Nicolas Sarkozy is about to monitor everything said about him on the Internet. One of the few innovations of his renovated government is the appointment of Nicolas Princen as chief spy in charge of surveillance of the Internet for President Sarkozy. Le Figaro reports that Princen is 24 years old, a graduate of Normal School and the HEC (Advanced School of Business). His mission: to be a sort of watchdog on the Internet, monitoring all the buzz about the president of the Republic, in order to alert the presidential advisers as quickly as possible and to prepare a response.

The French-speaking blogosphere is talking of little else. While some bloggers are concerned about the intrusion, others are taking it with humor. Blogger Luc Mandret writes:

Dear Nicolas Princen, I wish you great courage. And I would like to know if you really deserve your position. So I've decided to write this article. It would be super friendly of you to leave a little comment. [...] I would imagine you subscribe to the rss feed of Google's blogsearch. At least I hope so [...] Because I intend to continue writing things that are not very nice about your boss.

No sooner appointed, Nicolas Princen went to work... on his own image. As blogger Samuel Authueil notes: “Now he is known to all, it is in his interests to be irreproachable, because I feel that he will not be receiving many gifts. He will be besieged at the slightest mistake, and in the end, he could spend more time defending himself than conducting his original mission. I wish him much pleasure.”
 
Meanwhile Gaelle Mann has a long post on the changes being made by President Sarkozy following his “wake-up call” last Sunday when his UMP party suffered a major setback in the municipal elections. But in order to wake up, you have to first be asleep, and this was not Sarkozy’s case. He has the nature of a gambler who bets on winning elections and when he loses simply goes on betting. As his debt grows he may play the game more and more furiously, but he will not modify his behavior.
 
The ministers remain at their posts – at least Sarkozy is not punishing them for his own failings. Major ministerial changes are put off until 2009, after the French presidency of the EU is over (it begins in June 2008).

Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to persevere in his policy of reforms and to merely make a few marginal “adjustments”, mainly to appease the concerns of his party. [...] Using an Ipsos-Dell poll as a basis, a close associate of Sarkozy declared: “We took a beating, that is undeniable, but the vote reflects the impatience of the French people. It is fitting therefore that we accelerate the pace of reforms, especially regarding the modernization of the economy and pensions.”

  

Another innovation of the renovated government is the creation of a secretary of State for Family Matters. The job has been given to Nadine Morano, a close associate of the president known to favor euthanasia and gay marriage. French Catholics have been demanding a special minister for Family Matters, but it is certain they did not want Mme Morano. This is typical Sarkozy: he gives you what you ask for, his way.

The appointment of an advocate of euthanasia and gay marriage is a clear sign of the contempt in which Sarkozy holds traditional family life, and a kick in the teeth to his Christian constituents. Moreover Morano’s office is under the supervision of Minister of Labor Xavier Bertrand, who has admitted to being a Mason, thus adding an even greater dimension of anti-Christian potential to her appointment.

Le Conservateur’s succinct reaction says it very well:

It is an insult. Out of intellectual honesty it would have been in good taste to appoint her secretary of State on “parodies of the family” or on its “disintegration.”

Bernard Antony also responds to this new evidence of Sarkozy's left-wing preferences:

The appointment of Nadine Morano unfortunately illustrates once again how much the conservative rhetoric of Nicolas Sarkozy is intended to dissimulate the concrete left-wing drift of his actions.

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