AFP/Paris

French President Francois Hollande’s decision to order ministers to reveal their personal wealth looked in danger of backfiring yesterday as critics rounded on what one newspaper dismissed as a “Republican striptease”.
Editorialists and lawmakers argued that the move, hastily launched after former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac was exposed as a serial liar who hid 600,000 euros ($790,000) in a foreign bank account, would do nothing to combat dishonesty amongst France’s political class.
And several prominent members of Hollande’s own Socialist party warned they would join the centre-right opposition in opposing the extension of the transparency principle to all lawmakers.
This raises the spectre of a deeply divisive debate when a bill to that effect goes before parliament later this month, just as Hollande seeks to relaunch his deeply unpopular government in the wake of the Cahuzac scandal.
The disclosure exercise revealed that eight of the 38 ministers in Hollande’s cabinet are euro millionaires and their average net wealth is around 900,000 euros, in line with the richest 10% of French society.
The revelation caused few waves, however, with most reports concluding that the Socialist ministers’ assets statements contained few surprises.
But Le Figaro argued that Hollande had made life difficult for his ministers, particularly when they try to defend the belt-tightening policies that are having a painful impact on many voters.
“With his own comfortable wealth of 1.5mn euros, will the Prime Minister Prime Jean-Marc Ayrault not find himself in difficulty trying to defend austerity policies?” the right-wing newspaper asked.
Left-wing daily Liberation depicted Hollande’s initiative as “The end of a taboo” but criticised an “impulsive, ineffective” measure which it said would do nothing to prevent a repeat of the Cahuzac scandal.
Tabloid daily Le Parisien was more positive, saying that it may be “a chance for France to enter fully into the club of modern democracies”.
Even some of the ministers involved made no secret of their extreme discomfort at being forced to air their financial secrets in public.
“I felt like I’d been forced to undress before going out into the street,” confessed Helene Conway-Mouret, the minister with responsibility for French citizens based overseas.
Claude Bartolone, the Socialist speaker of the National Assembly, said the initiative was a PR stunt.
“It’s giving in to a populist syndrome to which I’m opposed,” he said. “Paparazzi democracy is not my thing. We are going to have a kind of hit parade of the rich, the poor, those who made it, those who didn’t.”