{{A year after he declared he would leave politics for good, France\u2019s Nicolas Sarkozy is back in the spotlight.}}<\/p>\n
The combative ex-president attended a meeting of his troubled UMP party Monday where he was welcomed like a star. It could mark his first step toward candidacy in the next presidential election in 2017.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first time the 58-year-old Sarkozy has made a political appearance since he lost the presidency to Socialist Francois Hollande in May 2012 after just one term in office. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s also the first time Sarkozy has attended a UMP party meeting since 2007, when he was elected president. Some 800 UMP politicians were invited to the event, closed to the media.<\/p>\n
Last year, Sarkozy said that if voted out of office, he would \u201ccompletely change my life. You won\u2019t hear from me.\u201d He later explained he aspired to a new life with his wife, singer and former model Carla Bruni, and their now-18-month-old daughter Giulia.<\/p>\n
But much has changed since then. Sarkozy appears to be rejoining the political fray because of the embarrassing state his old party finds itself in.<\/p>\n
The party he helped found, France\u2019s center-right Union for a Popular Movement, faced a farcical election for a new leader last year that left it badly divided.<\/p>\n
And now it\u2019s on the edge of bankruptcy, swamped with debts after the Constitutional Court last week ruled that he exceeded the legal funding limit during the 2012 presidential race.<\/p>\n
That decision prevents the UMP from being reimbursed half its campaign expenses by the state. That means Sarkozy\u2019s party is left with an 11 million euro ($14 million) bill, pushing its overall debt to more than 50 million euros.<\/p>\n
{France24}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A year after he declared he would leave politics for good, France\u2019s Nicolas Sarkozy is back in the spotlight.}} The combative ex-president attended a meeting of his troubled UMP party Monday where he was welcomed like a star. It could mark his first step toward candidacy in the next presidential election in 2017. It\u2019s the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}