Who is Nicolas Sarkozy?

Nicolas Sarkozy is the newly-elected president of France, the leader of the French conservative party known as UMP, and the former Minister of the Interior. Sarkozy is the son of Hungarian immigrants who fled their homeland in 1944, when Russia forcefully entered the country. Sarkozy's father, upon fleeing the country, entered the French army, where he served before becoming a French citizen and moving to Marseille in 1948. In 1949, Sarkozy's father remarried to a wealthy heiress named Andree Mallah, Sarkozy's mother. As a result of his new mother's immense family wealth, Sarkozy grew up in a financially-healthy upbringing. Nicolas Sarkozy attended a private Catholic school known as Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, in which he was reportedly a mediocre student at best. Sarkozy later graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from the French university, Universite Paris X Nanterre. Upon graduating, Sarkozy soon became a lawyer specializing in French business law.

Sarkozy entered the political arena when he was only 22 years old, when he became a city council member of Neuilly-sur-Seine, an upper-class suburb of Paris, eventually he became mayor of the suburb. In 1993, Nicolas Sarkozy gained national prominence when he successfully negotiated the release of children hostages in Neuilly. Soon after, from 1993-1995, he was the Minister of the Budget for the French government and he was also a cabinet member for the French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. Former French president Jacques Chirac personally mentored Sarkozy, until Sarkozy supposedly betrayed him and supported competing presidential candidate, Balladur. Jacques Chirac eventually won the election, and feeling betrayed, dismissed him as Minister of the Budget. In 1999, Nicolas Sarkozy became the leader of the Neo-Gaullist party, which yielded a mere 12.7 percent of the election. Due to his lackluster leadership ability, Sarkozy was dismissed as leader of the party.

In 2002, Jacques Chirac appointed Sarkozy as the Minister of the Interior, even though the two were supposedly "feuding". Later, in March 2004, Sarkozy became the Finance Minister. After party elections in November 2004, Sarkozy became the new leader of the UMP party while achieving eighty-five percent of the vote. In March 2005, Sarkozy was re-elected to the French National Assembly, and eventually, in June of 2005, Sarkozy was reappointed as the Minister of the Interior, where he remained until his presidency. As a politician, Nicolas Sarkozy is widely-considered to be the most conservative politician in all of France, largely due to his conservative policy legislation.