French president, wife may be seeking divorce

PARIS – The president’s wife has gone missing. And the question of the day in France on Friday was: Has she gone for good?

Cecilia Sarkozy didn’t vote for her husband, Nicolas, in May; she didn’t accompany him to lunch with the Bushes in Maine last summer; and the woman at Sarkozy’s side at a celebratory dinner after France’s victory in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup a week ago? Not his wife, but one of her closest friends.

The chic former model, in fact, has done nothing official since Bastille Day in July. And this weekend she is reportedly at a $1,000-night-spa in Geneva while he’s in Paris rooting for France in the rugby semifinals.

On Friday, a journalist for the newspaper L’Est Republican, citing sources close to the presidential palace, reported that the couple were definitely getting divorced – something the rest of the media have hinted but not quite said for weeks.

“Where has Cecilia Gone?” Le Parisien asked last week.

The French are a tolerant people. Their presidents have had mistresses and even fathered illegitimate children, and life went on. But divorce?

Christine Clerc, a French “first marriage” expert and author, said the French are ready to accept an Elysee Palace divorce. “In fact, it’s the first time we can see it like this – with our very own eyes,” he said Friday. “Before, the private lives of presidents were all hidden and many things were forbidden to be even discussed. Now we say, ‘The first lady is gone.’ “

About the only the person who didn’t seem to be letting go was the president himself. Normally, first ladies fill in for presidents, but when this 49-year-old first lady backed out of an appearance on a popular television show Sunday, it was the 52-year-old president who turned up, and somehow brought the conversation around to his “fantastic wife.”

“He seemed to be a husband trying to return his wife,” Clerc said. “It was rather amusing and also tragic.”

The Sarkozys have had a less-than-placid relationship.

Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz was married and had two small children when she fell for Nicolas Sarkozy, then-mayor of a rich Paris suburb. He was also married with two children, a few inches shorter than she and passionate about politics. It took five years of divorce wrangling before they were able to marry in 1989.

But in 2005, she ran away with another man to New York for eight months. While she was gone, he took up with another woman only to dump the girlfriend in order to lure Cecilia back.

“She saw him as completely absorbed by politics, unbearable to live with,” Clerc said, “and I think she wanted more.”

She rarely campaigned for him, appeared unsmiling at his inauguration and wore Prada instead of the usual French designer.

She would be her own first lady, was the message, and she has ignored protocol at every turn.