He posed in spectacular grandeur as the neo-imperial Liberator of Libya - only a few years after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi helped finance his 2007 election campaign with a cool US$65 million.
Profiting from a mysterious alliance between the Holy Ghost and an African chambermaid in New York, he got rid of the unstoppable challenger to his re-election, former International Monetary Fund director general and international sex fiend, Dominique Strauss-Khan.
And still, this Sunday, French voters - in a Facebook-style remix of the fall of the Bastille - are bound to yell "Off with his head".
Why? Hubris. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, aka neo-Napoleonic King Sarko, former king of bling bling, "Chouchou" to [Italian] First Lady Carla Bruni, may be his own worst enemy. [1]
A Ritzy lifestyleBashir Saleh is Gaddafi's former chief of staff and former president of the Libyan sovereign wealth fund. He was the go-to guy when the regime decided to finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
King Sarko, predictably, denied everything and said he would sue the French website, Mediapart, that revealed what many already knew. Yet this Thursday, former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi confirmed it all over again. And that's exactly what Gaddafi's son and former darling of the London School of Economics, Saif al-Islam, had said in March 2011: "Sarkozy must give back the money he accepted from Libya to finance his presidential campaign."
Comment: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The Wally-World of Wickedness!