Mitterrand Scion’s Arrest Fuels Hope That No One Is Above Law

Behind the high stone walls of the Sante prison here, the identity of one recent detainee in the VIP block is testimony that the mores of French politics may have shifted for good after a year of unprecedented scandal.

Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, 54, elder son of the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, is under investigation for alleged complicity in weapons trafficking and abuse of office. His bail has been set at about $725,000, but his lawyer has said Mitterrand cannot scrape so much cash together.

The arrest of the sleek, well-tailored and well-connected grandee of the French left Dec. 21 shook the political scene here. More and more, the French have become disgusted with what they view as the general impunity of politicians, in a country where egalitarian republican tradition often clashes with an equally strong bent by higher-ups to do as they please.

It was a French king, after all, who majestically declared, “I am the state.” Louis XIV presumably would have found nothing condemnable about the findings of a recent investigation by a French magazine. Reporters from Auto Journal trailed the limousines of government ministers and found that they often violated speed limits and didn’t bother to stop at red lights.

“What good does it do to be powerful if you have to obey the same laws as ordinary people?” a televised puppet show that lampoons France’s leaders, “Les Guignols de l’Info,” asked satirically this week.

In the past year, the country has been rocked by scandals. The president of the Constitutional Council, roughly the equivalent of the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, resigned under pressure and will go on trial this year for allegedly ripping off a state-run oil company for more than $9 million with the help of his mistress.

The elder Mitterrand’s successor as head of state, the neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac, has been mentioned in connection with no fewer than four financial scandals. Last month, France’s president went on television to deny all allegations and rumors and to insist, “I am not a man interested in money.”

On the left, a Socialist minister of finance resigned last year and two leading Socialist members of Parliament for Paris were placed under investigation in connection with an embezzlement scheme at a student health-insurance fund. The leader of the French Communist Party also was put on trial for an alleged kickback arrangement designed to fill party coffers.

But the jailing of the son of a former president arguably is the most hopeful sign yet that the law in France will be applied identically for all. From 1986 to 1992, Mitterrand served as advisor on African affairs to his father while the latter was president. He quickly became known as Papamadit--”Daddy told me”--for his frequent references to his father.

Investigating magistrates believe that in the early ‘90s the younger Mitterrand was a middleman in an illegal scheme by a French company to sell weapons from the former Soviet Union to Angola. A payment of $1.8 million was made into his Swiss bank account, a sum that Mitterrand says was for services rendered in connection with legitimate deals.

It is too early to draw lasting conclusions from the incarceration of Mitterrand, who has continually protested his innocence. He may go to trial--or be freed unconditionally on a technicality as early as next Friday.

His legal team has argued that the magistrate investigating Mitterrand predated a document that allowed for an expanded investigation. Under the French system, that would be a grave judicial error and could gut the charges against Mitterrand.