Chirac, Lover of Spotlight, Avoids Glare of France's Fires

By ELAINE SCIOLINO - New York Times: "President Jacques Chirac has never been one to shun the spotlight.

But in the face of the most serious social crisis of his 10-year presidency, the 72-year-old French leader has become the invisible man.

Even his declaration of a nationwide state of emergency on Tuesday was presented not in a sober, televised presidential speech in prime time, but read aloud to journalists by the government spokesman after Tuesday's cabinet meeting.

"Chirac seems completely out of the loop," said Bernard Kouchner, a Socialist former health minister and one of the most popular political figures in France. "It's all very strange. As a doctor, I can't say whether he's in bad physical shape. But as a citizen, I can say he looks weaker and weaker."

The absence of a man who seizes - even creates - opportunities to plunge into crowds, kiss babies and caress cows has prompted criticism that the president has no plan to ease the unrest that has gripped the country's slums for the past 13 days. It has also created an opening for rivals of Mr. Chirac's center-right party, already weakened by the public's rejection of a constitution for Europe - which was interpreted as a sweeping rejection of the French government - and humiliated when Paris lost the bid for the 2012 Olympics to London last July.

The civil unrest is seen as serious because it shakes the foundation of the French republican ideal, which envisions a uniform French identity that ignores ethnic and religious origin as the best guarantor of national unity. Initiatives proposed for the suburbs have been widely dismissed as inadequate to create educational opportunities and jobs for the young and security in ghettos plagued by drug-dealing and petty criminality.

"We live in a political system designed and created in the 1950's, and that system is dying," said Xavier Raufer, a leading French criminologist, in a telephone interview. "What is really frightening is that the people who run our country have no idea that the new measures they are proposing are miserable, absolutely hollow. If I were a young person living in a suburb I would laugh."

In recent days the crisis has forced the two main contenders in the battle for the presidency in 2007 - Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - to forge temporarily a common alliance. The two men seem to have settled into a division of labor in which Mr. de Villepin is slipping into Mr. Chirac's presidential father-figure role while Mr. Sarkozy, who used the first 10 days of the unrest to promote his hard-line rhetoric on crime, is the point man in the field.

With the imposition of tough measures, including a state of emergency and curfews, the situation appears to be calmer. A public opinion poll published in Wednesday's issue of the popular tabloid Le Parisien showed that 73 percent of those polled supported the measures, with 86 percent expressing outrage at the violence. But for Mr. Chirac, who has only 18 months left in office, the crisis has deepened his political vulnerability as he gradually cedes more authority to Mr. de Villepin, his longtime protégé.

The only public utterance that Mr. Chirac has made about the unrest was a brief statement televised live on Sunday that expressed faith in republican values and a determination to restore order. His distracted demeanor prompted rumors that he might be in ill health (he suffered what is believed to have been a minor stroke in September). On Wednesday, Jerome Bonnafant, Mr. Chirac's spokesman, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Chirac's health was "excellent" and that he was carrying on in an "absolutely normal way," adding, "He has been far from absent; he has been present every day and nothing has been done without his personal input."

But for François Hollande, the head of the Socialist Party, Mr. Chirac has become so irrelevant that in an interview with France-Inter radio on Wednesday Mr. Hollande refused even to talk about the president. "One doesn't know if he is in the Élysée or somewhere else," Mr. Hollande said. "His silence is deafening." The left-leaning newspaper Libération said Tuesday that the arson attacks "prove that Chirac's reign has been a tragic farce."

Mr. Chirac has spoken passionately over the years, most notably in his presidential campaigns in 1995 and 2002, about the need to fight crime, create jobs and bridge the growing gap between rich and poor. But he has never seemed comfortable in the suburban slums. He even said in Orléans in 1991 that it was "not racist to say" that the immigrant workers of the suburbs were a financial burden to France, were disinclined to work and made "noise and smell." His words are still quoted there.

The sense that elements of the center-right government regard ethnic Arab and African Frenchmen with disdain has even been expressed by Azouz Begag, a sociologist and the son of an Algerian mason who holds the recently created job of minister for the promotion of equality of opportunities. He publicly criticized Mr. Sarkozy for using language that contributed to the violence, including his vow to wage a "war without mercy" against delinquents in the suburbs, and for referring to young suburban rebels as "scum." Mr. Begag said Mr. Sarkozy should "choose his words" better and criticized his visits to the suburbs as publicity stunts.

On Wednesday, Mr. Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian father and a French-born mother, kept up his tough line, announcing to a session of the National Assembly that he had asked local authorities to expel foreigners convicted of a crime, even if they were legal residents of France. For the moment, though, his tough talk seems to be playing poorly. For the first time, Mr. de Villepin edged ahead of Mr. Sarkozy in their approval ratings in an opinion poll released Wednesday and conducted one week into the unrest.

Also on Wednesday, Mr. Chirac ventured out of the Élysée Palace to the Invalides to mark the anniversary of the death of President Charles de Gaulle. On Thursday, he will meet with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and then face questions from the media for the first time since the rioting began."