He’s a TV personality, writer, film-maker and gay activist who is not only an expert on monarchies but belongs to the closest thing the French republic has to a royal family: the Mitterrand clan.
And yesterday Frederic Mitterrand, nephew of the late socialist president Francois Mitterrand, was to add a new title to his list of honorifics by being appointed France’s new culture minister in a highly symbolic move by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The unashamedly right-wing French president has a strategy of poaching high-profile personalities from the left. Sarkozy’s “rainbow Cabinet” of all political colors, including left-wing Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, was always intended to wrongfoot his critics and weaken the moribund French left.
However, the appointment of a Mitterrand in the mid-term government reshuffle that was to be announced yesterday morning is seen as the ultimate prize — it is as close as Sarkozy can get to the respected socialist president and idol of the left.
Frederic Mitterrand, 61, who has written scores of books and directed several films, could also bolster Sarkozy’s latest efforts to counter charges that he is France’s first philistine president and prefers jogging to the arts.
Unlike the enigmatic, bookish Francois Mitterrand, president from 1981 to 1995, Sarkozy is better known for enjoying US thrillers on DVD, indulging in cheesy French Elvis impersonators and deriding 17th-century French literature.
This image has been tempered since Sarkozy married the model-turned-folk singer Carla Bruni. The couple now make highly publicized trips to the theater and hold private meetings with arts and film figures such as Woody Allen.
Mitterrand has spent the past eight months as head of the Villa Medicis French cultural academy in Rome, one of the most prestigious French cultural institutions abroad.
He was appointed last September after outrage in the arts world that Sarkozy was going to parachute one of his former advisers into the job. Italian-born Bruni was said to have helped persuade her husband of the importance of a fair appointment.
Mitterrand’s father, an engineer, was the late president’s brother. A former teacher and devout film fan, Mitterrand ran cinemas in Paris before reinventing himself as a TV presenter, producer and director in the 1980s and 1990s.
He was famous for his arts and history programs and commenting on royal events. A campaigner for gay rights, he also presented a show on France’s first gay cable channel, Pink TV.
Hard to pin down politically, he supported his uncle and was part of former president Mitterrand’s inner circle, but he didn’t join his Socialist party and backed the center-right Jacques Chirac for president in 1995.
Mitterrand’s appointment was not supposed to be announced until the reshuffle yesterday morning, but after leaks from his leaving party in Rome, he confirmed the story himself, telling TV reporters that the culture ministry was “an exciting task and an honor.”
Asked if he still considered himself on the left, he said: “When Francois Mitterrand didn’t want to answer a question, he didn’t. I’m the same.”
The culture minister’s job is seen as a poisoned chalice. His first headache will be the hardline law to clamp down on illegal music and film downloading by cutting off repeat offenders’ Internet access — Sarkozy’s pet project. Mitterrand’s brief also includes the media, a difficult issue in France, where Sarkozy has been accused of trying to tighten state control of public TV and the troubled press is engaged in a government-led drive to reform.
Sarkozy’s reshuffle will fill posts vacated by ministers leaving for the European parliament, including Rachida Dati, the justice minister and first woman of north African parentage to hold a major government post.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of