Enlarge imageBy Jon Boyle
PARIS (Reuters) - Given 48 hours to save his job, French Finance Minister Herve Gaymard has suffered a fresh blow with a report that he owned five homes and paid a wealth tax while living in a vast luxury flat at state expense.
The daily Liberation said Gaymard owned two houses and two flats in the provinces as well as a large flat in central Paris, at a time when the cost-cutting state was paying 14,000 euros (7,331 pounds) a month to house him, his wife and their eight children.
"There is nothing more derisory than a manhunt. But there is also nothing more derisory than a minister lying for personal reasons and not for reasons of state," the paper’s Jean-Michel Thenard wrote in an editorial on Friday.
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Gaymard, 44, has denied any wrongdoing and quit the 600 sq metre split-level flat in a chic Paris district at the centre of the initial controversy when the storm erupted a week ago.
But his flip-flop accounts over the status of his property portfolio, and his personal finances, have only stoked resignation calls.
Adding to the sense of gloom, official unemployment -- voters’ top concern -- hit a five-year high in France at 10 percent and business confidence unexpectedly dipped.
Liberation’s report, confirmed to local media by Gaymard’s private office, only aggravated a crisis already heightened by Gaymard’s apparent suggestion in a glossy magazine interview on Thursday that he was too poor to be a home owner.
An aide to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told Reuters on Thursday that the cabinet chief has given Gaymard until the end of the week to explain his way out of the housing scandal that has rocked the government.
The scandal has been hugely damaging to the conservative government beset by a sluggish economy, high unemployment, street protests over its economic reforms and a tough battle to convince voters to approve the EU constitution in a referendum.
Gaymard is to appear on national television late on Friday in an attempt to set the record straight, but with opponents and commentators openly calling him a liar he faced an uphill task.
"It’s clear that Herve Gaymard’s future hangs by a thread," commentator Alexis Brezet wrote in the conservative Le Figaro daily. "But this stay of execution appears above all designed to give him time to accept what is, in the eyes of many, now inevitable."
SYMBOL OF INEQUALITY
When President Jacques Chirac promoted his farms minister to the finance ministry just three months ago, Gaymard appeared the perfect replacement for the outgoing Nicolas Sarkozy, who quit to take the helm at the ruling UMP party.
Even though he has broken no laws, Gaymard’s claim to be as "clean as a new penny" has cut little ice with the public and his disastrous public relations skills have left his reputation in tatters.
In a country whose state motto is "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity", Gaymard had become a symbol undermining the public’s faith in politics just as the key vote on the EU constitution loomed, commentator Alain Duhamel told RTL radio.
"For the simple reason that the number one political obsession with public opinion is the feeling of inequality and social injustice," Duhamel said.
"And this at a crucial time when it’s being asked if the demonstrations and strikes are going to spread, we have school kids in the street protesting, and we are facing an important vote with the referendum, he is weakening the government.
"It’s up to Chirac...but if the first opinion polls show there is a real impact, if the demonstrations grow and the (referendum) ’yes’ vote falls in opinion polls, he will sacrifice him."
