental health of the prison’s inmates would improve after staying there. Sarkozy called this prison a noisy, harsh “all-grey” world of “inhuman violence.” The book is notable not only for its vivid, graphic account of the appalling conditions of the prison, but also the former President’s surprising advocacy of a new political line for his conservative party to close ranks with France’s Far-Right political outfit. The shift in his political strategy runs counter to the aims of “republican front” or parties that have traditionally kept the Far-Right out of power.
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In his “Diary of a Prisoner,” 70-year-old Sarkozy confesses his own tough stand on crime and punishment and has taken on a new perspective as he recounts his short experience in prison after being found guilty of criminal association in financing his winning 2007 campaign with dubious funds from Libya.
Hundreds of his supporters queued up at a bookshop in a Paris upscale residential neighbourhood where Sarkozy staged his first book signing. The court sentenced him in September to five years in prison, and he appealed against the ruling. He was granted release under judicial supervision after 20 days behind bars. The book provides a rare look inside the La Santé prison, where Sarkozy was kept in solitary confinement, strictly away from other inmates for security reasons.
His loneliness was broken only by regular visits from his wife, supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and his lawyers. Sarkozy wrote that his cell looked like a “cheap hotel, except for the armoured door and the bars,” with a hard mattress, a plastic-like pillow and a shower that produced only a thin stream of water. He described the “deafening noise” of the prison, much of it at night. Opening the window on his first day behind bars, he heard an inmate who “was relentlessly striking the bars of his cell with a metal object.” “The atmosphere was threatening. Welcome to hell!,” he wrote in his book.
Sarkozy said he declined the meals served in small plastic trays along with a “mushy, soggy baguette (a long, narrow French bread)” – their smell, he wrote, made him nauseous. Instead, he ate dairy products and cereal bars. He was allowed one hour a day in a small gym room, where he mostly used a basic treadmill. Sarkozy says he was informed of several violent incidents that took place during his time behind bars, which he called “a nightmare.” “The most inhumane violence was the daily reality of this place,” he wrote, raising questions about the prison system’s ability to reform and reintegrate people into the mainstream once their sentences are served. Sarkozy was known for his tough rhetoric on punishing criminals. He promised that “upon my release, my comments would be more elaborate and nuanced than what I had previously expressed on all these topics.” No less important is Sarkozy’s strategic political advice offered in his book for his conservative Republicans party. He sprang a surprise by revealing that he spoke over phone from the prison to the Far-Right National Rally’s leader Marine Le Pen, once his fierce rival. He no longer finds Le Pen’s party “a danger for the Republic,” he wrote.
Despite his party’s differences with the outfit on many issues, including economic, he argued in the book that the reconstruction of his weakened Republican party can only be achieved through “the broadest possible spirit of unity.” Sarkozy is, of course, free to hold his political opinion and spell out new strategies. But his prescription this time around reads like a desperate attempt to safeguard personal interests. This is nothing new since some tall leaders across the globe, including the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have for some time been courting Far-Right groups for their own personal and political survival, engendering, in the process, the politics of hatred, religious divide and racism, but all of that assures long-term survival for such men in office.
