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Chirac ally holds on, despite conviction

UMP party chief Alain Juppe reads a French daily with the headline ``Chirac faces Juppe earthquake'' as his car passes by the Invalides square in Paris on Tuesday. PHOTO: AFP

French President Jacques Chirac's closest ally and chosen heir, the former prime minister, Alain Juppe, vowed on Tuesday night to stay in politics and fight a corruption conviction that has shaken the French president and his ruling center-right party.

As three separate inquiries were launched into alleged dirty tricks against the judges who sentenced him, Juppe -- mayor of Bordeaux, a member of parliament, and chairman of Chirac's UMP party -- said he had appealed against the conviction and "since the appeal suspends the sentence, I will continue in my duties."

Juppe said his first instinct had been to "turn the page" and quit politics, but he had since reconsidered. The decision affords Chirac some respite by averting an immediate and potentially catastrophic UMP power struggle.

But that battle is only deferred: Juppe said he would not stand for re-election as the head of the party at polls in November. Nonetheless, if the appeal is successful, there remains a slim hope for Chirac that his most loyal lieutenant may yet succeed him.

A Nanterre court on Friday gave Juppe an 18-month suspended sentence and banned him from holding elected office for a decade, finding him guilty of using Paris taxpayers' money to pay the salaries of full-time staff from Chirac's previous party, the RPR.

If the verdict rocked the right, the extraordinary shower of praise for Juppe from his Gaullist allies has prompted widespread criticism that France's political elite cannot accept it should be subject to the same justice as voters.

The president of the French magistrates' union, Dominique Barella, said yesterday the campaign by Juppe's allies showed France was "still, democratically, a developing country whose elected officials have yet to absorb the notion of judicial independence."

Liberation called such declarations -- and attacks on the justice system -- as "unworthy of a genuine democracy," while Le Monde branded them "stupefying."

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he was "surprised" at the verdict, which was "only provisional," and that France "needs men like Alain Juppe."

A senior UMP senator, Josselin de Rohan, professed himself "indignant that a man of such quality should be treated as a wrongdoer," and the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Eric Raoult, called the verdict as "disproportionate, hypocritical and cynical."

In what amounts to a concerted challenge to the judicial system, the president's wife, Bernadette, has chimed in, describing Juppe as "a great statesman," while Chirac called a "politician of an exceptional quality of competence, humanity ... and honesty."

Noel Mamere, a Green member of parliament , said the right in general, and the president in particular, were "giving an extremely bad impression of France ... We look like a banana republic."

Juppe, 58, was both RPR chairman and responsible for Paris town hall's finances during much of the period from 1978 to 1995, when Chirac was mayor.

His conviction is seen as a condemnation of the entire illegal party financing system allegedly masterminded by Chirac to turn the town hall into a launch pad for his presidency.
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