THE TELEGRAPH: President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla have provoked an outcry in France by spending the weekend in a £2,100-a-night beach-front villa in Mexico.
The couple spent the weekend at the El Tamarindo Beach and Golf Resort, located in a nature reserve on Mexico’s south-eastern Pacific Coast.
The villa cost £1,640 plus 17 per cent tax and 10 per cent service charge – making a total of just over £2,100 per night. However, the overall cost including security and staff is believed to have come to £45,000.
The visit was shrouded in secrecy and disclosed only after Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy inadvertently told friends at a charity event on Thursday afternoon that “I’m leaving tonight for Mexico” after her husband had burst in a little earlier.
The one-bedroom villa, owned by a multi-millionaire friend of Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, comes with private pool, outdoor Jacuzzi, butler, cook and maid. It is set in 2,000 acres of tropical rainforest. The Elysée said the presidential couple had sought to keep the private break secret “for security reasons”.
Unemployment in France passed two million in January and the country is expected to go into recession this quarter. “I find [the holiday] very shocking at a time of international crisis and rising unemployment,” Marielle de Sarnez, the vice-president of the centrist Modem party, said.
“At root, it reveals the glaring gap between the president and the people: he is not aware of the state of the country and what the French are going through. The least a leader can do is to assume a form of solidarity with the population. Why can’t he just take a normal break? He’s not obliged to go to a palace, even if someone else is paying.” >>> By Henry Samuel in Paris | Monday, March 9, 2009
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