French press review 06 March 2014

Patrick Buisson, former presidential advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy, dominates this morning's front pages.

Libération and Le Monde both give the front-page honours to Buisson. He is in the news because he made a habit of recording supposedly controversial conversations and meetings at the Elysée presidential palace.

Like a low-budget version of James Bond, Buisson would attend meetings of the Sarkozy inner circle with a dictaphone running in his jacket pocket.

Libé says the details in some of the recordings may well turn out to be a dangerous boomerang for Sarkozy but says this is just one further illustration of the nastiness that marked political high places under the Sarkozy regime. No one trusted anyone else, and you were well advised to have a record of what was really being said, and by who.

Libé says the recordings reveal an excercise of power at the summit of the French republic which is a sickening mixture of vulgarity, cynicism and distrust.

Buisson has been criticised across the political spectrum and his initiative may lead him to certain legal complications: depending on what is actually on the tapes (apart from Sarkozy sending his secretary out for five coffees and a sticky bun for Claude Guéant). Buisson could be done for breaching the regulations surrounding national defence or for infringing the privacy of third parties or for violating judicial secrecy.

Right-wing Le Figaro says that the European Commission in Brussels has once again warned the French government that the state of state finances is just not up to scratch.

The level of indebtedness, the gap between income and spending and the ever-diminishing capacity of French business to compete in the global market are among the commission's main worries. France is now in the "special supervision" category normally reserved for Greeks and Irishmen.

A national humiliation, whimpers Le Figaro.

On inside pages, Libération looks at the way the power structure of the Hosni Mubarak era is slowly retaking control of post-revolutionary Egypt. Current Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb and two of the 11 new ministers are former Mubarak stalwarts. Perhaps more significantly, the wise money is on the current defence minister and army chief, Abdel Fatha el-Sissi, for the upcoming presidential race.

One commentator interviewed by Libé says it's not surprising to see serious career politicians reemerging from the cracks after the dark days of the revolution. But this, says the same analyst, is an expression of individual ambition not a sign that the regime is about to stage a sudden comeback.

Libération also reports that the Japanese high-speed train Shinkasen is now equipped with footbaths so that travellers can profit from the journey by getting their hooves honed up while watching the countryside flash past. They already have the option of a beauty salon and the traditional food service.

You might be inclined to wonder if the authorities didn't have some special kind of health consideration in mind when they installed the special compartment with the two three-metre long baths on the service linking Shinjo and Fukushima.

Japanese high-speed trains are renowned for being clean, on-time and very expensive. And you won't meet anyone with radioactive or otherwise offensive feet on the line from Fukushima to Shinjo.