It's been quite the week for politicians unretiring themselves.

DISGRACED JUPPÉ TO RETURN TO POLITICS

PARIS August 30, 2006 (Guardian) - France's disgraced former prime minister Alain Juppé yesterday announced his return to politics, two years after he was convicted of corruption in a party funding scandal.

Mr Juppé, 61, was found guilty in 2004 of being part of a corrupt scheme in the 1980s to put workers for Jacques Chirac's neo-Gaullist RPR party on the payroll of Paris town hall. He has spent a year in self-imposed exile teaching at a university in Quebec.

But the protege whom President Chirac called "the most brilliant man of his generation" and groomed for the presidency said he would return to his old powerbase at Bordeaux town hall, where he was mayor for nine years until his conviction.

Our earlier post is worth a revisit:

M. Juppé was one of 27 people on trial for corruption during Jack's mayoral tenure, all but six of whom were convicted. His original sentence was a suspended 18-month prison sentence, which automatically barred him from office for 10 years. Prior to his conviction, M. Juppé, the wounded drama queen, threatened that if barred from public office, he would end his political career. Would a clutch of nobody magistrates dare deny France the services of Alain Juppé?

Astonished by his conviction on January 30, 2K4 barring him from public office, M. Juppé had this to say on February 3:

"I joined politics because I wanted to serve my country, to serve ideas, to serve my fellow citizens. And that is what I try to do... Does all that deserve to be wiped out at the stroke of as pen, in general disgrace? I do not think I deserve it. I think it is too much," he said.

Well, apparently too much to make good his original threat. So M. Juppé delayed his leaving politics, which he now made contingent on the conviction being upheld on appeal.

He admitted that he was guilty of the charges against him - that he organised the payment of party officials out of Paris municipal funds during the time when Chirac was mayor of Paris - and said that if the appeal court reconvicted him he would leave politics for good.

M. Juppé, prior to his conviction, admitted no guilt and fought the charges.

At his trial in January Mr Juppé angered the judges by insisting, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and confessions, that he had not been aware of the scam in which Paris town hall and private companies paid the salaries of up to 175 activists from the RPR party, the predecessor of the UMP.

On December 1, 2k4, an appeals court upheld M. Juppé's conviction but reduced his sentence. However, the failed appeal forced M. Juppé to relinquish his last elected post, mayor of Bordeaux.

Thank goodness for the finality of the law putting M. Juppé's on-again-off-again conscience to rest.

This week all 50 elected members in the centre-right grouping that dominates Bordeaux council announced their mass resignation to allow early elections in October in which Mr Juppé will run for mayor. They said his return was "necessary" for the future of the port city in south-west France.

One socialist party member of Bordeaux council said forcing early elections to pave the way for Mr Juppé's return was "a denial of the republican spirit".

"I'm approaching this campaign with humility, nothing is won yet," Mr Juppé told a press conference yesterday, saying he had a "big task" explaining himself to the electorate.

Humility is such an endearing quality in a felon.

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