NEWS.COM.AU: FRENCH Justice Minister Rachida Dati, one of the stars of President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet, has announced she is pregnant - but won't say who the father is.
The divorced daughter of North African immigrants, 42-year-old Dati has become the public face of President Sarkozy's drive to add some much-needed diversity to French politics.
Since taking office last year, she has appeared almost as often in the glossy magazines as the serious political press, prompting criticism that she is seeking celebrity status rather than concentrating on her job.
On Wednesday, she confirmed rumours that she was pregnant after the weekly magazine VSD splashed her on the front page saying she was expecting a child.
Being a single mother carries no social stigma in modern France and a census released earlier this year showed that for the first time in 2006 more children were born out of wedlock here than to married couples.
"I want to remain prudent, because it isn't yet safe. I'm still in the danger zone," the website of Le Monde daily quoted Ms Dati as saying, referring to the risk of a possible miscarriage.
"I am 42 years old and have always said that (having a child) was fundamental for me," she said. "If it goes ahead, I will be happy and have the feeling I've looped the loop."
Ms Dati is photographed alone when she goes out for evening parties.
"My private life is complicated and I'm keeping it off-limits to the press. I won't say anything about it," she told reporters when asked about the father. MP Pregnant – But Won’t Name the Daddy >>> By Crispian Balmer in Paris | September 3, 2008
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE:
Aznar dément être le père de l'enfant de Rachida Dati: L'ancien chef du gouvernement espagnol est en colère: il évoque même de possibles suites judiciaires >>> Agences | 4.9.2008
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH:
Rachida Dati: French Justice Minister Who Refuses to Name the Father of Her Unborn Child: The justice minister refuses to name the man by whom she is pregnant, but the affair makes it harder to defend France's custom that politicians' private lives are private, writes William Langley.
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Rachida was born in Chalon-sur-Saône, the second of 11 children of a Moroccan father and Algerian mother.
Staunchly secular, she has described herself as "a French woman of French origin", and her prickly relationship with the country's large Muslim population has not been improved by news of her pregnancy.
"It is difficult for Rachida," says Hoffenberg, "because she has been held up as a role model for Muslim girls, and now we have Muslims denouncing her. Most people in France aren't shocked by an unmarried minister getting pregnant. The only real protests have come from her own community, and that must be hard for her."
Dati's wariness of religious dogma is founded on personal experience. In her early twenties, during a visit to the Maghreb, she married a young Algerian – "to please my family" as she put it in a memoir last year.
Arriving back in France, she discovered that not only did she have nothing in common with her husband, she had, effectively, signed the ownership of her life over to him. It took her four years to gain an annulment, by which time she was rising fast as an accountant and business consultant. >>> By William Langley | September 6, 2008
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