L'affaire presidentielle

The loneliness of power could take on new meaning in the Elysee Palace. Whichever candidate wins the French presidential election a week today, the next President will almost certainly move into his, or her, official residence alone. The 44,500,000 French voters will be given a choice between two odd couples. Not all of the French electorate is fully aware of the fact.

The troubled but once seemingly perfect marriage between the centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, 52, and his wife Cecilia collapsed in mid-campaign. Mrs Sarkozy, 49, is believed to have spent part of the past few weeks in Florida.

This has been widely reported in the foreign press and on the internet, but has barely been mentioned in the French mainstream press, and not at all on television. The only reference on radio has been in the daily foreign press review on France Inter - the French equivalent of Radio 4 - which last Wednesday gave listeners translated extracts from an article on the Sarkozy marriage published that day in The Independent. The article asked why there had been an official news "blackout" on Cecilia Sarkozy's virtual disappearance: France Inter made no further comment.

France has strict and well-intentioned laws that forbid the media to invade private lives. The president's wife, or premiere dame, is almost as much a part of the French political landscape as the First Lady in the US. Can the front-running presidential candidate's marriage therefore be regarded as a "private" matter? Sources in Mr Sarkozy's party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), say that there has indeed been another serious rift in his marriage: after brief appearances last Sunday at a polling station and at UMP headquarters, Cecilia has disappeared from view once again.

French websites are full of lurid speculation about the causes of the latest Nicolas-Cecilia bust-up, the third in two years. The Paris political-media village is talking of little else, and some are asking whether the rest of the public - especially the provincial public - does not have a right to know as well.

By contrast, the unconventional private life of the other remaining presidential candidate, Segolene Royal, is well known to all. The 53-year-old Socialist candidate's "marriage", and the exact nature of her relations with her partner, have been the subject of constant media speculation during the campaign.

Ms Royal and her partner of 25 years, Francois Hollande, have four children. They have never married. But he is also the first secretary, or head, of the Parti Socialiste. On the pattern of previous elections, he, not Ms Royal, should have been the Socialist presidential candidate.

The meteoric success of Ms Royal in the primary campaign last year was a personal calamity for Mr Hollande, 54. Trapped between his partner, several other candidates and his own ambitions, he behaved, in the circumstances, with extraordinary dignity. He was, however, caught on a live microphone on one occasion saying: "I am living through a nightmare."

Mr Hollande has let it be known that he will not move into the Elysee Palace as "First Gentleman" if she wins. So are Segolene and Francois still truly a couple? Rumours have circulated for years suggesting that their "marriage" is a sham.

In a book of interviews published last month, Ms Royal joked about the constant speculation surrounding her relationship, saying: "At least, since I am a woman, they can't say I have a hidden child somewhere." On the big question - are they still an item - she said: "Yes, we are together and yes, we still live together. If that was not the case, I assure you - given the paparazzi who follow us all the time - you would know about it."

According to Socialist Party officials, her reference to paparazzi was no joke. She and Mr Hollande, they say, have been targeted unsuccessfully for months by the "celebrity scandal" press in France. That raises the obvious question: why has this section of the French press ignored the Nicolas-Cecilia story?

One reason might be that Mr Sarkozy has many connections in the French media industry. The last editor of Paris-Match was fired for running a picture spread showing Cecilia with the man with whom she fled to the US in 2005. The magazine happens to be run by a group owned by a close friend of Mr Sarkozy.

When she left her husband in 2005, Cecilia Sarkozy gave a series of interviews to a journalist, Valerie Domain, who wrote a book giving the reasons for her flight. Mr Sarkozy intervened to have the book pulped.

Ms Domain changed the names and turned her book into a novel, Entre le Coeur et la Raison ("Between Heart and Reason"). The Cecilia Sarkozy character - "Celia" - is presented as an impulsive romantic who cannot stand living with a man who ignores her. At one point she says: "I have the impression that you have become like all of these other politicians, cold and distant, even with your wife. You are a fake, and I can stand it no longer."

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