The 23-year-old son of Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, announced last night that he would no longer seek election as the head of the management committee of the capital's business district, La Défense, as any "victory" might be "stained with suspicion" of nepotism.
Jean Sarkozy said that to end a vitriolic political row that risked doing significant damage to his father, he would stand for election today solely as an administrator on the management committee of Epad, as the £100m a year public agency is known. He said he would not be a candidate for the presidency when elections for the post are held in December.
Interviewed live on TV news, he said that being a politician involved listening to voters and "putting oneself in their place". His decision had not been straightforward, he added, but he took responsibility for it.
The news that the second-year law student was hoping to replace Epad's outgoing president, one of his father's closest political associates, brought a furious reaction when it broke two weeks ago.
Though the most strident criticism came from the left, or from centrist politicians such as François Bayrou, who called it an "enormous abuse of power" and compared the country's president to Louis XIV, Jean Sarkozy's candidature also made senior politicians within the conservative majority uneasy.
Government figures claimed repeatedly that there was no question of a "nomination", but as the key votes on the appointment are cast by state appointees on Epad's management committee, any election would have been heavily loaded in favour of the president's son and his effectively anointed political heir.
Political opponents had claimed that President Sarkozy was again reneging on his oft-repeated promise to make France more meritocratic, and to reward those who "got up early" to go to work. In polls last week, 64% of those questioned opposed election to Epad's presidency of the younger Sarkozy – who is already a councillor in the wealthy Hauts-de-Seine department.
Recent polls have shown unemployment, particularly among the young, to be a major concern for voters. Demonstrators had gathered at La Défense yesterday waving bananas as a symbol of the "banana republic" they claimed the president had turned France into.
In a polished TV performance, Jean Sarkozy said he had "learned a lot" from what he described as a "test", rather than a "check". Saying he was not bitter, he spoke however of a campaign of manipulation and disinformation.
Asked if the decision to renounce his candidature was his own, Sarkozy answered: "Did I speak about this with the president of the republic? No. Did I speak about it with my father? Yes. As any son would do."
The deputy spokesman for the majority conservative UMP party (Union for a Popular Movement), Dominique Paillé, saluted his "courage and abnegation", as well as his "sense of the general interest, his stature and his talent". Brice Hortefeux, the minister of the interior and Jean's godfather, criticised "the lies, the distrust, the arrogance, the stupidity" of the polemic of recent days.
Patrick Jarry, the Communist mayor of the city of Nanterre, which borders La Défense, commented: "This candidacy had no legitimacy whatsoever and was felt widely as a real provocation. It created a real shock among French youth."