Sarkule

The latest nickname for French president Nicolas Sarkozy – aportmanteau of Sarkozy and recule, the French for retreat. (The word mimics the phrase ça recule: “it’s going backwards.”)

“It’s not longer Sarko, it’s Sarkule” declared the French satirical paper Le Canard Enchaîné, after Sarkozy announced a one-year delay to education reforms in a bid to avoid sparking riots similar to those seen in Greece in December 2008.

According to Henry Samuel in The Telegraph, Sarkozy was highly critical of former president Jacques Chirac’s propensity for U-turns:

During his 12-year tenure, Chirac turned political retreat into an art form, announcing grand plans and calling them off when the going got tough. French political commentators have even come up with a reflexive verb to sum up the affliction: “se chiraquiser.”

Sarkozy promised a “clean break” with all that and to push through reforms whatever it took. … And yet, he must have performed a double take over coffee this morning while reading the pro-government newspaper Le Figaro, which posed the question: “Is Nicolas Sarkozy in the process of turning into Chirac?”

(In January 2008, The Times of London’s man in Paris, Charles Bremner,enumerated some of Sarkozy’s many epithets: Super-Sarko, Speedy Sarko, L’Hyperprésident, L’Omniprésident, Le Petit Nicolas, Le Lapin Duracell, Le Président Bling Bling, and Le Roi Sarko I.)