Clamour grows to sack 'boy sex' French minister

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand is facing calls for his sacking over a growing scandal involving an old admission that he had paid for sex with boys.

Both far-right and left politicians have joined in a campaign criticising Mr Mitterrand and now risks throwing the government into a crisis.

The far-right National Front party has conceded that it went looking for dirt about Mr Mitterrand after his impassioned defence last week of film director Roman Polanski. The director was arrested in Switzerland on US charges connected with his having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 in Los Angeles.

Mr Mitterrand’s 2005 book, “La mauvaise vie” or “The Bad Life,” describes painful periods in his childhood as well as his homosexuality. One passage describes his “bad habit of paying for boys” in Thailand. The minister said yesterday that he is not a paedophile and uses the term “boys” loosely.

Mr Mitterrand, whose book raised no more than literary eyebrows when published four years ago, is to go on national television to explain himself.

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party is squirming but so far holding firm in defence of Mr Mitterrand, a nephew of former Socialist President Francois Mr Mitterrand who is widely known to the French for his eloquent TV profiles of the famous. He entered the government in June as part of Mr Sarkozy’s policy of reaching out to the left.

Socialist Arnaud Montebourg claimed that Mr Mitterrand “deliberately acted in violation of national and international laws” and appealed to Mr Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon to fire him.

“It is impossible that a minister representing France can encourage violation of his own international commitments to fight sexual tourism,” he said.

The scandal started when National Front leader Marine Le Pen read excerpts of Mr Mitterrand’s book on French television and demanded his resignation. The Socialists then jumped on the bandwagon.

“To be dragged through the mud by the (National Front) is an honour,” Mr Mitterrand said.

No one has come forth with an outright defence of the minister. However, the government stood firm in a bid to hold off the attack.

A top aide to Mr Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, stressed that the book was written four years ago with no complaint from politicians on left or right.

“He wrote a book .... Was he taken before a court? Was he the object of a law suit?” he said. Calling it a “pathetic controversy,” he asked why “such radical consequences” should be in the offing.

The Green Party was among left forces that distanced itself from the controversy, with national secretary Cecile Duflot warning against “an amalgam between paedophilia and homosexuality.”

“The very idea that anyone wants to dig into the private past of public officials for political ends is profoundly shocking,” said the government spokesman, Luc Chatel.

Indeed, France has a long-standing tradition of privacy surrounding the sexual lives of its politicians.

The culture minister’s uncle, President Mr Mitterrand, was a perfect example of the hands-off policy accorded him by the French media and other politicians, many aware for years of his daughter born out of wedlock – and whom he introduced to the nation before dying of cancer.