IT IS an unwritten rule of French politics that presidents must distance themselves from the Paris elite.
It is odd, then, that four of this year’s presidential aspirants graduated from the same elite training college, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA): Mr Hollande, Dominique de Villepin on the independent centre-right and two fringe candidates. Stranger still, Mr Hollande and Mr de Villepin are both from the class of 1980, known as the promotion Voltaire—as is Ségolène Royal, Mr Hollande’s ex-partner and the Socialists’ defeated candidate in 2007. (The three are circled in the picture, above.)
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