Word: mitterrand
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...there's also a sentiment that many members of France's political class may wind up discredited if too many old corruption cases are dredged up now. Earlier this week, several public figures - including former Interior Minister and Chirac confidant Charles Pasqua and Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of former President François Mitterrand - were convicted of illegally supplying arms to Angolan rebels in the 1990s. In responding to his guilty verdict and one-year prison sentence, Pasqua said that many former and current members of government knew about the arms sales, as well as several other illegal schemes...
...Conservatives from the ruling center-right Union for a Popular Majority backed Mitterrand. On Thursday evening, a close aide to Nicolas Sarkozy said the French President backed his Culture Minister and described the controversy around him as "pathetic." A few of Mitterrand's backers noted that while disturbing in parts, La Mauvaise Vie has been hailed by critics both for its literary boldness and its provocative examination of homosexuality. Mitterrand, who was tapped for the Culture Ministry job by Sarkozy in June, has long been open about his sexuality. His defenders note that the current hubbub over the book...
...detractors point out that sleeping with minors is indeed a crime - and that if, as Mitterrand's book suggests, that is what he did, he should step down. But Mitterrand has always maintained his novel was intended as a kind of full disclosure of things he'd seen and experienced. While the portion of the book dealing with prostitution might worry some readers - "I got into the habit of paying for boys," he writes - Mitterrand argues that his use of the word boy referred to younger men rather than minors. Many older gay men use the expression in that...
...French television on Thursday night, Mitterrand condemned pedophilia and sex tourism, and said that the men he paid for sex were his own age. He accused his critics of failing to distinguish between homosexuality and pedophilia...
Despite the usual refusal of the left to deal with Le Pen, overlapping motives are driving the common offensive by traditional political enemies. "It's above all the first direct political consequence of the Polanski case, in which Frédéric Mitterrand became iconic of the élites defending [Polanski] by immediately thrusting himself to the heart of the controversy," says political commentator Alain Duhamel. "Some resent him as the living legacy of Mitterrand. The left is still furious at him for agreeing to serve under Sarkozy. Still others want to make him pay for his sophisticated...