ninme

All articles by Charles Bremner in Paris.

Times Online - Secret divorce for Nicolas Sarkozy as Cecilia poses for magazine

The divorce will be finalised in six weeks, Le Monde newspaper said. Mr Sarkozy delayed word of the separation in the hope that his wife, who had left him before, would change her mind, it added. Le Monde also said that the couple had drafted a divorce agreement at Mrs Sarkozy’s request during the election campaign last spring.

And the caption to the accompanying photograph:

Ceclia Sarkozy pictured during a holiday with her ex-husband in May, around the time they are said to have agreed on a divorce

Well now.

Times Online - Cecilia: I grew tired of playing second fiddle to statesman Sarkozy

“Public life does not suit me, the person I am in my deepest self. I am someone who likes the shade, peace of mind and calm,” said Ms Ciganer-Albéniz, to use her maiden name. “I need to live in peace, in hiding . . .

“When you marry a political figure private and public life become one. That was the start of the problems. What is happening to me happens to millions of people,” she added. “One day, you no longer feel at home in the couple. The couple is no longer the essential thing in your life. It doesn’t work any more . . . The reasons are inexplicable.”

She described how she drifted apart from a husband whom she admires as a statesman. “[The presidency] is for him like a violinist who has been given a Stradivarius. He suddenly has the opportunity to exercise his art,” she said. “It is not at all the same for me. I worked alongside him but I was not elected and didnt want to be.”

The heart-to-heart with L’Est Républicain, an eastern France newspaper, ended the official silence around the troubles of “Super-Sarko”, 52, and the elegant wife whose absences and caprices had fed the gossip mill for months.

It was also the latest case of the former première dame seeking the limelight while saying that she wanted to flee it. Yesterday, as the divorce was announced, she appeared in a glamorous photo spread that was staged at her request for Paris Match magazine. The Elysée Palace also said yesterday that Ms Ciganer-Albéniz would make no public comment.

She spoke for the first time of her months of estrangement in 2005, spent with Richard Attias, a French events organiser. Mr Sarkozy was Interior Minister and presidential candidate at the time. “I met someone and fell in love and left. Perhaps it was a bit rushed, given the media attention under which I was living at the time,” she said. “I wanted to behave correctly and come back to try to rebuild something, to return the the principles to which I was accustomed.”

For a year, the Sarkozys had made a big effort for the sake of their children, Louis, their son, 10, and two grown-up offspring each from previous marriages. “We tried to rebuild things, to put the family first,” she said. “We tried everything, I tried everything. It simply was no longer possible.”

Her words were a riposte to charges from some senior figures in the Socialist opposition that the Sarkozys’ reconciliation last year was a sham aimed at presenting an image of a happy family in the presidential campaign. Mrs Sarkozy said that she had made an effort to play the first lady role.

“I tried to become involved professionally, personally, but it didn’t go well every day.” She walked out of the spouses’ events at the G8 summit in Germany last June because she felt out of place, she said.

Given what’s been disclosed, that makes a lot of sense.

She called her husband a statesman. “France deserves him and he deserves France. I was proud and happy for him,” she said.

The former first lady also disclosed that it was her idea and not her husband’s to travel twice to Libya to negotiate the release of Bulgarian nurses from prison in July. “I felt that I could do it even if the situation was blocked,” she said. “I said to [Chief of Staff] Claude Guéant, ‘I’m coming with you’. He was quite surprised and talked to the President who said, ‘Let’s go for it. Take her with you’.”

The Sarkozys received a sympathy message yesterday from Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. “In a personal capacity, I wish to express my deep regret at the separation of my two very close friends Sarkozy and Cecilia,” Colonel Gaddafi said. He regretted that the breakup “came abruptly, giving no time for personal intervention by their friends to reconcile them”.

Heh.

She now plans to work in the humanitarian field and to take care of her children. “I do not want to live in my past,” she said. “I don’t like living in ruins. The page turns. It’s very difficult and that’s normal, given the context and the stakes but I never regret my decisions.”

Opinion polls confirmed today that France is not distrubed by the first divorce by a French ruler since that of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809. A survey in Le Parisien found that 92 per cent of French had not changed their opinion of Mr Sarkozy because of the divorce and 79 per cent said it was not an important event in French politics.

Hmm. A helpful example for… Never mind.

Here’s one of his weblog entries with the Paris Match cover.