Ethnic troubles

Eighteen months on,however,and Mr Sarkozy is finding that his feisty minority ministers are giving him more than a spot of trouble. The biggest headache has been Ms Datiand not because,at the age of 43,she has just given birth to a baby girl whose mystery father she declines to identify. The French,to their credit,consider such affairs to be a private matter,and the media have devoted little space to the birth. Rather,it is the high-handed way in which Ms Dati has carried out her job,combined with her taste for the high life.

Much of the substance of Ms Datis reforms of the judicial system makes sense. This week plans were unveiled to abolish Frances controversial investigating magistrates,who have huge powers both to investigate suspects and to send them for trial,and whose solitary role has been blamed for some recent miscarriages of justice. Other reforms include the geographical reorganisation of the courts,whose distribution has not changed in nearly 50 years despite big population shifts,and the introduction of minimum sentences for repeat offenders.

Yet Ms Datis clumsy dealings early in her tenure with protesting magistrates and judges have succeeded only in rallying them against her,making her later efforts at reform a lot harder. An exasperated Mr Sarkozy has had to take matters into his own hands,at one point holding talks with a magistrates union without her. Even though she rushed back to work this week after a mere five days maternity leave,it was he who announced the scrapping of investigating magistrates. Ms Datis designer tastesshe once posed for the cover of Paris-Match in a pink leopard-print Dior evening dressand imperious manner have not won her friends. In her short time in office,two directors of her cabinet have resigned,and several other staff.

Ms Dati is the most senior minority minister,but Mr Sarkozy has also had a stormy time with Ms Yade,who handles human rights at the foreign ministry. When the president invited Libyas Muammar Qaddafi to Paris,she insisted to a newspaper that France was not a doormat on which a leader,terrorist or not,can come to wipe the blood of his crimes from his feet. Mr Sarkozy was not amused. More recently,the 32-year-old refused his request that she should stand for election to the European Parliament in June. She would prefer,she said sniffily,to win a national electoral mandate.

The least controversial of the three is Ms Amaraalthough even she once breached political etiquette by calling the governments plans for DNA tests for immigrants disgusting. Ms Amaras problem has been neither poor judgment nor mismanagement but rather a lack of money to put much flesh on her plan banlieue,an attempt to revive prospects in the French suburbs. Her down-to-earth approachshe still lives in her two-room flat in eastern Paris,refusing grand official lodgingsand her plain-talking style go down well with voters. In a recent popularity poll,despite her relative invisibility,she ranked four places ahead of Ms Dati.

The difficulty for Mr Sarkozy is that he cannot afford to let any of his minority ministers fail. Long before his election as president he argued the case for a Condoleezza Rice à la française. Barack Obamas election has added urgency to the efforts to find one. Even if Mr Sarkozy were to move Ms Dati,say,he would probably have to offer her another job. Any hint at incompetence would be seized on,however absurdly,as racism. In the short run,the answer,as with most such puzzles,will probably be for the Elysée quietly to take charge of troublesome dossiersif,that is,it has not done so already.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008