In the corridors of the Radio House, commotion. This Monday, November 27, when 8 o’clock has just struck, François Hollande pushes open the glass doors of the immense round building and hurries towards the elevators, heading towards the yellow floor of France Info. The elevator takes its time, feeling of eternity. The former President of the Republic knows that on the upper floors, at France Inter, Jérôme Cahuzac, his former Minister of the Budget, the one who lied “eye to eye” and who was convicted of tax fraud, has just concluded the 7:50 a.m. interview and will go the other way. He has no desire to meet him. He has not spoken to him since the minister’s resounding resignation in 2013. Jérôme Cahuzac could have forced fate. The writers would have chatted, thus fueling the chronicle of his return to the political scene. “We were never friends with François Hollande,” he told L’Express today. “Political life had brought us together, but it ended up pushing us apart.”
Here is the 71-year-old man relieved of his electronic bracelet, and who loudly proclaims “don’t forbid yourself anything”. Until then it was only a rumor, which had been flying with the wind since the start of the September school year, first in Lot-et-Garonne, its former stronghold, then towards the north of France. Xavier Bertrand, president of Les Républicains des Hauts-de-France, was one of the first to know, warned by Jean-Louis Costes, one of his supporters, former LR deputy and mayor of Fumel (Lot-et-Garonne). The rumor then spread to the National Rally. During a meeting at the beginning of November, the RN deputy for the constituency where Cahuzac was elected informed his colleague Sébastien Chenu. “We all looked at each other, surprised. Nobody really understood,” says the vice-president of the RN. “It seems that he is aiming for the town hall of Villeneuve-sur-Lot but who could have the crazy idea of giving him the nomination?”
The rumor arrived late in the Socialist Party. Even François Hollande had not heard of it, and when a few journalists informed him of it, he thought it was a bad joke. “If Jérôme Cahuzac is not burned, then Eric Dupont Moretti has a future,” he joked again in November, well before the Minister of Justice was acquitted by the Court of Justice of the Republic.
“When I give the exact time, people don’t believe me”
The few who did not cut ties with Jérôme Cahuzac were not surprised. He always refused to bow out. The fate that his socialist friends, François Hollande first, had reserved for him, he said he experienced as an “injustice”. “I am accused of having lied to people who lie every day. Even when I give the exact time, they do not believe me. All I have left is my dignity, my courage, I value it. They “took everything else…”, he confided one day in June 2014. Nine years later, one of his friends assured him: “On the first day of his long crossing of the desert, he swore that he would come back, one way or another, sooner or later.”
Jérôme Cahuzac will therefore have patiently waited for the end of his ineligibility, confident in himself and certainly not vengeful. “Who has read Joke by Milan Kundera knows that revenge is useless. It is degrading for everyone. Wanting revenge is wasting your time,” brags the one who doesn’t hold a grudge against anyone – he swears! – not even the socialists, not even Bernard Cazeneuve who was one of his most loyal comrades. “J “I have the weakness to think that we were true friends between 2007 and 2013.” Cazeneuve has other ambitions now and Cahuzac refuses to disturb him. With him also the complicit exchanges have stopped, we mustdoes he face the facts?
Summer 2023, dinner with his friend Senator François Patriat. “I want to come back,” he repeats with each stroke of the fork. He reveals his plan, this idea for an association which will be born at the end of September, “Les amis de Jérôme Cahuzac”, hosted by the former socialist head of the department. In the gang, faithful of the time, most of them former local political hands and Guy Gérard. He is the former mayor of another neighboring village who steers the boat. The local press, La Dépêche du Midi above all, make your honey quickly. A first gathering, private and by invitation, was held on October 20, then another meeting, public, with some 400 people. “Understand that bringing together so many people in a room with word of mouth in Lot-et-Garonne is a great success,” explains a local politician who has known Jérôme Cahuzac for a long time.
A return, but to do what? Many think that he only has the town hall of Villeneuve-sur-Lot in his objective, the city that he led for eleven years. However, this is not the priority of Jérôme Cahuzac who spends much more time talking about national politics. “The town hall is at most a fallback solution,” murmurs one of his supporters who concedes: he wants to recover his seat as deputy for the 3rd constituency of Lot-et-Garonne. Cahuzac, like so many others, is betting on a dissolution before the end of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term. “The president cannot go all the way like that,” he has been repeating to his family since the last legislative elections. At L’Express, he struggles to hide his newfound ambition, saying that “the political situation is undoubtedly difficult” even if “the president, the government and the majority are not doing so badly.” Compliment of a hardened person. “Imagining a dissolution would be a gamble and I don’t know what would suggest that it could be won, but politics is sometimes mysterious. Trying to take the constituency back from the National Rally is a great fight.”
The dead and the living
Did he also say it to the main person concerned, the President of the Republic, in the messages that the two men have been exchanging on WhatsApp for several months? Cahuzac has “affection” for the tenant of the Élysée whom he knew when the latter was only a young financial inspector. “I never wanted this friendship to embarrass him.” In Emmanuel Macron’s entourage, we look with a curious eye at this “American-style” political Easter, played out like a catharsis. “People want scars, but what’s the motivation behind it?” No political movement, on the left or in Macronie, plans to help him. The man remains politically radioactive. In Lot-et-Garonne, his supporters but also his opponents are less categorical. His one-hour stroll in Monsempron-Libos went so well that he himself said he was surprised not to have been heckled more than necessary.
The boss of the socialist deputies Boris Vallaud cannot help but retch: “Why do the media talk more about the dead than the living?” Jérôme Cahuzac believes he is more alive than ever. He “purged” his debt, he asserts. Did he forget his joke? “Morally, he will remain the one who lied to the national representation, who lied to his political family, who lied to me, who lied to the whole country,” recalled François Hollande on France Info on November 27. Did Cahuzac, who will remain one of the greatest liars in the history of the Republic, ever believe that politics was done with morality? “Written laws must be respected, I know this all the more because I paid for not having done it, he believes. But if there is a law superior to all others in politics, it is indeed the vote of the voters. No one can prejudge what would be their decision.” Rely on principles, they will end up collapsing, said Talleyrand.
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