Sarkozy floats return to French politics 'out of duty'

Less than a year after his defeat in France's presidential election, former leader Nicolas Sarkozy suggested he could make a political comeback - not out of desire for power but "out of duty" to country. In an interview, with Valeurs Actuelles magazine for a long article on life after the Elysee Palace, the 58-year-old former centre-right president at first declared he "wanted nothing to do with the political world, which bores me to death."
"Frankly, do I want to come back? No," he was quoted as saying in the article to be published Thursday. But, he added: "Unfortunately, the time will come when the question is no longer: 'Do you want?' but 'Do you have a choice?' It will be a time when the country is caught between a flare-up of extremism on the left and the right."
"In that case," he said, "I could no longer continuing saying to myself: 'I am happy, I take my daughter to school and I give conference all around the world.' In that case, indeed, I will be obliged to go for it. Not out of desire. Out of duty."
Sarkozy was narrowly defeated by the Socialist Party's Francois Hollande in the May 2012 elections, becoming only the second president in the history of the 55-year-old Fifth Republic to be ousted after a single term. No sooner had he and his model-turned-singer wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy departed the presidential palace than speculation about a possible comeback began.
While several of his friends and allies have told French media he is anxious to set up a rematch against Hollande in 2017, Sarkozy had never before himself suggested a return. The announcement drew mixed reactions. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the economic difficulties France was experiencing were "the fruit of the fiscal and budgetary policies" of the Sarkozy years.
Sarkozy's former prime minister Francois Fillon, who has announced he will seek the presidential nomination of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement in 2016, said everyone in the losing camp in 2012 needed to examine their conscience. Voters were divided. "We are waiting for you Mr Sarkozy. Our country is coming apart," a supporter wrote on the website of the centre-right Le Figaro newspaper.
But for Gerard, writing on the website of France Info radio, Sarkozy's remarks smacked of a "Superman" complex. "Like all politicians who are not in power he promises to and when he was there he was explaining why he could no longer do. Let him be quiet and stick to his personal affairs."