African press review 22 March 2018

France takes to the streets in largest protests against President Macron's reform agenda.

We begin with the reactions of the commentators to a thunderbolt that ripped through the French political skies on Wednesday.

The decision by judges looking into France's most explosive political scandal to formerly charge former French president Nicolas Sarkozy with corruption and illegal campaign financing over allegations that the late Libyan dictator Moamer Gadhafi helped fund his 2007 election campaign.

Le Parisien reports that the judges decided they had enough evidence to charge the 63-year-old with corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of Libyan public funds, after five years of investigation and two days of questioning.

According to the paper, Sarkozy, who denies the charges, is already facing the risk of being indicted in two other case.

Libération recalls that the scandal broke out in 2012, when the investigative website Mediapart published a secret memo signed by Libya's intelligence chief Abdallah Senoussi about Tripoli's release of 50 million euros for Nicolas Sarkozy's Presidential campaign.

While Sarkozy dismissed the allegations, Libé says the intermediary in the deal Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine made a bombshell revelation affirming six years later that he personally transported a cash payment of 5 million euros from Tripoli to Paris between 2006 and 2007, which he handed to Claude Guéant, Sarkozy's chief of staff and then to Sarkozy himself who at the time was minister in charge of the interior.

Le Figaro observes that angry reactions by the former President's outraged friends may get the investigative judge Serge Tournaire to lose his serenity as the Sarkozy probe reaches decision point.

The paper says former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, unleashed the first salvo about the staging of a spectacle which justice does not need and which is harmful to the Republic while the President of the Paris region Valerie Pecresse expressed deep suspicions for so-called public and mediatized trials.

Le Figaro also runs excerpts from the well-scripted comments by the Republican Party’s Vice President Virginie Calmels in which she calls on the judge to respect Sarkozy's status as a former President of the Republic.

We are not dealing with someone who can run away, Madame Calmels is quoted as saying, adding that more several other cases filed against Nicolas Sarkozy were thrown out for lack of evidence.

But as La Montagne/Centre France points out, the scandal comes at a terrible time for the conservative Republican party which is trying to undertake a difficult reconstruction under a very divisive leader Laurent Wauquiez after losing the 2017 Presidential election they were set to win by a landslide.

For its part, Le Journal de la Haute-Marne appeals to the Conservative party's attack dogs to let justice take its course and stop their Franco-French reasoning. The paper warns that the charges filed against ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy have done great damage to France's image across the world.

There is also a flurry of comments about what looks like a 'black' Thursday in France as thousands of train drivers, teachers and air traffic controllers go on strike in a major day of protest against French President Emmanuel Macron's reform drive.

Libération says it expects something of a traditional strike action in the public service which could put the government in difficulty. According to Le Figaro the government's drive to reform the public SNCF railway company and the civil service puts it against the Mount Everest of French conservatism and the last regiment of hardline unionism in France.

For its part, Le Parisien, says it is hard to imagine that the government can just back down on such sectorial issues after standing firm with the ordinances that saw through the landmark reform of the labour code.

Someone needs to convince the French people that it is the absence of reform which has killed the public service argues Les Echos. This, in contrast with l'Humanité happy to see the so-called real Left open real perspectives capable of getting workers to turn their back to the liberal job-crushing machine.

Marc Zuckerberg apology

Le Monde looks at the vow by Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg to "step up" and fix problems at the social network giant, as it fights a snowballing scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users.

According to the paper, this is the second time Zuckerberg has pledged to fix the social medium and win back the confidence of its users since the start of the year.

For Le Monde, this new scandal exposes the difficulty Facebook faces in regulating itself.  It is high time says the publication for public authorities to take over the mission of social media regulation so as to protect private and personal data which has imprudently been abandoned at the mercy of so many greedy interests.