The downfall of former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas who has just been found guilty of accepting illegal payments from French oil company Elf Aquitaine, represents a shock to the French body politic. Not only was Dumas a close ally of the late President Francois Mitterrand but he epitomized France’s ruling elite. It is widely believed that the crimes of which he has just been found guilty, are only the tip of an iceberg of payola and corruption which began in the late 1980s when Mitterrand came to office. It is suggested that the political establishment created slush funds to finance their activities while certain individuals behaved in the same way as Dumas, by personally enriching themselves.
It may be significant that the web of corruption in France was being spun at about the same time that disgraced German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was amassing illegal funds from German business for his Christian Democrat Party. The honor and probity of the European Union’s leading two member states has thus been impugned at a time when leading lights in Brussels have signaled that they want more powers for the EU’s wholly unelected commission and a new tax to fund the workings of the Brussels bureaucracy.
The problem of French corruption, however, has deeper roots than what appear to have been the opportunist maneuverings of Helmut Kohl in Germany. Since 1945 France has been governed, regardless of every government’s politics, by pretty well the same team of highly educated civil servants and politicians, all graduates of the republic’s exclusive and highly selective administrative academies. This self-perpetuating elite of often highly intelligent individuals, generally took the view that it alone knew what was best for France. The vulgar business of politicking was a necessary evil at elections but for most of the time, they could lead the French people by the nose, in the direction that they considered most appropriate. To consolidate their power base, they were prepared to give in to angry farmers or airline personnel or railway employees or truckers or ferry crews and pass the bill on to the long-suffering French tax payer. The leadership of state-run banks and companies became a source of employment for members of their elite.
Unfortunately the fundamental rottenness of this highly partial system, carried with it the seeds of greater corruption. The concentration of power in the hands of a few hundred self-regarding individuals, inevitably began to corrode the decent standards of behavior to which they had maybe originally subscribed. Feeling themselves effectively unaccountable to the “little people” whose destiny they shaped, for some the temptation to enrich themselves and their friends became irresistible, among whom it is now clear, was the high-living Roland Dumas .
The comparatively light sentence of six months given to Dumas is perhaps a reflection of his 78 years. It may also be that the French judges are hoping that by avoiding severe punishment, they will encourage other leading lights of the French political establishment to turn state’s evidence and help uncover further details of what seems to have been widespread corruption. The French authorities will of course be wishing to draw a line in the sand. They maintain that the offenses committed by Dumas and French businessmen are a thing of the past. But there are influential voices who feel that nothing short of a full and profound inquiry into allegations of corruption is more than called for.
It may well be that what really needs to be examined in fine detail is the way the exclusive administrative faculties operate; the manner in which the graduates of these academies have supported and promoted each other, regardless of the greater good of France itself. French local government with influential mayors in tiny communities is unfortunately being steadily subsumed by bigger local government units with whom the centrally appointed local prefects can more easily do business. The centralization of powers is making ordinary Frenchman ever more skeptical of the activities of “le pouvoir”, “the power” in Paris. An inquiry into that power could help restore their faith.
