June 29, 2002	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1423

PARIS: It was an incident evidently fraught with significance, but which few observers chanced to pick up on at last week’s summit of European heads of state at Seville: France’s newly- reelected President Jacques Chirac quickly got himself attributed the sobriquet of the “Roi-Soleil” — the Sun King — in evident homage to France’s Louis XIV.

Jacques Chirac, who turns 70 later this year, has never hidden his desire to concentrate in his office as many powers as possible, notably after the past five years where he saw himself forced to share power with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a man with whom he was often at loggerheads, especially on foreign policy issues.

Which is why observers at last week’s Seville summit of European leaders lost no time pointing out how Chirac represented France all by himself.

Contrary to past summits, where he had to share the platform with the prime minister, often resulting in the two men exchanging acerbic remarks and usually bearing a glum appearance, Chirac never looked better than he did at Seville.

Observers also noted how his Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin stayed perpetually in the background during the entire summit.

It’s for the same reason that Chirac placed another old friend, Madame Michele Alliot-Marie, in the very strategic post of defence minister. And this contrary to the advice of many of the Gaullist barons who found it scandalous that such an important ministry should go to a woman, albeit one well-known for her often authoritarian and autocratic behaviour.

Other signs of Chirac’s taking control of the fundamental controls of the French state are the decisions by many of his tried-and-true longtime aides to start thinking of retirement. Notably among these is Chirac’s “grey eminence,” Jerome Monod, his principal strategist and confidant.

Monod, the former chairman of Lyonnaise des Eaux, is 72 and has decided to retire from political life, especially now that he’s successfully engineered Chirac’s comfortable victory in recent elections.

Another major change in the Elysee Palace power apparatus is the rumoured departure of president’s daughter Claude Chirac, who has told friends that after many years as her father’s principal media adviser, she would like to move on to other pursuits.