The Minister Who Doubled Up As Mayor

摘要

So Rachida Dati, France's glamorous justice minister, has outlived her political value to the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as the first Muslim of North African origin to hold a senior government post. Having survived the hostility of judges, court officials and prison officers, and the global furore over her return to work within days of giving birth, Mlle Dati will leave the Government after all - although not until June, and her near-certain election to the European Parliament. M Sarkozy, has decreed, by slotting her into second place on his party's candidate list for Greater Paris, that the next phase of her still-fledgling political career will be in the 'purgatory' of Strasbourg. The MJ's readers would not expect yet another prurient airing of the minister's famously 'compli-cated private life'. Besides, with Spain's former prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar; Sarkozy's younger brother, Francois; and French sports minister, Bernard Laporte, all making it quite clear they are not the father of her daughter, and a Danish sperm bank refusing to comment, what complications are there left?