French weekly magazines review 15 March 2015

Politics dominate the front pages as French voters prepare to go to the polls for the March 22 and 29 Departmental elections. The National Front of Marine Le Pen, widely tipped to become France’s leading party after the vote, is everyone’s punching ball.

Le Canard is urging voters to open their eyes and see what the rather crazy economic program the National Front party has on offer as it looks to make strong gains come the election. “Collectivism is at your doors” warns the publication.

It goes on to satirize about the FN’s plans to nationalize and tax companies in order to increase salaries and bring down commodity prices.

Le Canard Enchaîné feels sorry for the voters who it says are deaf and the candidates described as blind men. Two weeks to the ballot, the satirical weekly claims that the citizens and candidates have no clue whatsoever about what the role of the future councillors will be.

Left-leaning L’Obs exposes what it claims is the racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia of its candidates standing in the election.

According to the publication, they hate immigrants, Muslims and can’t stand Christiane Taubira as France’s Justice Minister simply because she is black. proliferate anti-Semitic prejudices, while others look back at the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain which ruled France from 1940-1944 with nostalgia.

Le Point rolls the red carpet out for Tidjane Thiam the new black CEO of Credit Suisse Bank.

The cultural switch at Switzerland’s second investment bank is described by the conservative publication as a big coup. Thiam aged 52 and a former Ivorian Planning Minister was prior to his appointment CEO of Britain’s largest insurance company Prudential.

Le Point praises the 2m- tall Thiam of having earned the reputation of a global financier with established interest in new technologies and global evolution. He becomes the first black man to head a Footsie company.

One of Tidjane Thiam’s friends says he bears no grudges against France for not giving him a chance after he graduated with honours from the Paris Polytechnique and the prestigious business school l’INSEAD.

This Week’s Le Monde Magazine makes a perilous trip into what it calls the playground of the main opposition UMP party. The 238, rue de Vaugirard, the official address of the party’s headquarters is according to the publication is nest of debts and scams.

For Le Monde, ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy thought he was taking over a war machine when he took over the party.

What he has in his hands, according to Le Monde, is a movement which has ran out of breathe, mined by internecine fighting, with cronies of the likes of ex-President Jacques Chirac, ex-Prime Minister Alain Juppé and ex-UMP chief Jean Francois Copé spying on each other to maintain their influence.

L’Express voices serious doubts at Sarkozy’s prospects to redeem his political fortunes, by publishing damaging revelations on the so-called Bygmalion bomb, the ongoing probe into the suspected illegal funding Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential campaign.

The right-wing weekly says it is now in a position to report a secret meeting held at the Elysée Palace to discuss the funding difficulties of the UMP candidate’s campaign in February 2012 and what needed to be done.

The journal names the top Sarkozy aides who attended the meeting adding that Nicolas Sarkozy allegedly knew about Bygmalion well before the scandal broke out.

And Marianne makes further revelations about the so-called “Guéant affair” concerning Sarkozy’s Chief of staff during his time at the Elysée.

Claude Guéant has just been charged with tax evasion and forgery in connection with a probe into the suspected funding of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign by former Libyan dictator Moamer Kaddafi.

Investigators are looking for the origin of 500,000-euros discovered in Guéant’s account in February 2013, which he claims were proceeds of the sale of two 17th-century Flemish paintings to a Malaysian lawyer. But art experts challenged the evidence.

Marianne describes Guéant as a “key man of the Sarkozy system” put in place to negotiate giant international contracts known to have generated huge commissions and kickbacks.

According to Marianne, Sarkozy’s conspicuous silence over the indictment of his top aide brings to the fore the shady dealings which characterized his time in the Elysée.