LONDON -- Is corruption a Third World disorder? Not if the French are any guide.
"France is not a banana republic," insisted former Prime Minister Raymond Barre last year, as the financial scandals surrounding President Jacques Chirac grew ever more damning. "You must not believe that all French politics or that all French politicians are corrupt." But most French people believe exactly that.
Judge Eric Halphen, who spent seven years investigating the French president's alleged crimes, only to have France's highest court rule last October that "the president of the republic cannot be questioned as a witness . . . or charged with any infraction," has come to the same conclusion.