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Comment by mendicantB | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how anyone can take this douche seriously after the leaks.

In other news, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was recorded talking with his lawyer on burner phones bought under a fake name, discussing about a mole they have who keeps them illegally informed of the investigations currently going on (such as having had Gaddafi fund his political campaign). The tape was leaked to the press. In spite of this, he is still the favourite would-be candidate for the presidential elections of the French conservative party.

See also Berlusconi. The wonderful thing about the combination of democracy and transparency is that the majority of the population gets exactly the leaders they deserve.

I think, I like all your comments hehe :-)

More worrying is not the BS they (Sarkozy and Berlusconi) have done, but who is the arbiter of "truth" who makes the recordings and the leaks.

Perhaps some foreign power or some large interest group, that seeks to replace them with some equally scum candidates, but who will be more willing to cater to them, and who will not have leaks on him...

Leaks are not providing transparency, but the illusion of it. You only have transparency if you either have leaks for everybody and all their ill actions (which you don't have a way to check if is the case) or if you also know who makes the leaks and why.

You have a point here. The recordings in France were made by the police as part of the investigation, as for the leaks, it's not clear. Other tapes, this time recorded by a former advisor, were leaked to right-wing newspapers and websites, possibly as a symptom of internal struggle. The police recordings being leaked may be due to the work of the Mediapart website, leaked by the current government before the upcoming elections, leaked by left-wing sympathizers in the police/justice, leaked by right-wing opponents of Sarkozy... your choice. I doubt any foreign state plays a role there.

The situation in Turkey is much more worrying though. That's different competing conspiracies.

> I'm not sure how anyone can take this douche seriously after the leaks.

Hard to believe isn't it? He's expected to get 20 to 30% of the votes during next week's regional elections.

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