Statue of Carla Bruni as a worker angers France

A French mayor’s plan to erect a statue of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s former supermodel wife Carla Bruni in worker’s attire has angered the opposition and embarrassed the first lady.

Jacques Martin, mayor of Nogent-sur-Marne, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, and a member of Sarkozy’s UMP party, commissioned the statue to honour the mostly Italian immigrant women who used to work at a feather factory in the town.

But when French daily Le Parisien revealed the plan for the statue more than two metres tall, at a cost of over €80,000, the opposition and even the first lady’s friends were up in arms.

A source close to Bruni said she agreed to model for sculptor Elisabeth Cibot as she admires her work, but that “it was never suggested that her name would appear”.

Modelling “is her former job, she no longer does it commercially, but she’s often asked to do it, and she often agrees, and always without being paid”.

But the swiftly gathering scandal “is using something that has nothing to do with politics to political ends”, one of her friends said, requesting anonymity.

William Geib of the Socialist opposition said the idea of dressing up a likeness of the Italian heiress and pop singer as a worker was “grotesque”.

“It’s an insult to the Italian feather workers, to give them the face of an extremely rich person. I have nothing against Carla Bruni-Sarkozy but she does not represent the workers’ world.”

Michel Gilles, a local member of the right-wing opposition, slammed what he said was a “political coup” ahead of the April-May two-round presidential election, which opinion polls say Sarkozy is likely to lose.

Martin said he voted in favour of the statue at a council meeting last year.

“But it was never mentioned that it would have Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s features,” Gilles said.