Last week, Sarkozy announced via his Facebook page that he would seek the leadership of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, according to the reports.
The development came after the suspension on Wednesday of a case against Sarkozy about an alleged attempt to influence judges who were looking into his affairs.
Sarkozy denies all allegations against him. “My dear friends, it is a long walk that we are starting in the service of France,” Sarkozy said.
“I have had time to think about what we did, and to you the people of France, I wanted to say thank you.” He intends to contest the 2017 presidential election.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s original Facebook post on September 19th 2014 (translated via Google translate):
Dear Friends,
May 6, 2012, in the evening of the presidential election, I thanked the French for the honor they had given me by allowing me to drive the destiny of our country for five years. I told them my intention to retire from all public activities.
Since then I have taken the time to think after all these years of intense activity. I was able to take the necessary step back to analyze the course of my term, learn from, go back to what was our common history, measure the vanity of certain feelings, avoidance of revenge or confrontation.
I could talk with the French, without the weight of power that distorts human relationships. They told me their hopes, misunderstandings and sometimes disappointments.
I’ve seen him go as an inexorable tide confusion, rejection, anger at the government, its majority but more broadly to all aspects of near and far in politics.I felt in many French temptation not to believe in anything or in person, as if everything was worth, or rather as if nothing was worth anything.
This lack of hope so specific to France today requires us to reinvent ourselves deeply.
I wondered without compromising the opportunity for a return to political life that I had stopped without bitterness or regret.
It is after careful consideration I have decided to offer a new French political choice.
Because, basically, it is a form of abandonment to remain a spectator of the situation is France, before the disintegration of the political debate, and the persistence of divisions so ridiculous in the opposition.
I‘m running for president of my political family. I propose to turn it inside out in order to create, within three months, the conditions for a vast new collection that will address all the French, without partisanship, beyond traditional cleavages now no longer correspond to any reality.
This huge gathering will develop a new project, a new operating mode adapted to the age in which we live and a new club, the ambition of a revival so necessary to our political life.I really like the France; I’m too passionate public debate and the future of my countrymen to see them condemned to choose between the desperate spectacle of today and the prospect of hopeless isolation. I can not bring myself to see move into the world the idea that France could have only marginal voice.
We must make new answers emerge to the concerns of the French, in their questioning of the sustainability of France, to the need to assert his unique personality, to promote his cultural message which is probably the most beautiful part of our heritage.
It does nothing great without the unity of the nation. It does nothing great without hope, without perspective.
To build a credible alternative, so we need to build the political formation of the XXI century. I will do it with attention to broader rally, willingness to ease tensions, and at the same time arouse passionate interest of all those who can not bring themselves to the humiliation of France. We will need all the intelligences of all the energy, all the good wishes. We need to turn the page on the divisions and resentments so that everyone can be part of a project by nature collective.
I know the difficulties that lie ahead. But the challenge is beyond us so, prospects are so exciting, the recovery if necessary in my eyes obstacles paled.
Overall, the strength of our commitment, our common severity of conscience issues, we will enable the start no one can doubt the necessity and urgency.
That everyone is convinced of the strength and sincerity of my commitment to the service of France.
NS
