Repentance for the sins of the past has come easy to French President Jacques Chirac. He will be remembered as the first French leader to recognise the country’s crimes against Jews in World War II and to commemorate formally its complicity in African slavery. President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, by contrast, does not believe in saying he is sorry. ‘‘I’m going to make the French proud of France again,’’ Sarkozy said in his speech after he was elected president last Sunday. ‘‘I am going to bring an end to repentance, which is a form of self-hatred, and the battle of memories that feeds hatred of others.’’But when Chirac pointedly asked Sarkozy to attend a ceremony remembering the victims of the French slave trade and celebrating the abolition of slavery, he could not refuse. Perhaps it was a last act of Chirac-ian vengeance. Chirac and Sarkozy do not like each other, even though Sarkozy served as a minister in Chirac’s cabinet and Chirac endorsed him — reluctantly — for president.The two men stood side by side in the Luxembourg Gardens on Thursday — their first time together since the election — for the ceremony. They walked into the park together, Chirac’s left hand resting a bit paternally on the right shoulder of the much-shorter Sarkozy. They made the rounds of the invitation-only crowd. Chirac inaugurated a sculpture representing the links of a broken chain. Some of the invitees greeted Sarkozy’s role with scepticism. ‘‘His presence was a surprise,’’ said Lilian Thuram, the Guadeloupe-born French soccer star, who criticised Sarkozy during the campaign. ‘‘He said he didn’t want repentance, and today he’s here. Civil society requires work on our past.’’ The far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who did not go to Thursday’s ceremony, criticised Sarkozy for attending, saying it reflected ‘‘continuity with Chirac-ian universal repentance’’ and not the ‘‘rupture’’ Sarkozy had promised. The issues of slavery and of France’s colonial past have been particularly delicate since an orgy of unrest in 2005, mainly among ethnic Arab and black African youths in the troubled suburbs. The country’s failure to integrate its minorities and to give them educational and employment opportunities will be one of the most important issues facing the Sarkozy presidency. Despite the many faults of his 12-year presidency, Chirac has been widely praised for trying to heal the wounds of history. Soon after he was elected in 1995, he acknowledged that France bore heavy responsibility for deporting tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II. He pushed successfully for the modification of a divisive law passed in 2005 that called for a positive portrayal of France’s colonial past in history textbooks. After the unrest in the suburbs, he set up a commemoration day for the end of the slave trade, and called the examination of the past ‘‘one of the keys to our national cohesion’’.Sarkozy promotes himself as a forward-looking leader with an eye on the future, for whom apologising for events of the past is a sign of weakness. ‘‘I want us to stop this systematic repentance,’’ he said in March. ‘‘The colonial system was unjust, but to say that all the French who were in Algeria were exploiters is false.’’ In April he was even more blunt, saying: ‘‘I am among those who think that France should not be ashamed of its history. It didn’t commit genocide. It didn’t invent the ‘final solution’. It invented human rights.’’Sarkozy is unrepentant about his personal decisions as well. After his election victory, his aides gave the impression he was off to a monastic retreat to contemplate the weight of the decisions awaiting him. Instead, he left in secret with his wife and son, as guests aboard the 190-foot yacht of the billionaire Vincent Bolloré, a personal friend, corporate raider and media tycoon. The trip was criticised by Sarkozy’s political opponents. Unlike other French leaders, Sarkozy flaunts his connections with the moneyed class and has criticised France’s penchant for hiding wealth and ambition. ‘‘It seems that success has become so shameful in France that a young person who wants to succeed must leave,’’ he wrote in his 2006 memoir, Testimony. ‘‘I don’t see the controversy,’’ Sarkozy said about his all-expense-paid vacation. ‘‘I have no intention of hiding. I have no intention of lying. I have no intention of apologising.’’
