From the former president to the future prisoner: Sarkozy’s sentence divides France

Nikola Sarkozy returns to where she was before – he dominated the news and divided the nation.

Thirteen years after he has left his post, he is about to become the first former French president sent to prison after receiving a five -year term of criminal conspiracy.

And the circumstances are full of the same raw disputes that they once used to mark its every move.

Fresh from his sentence in the Libyan Money process on Thursday, he talks to the incandescent rage about “boundless hatred”, which he said he was still a victim.

From the moment he became a champion to the right, Sarkozy was convinced that he was the target of Levik Kabbalah within the framework of the French judicial system and the media.

And with this sentence – he thinks – more unasiable evidence has come.

Why, did his supporters ask him, did the court cleared him on three of the four charges that weighed against him: illegal party funding, assignment of Libyan funds and corruption?

Why did the court only condemn him for the last accusation-the “catch” one of the “criminal associations” (often thrown at members of the drug gang when investigators have nothing else to continue)?

And why – when I sentenced him to this less accusation – then the court gave him such a humiliating and Draconian punishment? Not only did they send a 70-year-old man at a five-year-old prison, but it was shocking 20 years after the crime.

They also determined that the sentence was not “supan” – in other words, they said that he would go to prison, even if he had appealed, although in French law in anticipation of appeal, he in theory still innocent.

Just when you thought that old passions for and against the man were beginning to fade, they suddenly returned with revenge.

Many will feel some sympathy for Sarkozy – it is not necessary that he is completely without guilt on the search for money from a Libyan campaign.

But they will see some truth in his claims of victimization: that there are indeed some in the Paris establishment “Political-Media-City” who hate the former president and enjoy his overthrow.

Take a look through another lens, and Sarkozy is not some hard-to-major head of state, but a selfish and highly influential political operator who consistently presses the law to its borders to make its way.

Why else will there be such lithabies from court cases against him? Why else would Sarkozy already be convicted of two other accusations of corruption – once for an attempt to undermine a judge and another time for illegal funding for the campaign?

And if the court has now decided to throw his book into the affair in Libya, maybe it is because the prosecution can try to extract electives from a foreign dictator is actually quite serious.

Today, everything is appropriate, because although Sarkozy is no longer the influential figure that some do, the arguments for this case echo through the hall of the ruins, which are French politics.

The right and far right take on his cause, crying a foul for the left court excess. The Marine Le Pen-itself has prohibited from running for the Presidency for the “seamless” clause in her own sentence earlier this year-for the first time, she denies “injustice”.

And the Left sees all this as more evidence of the privilege of rich men – the powerful becomes powerful by ignoring the law.

Nikola Sarkozy has long left the post and has no prospect to return. He is a figure of the past. But his case stripped the divisions in a very divided country.