A hush does not usually descend on a noisy Paris café when an aspiring local councillor walks in. It does if she is Rachida Dati. Nudges and nods ripple among the tables when the glamour figure in President Sarkozy's “Rainbow Government” drops in with leaflets as she campaigns for the council in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

Ms Dati, 42, Justice Minister and elegant emblem of the ethnically mixed Government, is among eight Cabinet neophytes that Mr Sarkozy has sent out to earn their electoral spurs in local voting that starts on Sunday.

The very French exercise is intended to confer “the legitimacy of suffrage” on those who hold power by the grace of the monarch-like President. A seat on one of the capital's 20 arrondissement councils counts. The biggest handicap of Dominique de Villepin, the last Prime Minister of President Chirac, was his failure ever to seek election anywhere.

For Ms Dati, the daughter of a Moroccan bricklayer and an Algerian housekeeper, the 7th arrondissement, the grandest Left Bank district, offers little risk, but the parachutage of “Sarko's” favourite over the head of Michel Dumont, the popular local mayor, has stirred resentment among its old-France residents.

“The President has a lot of respect for people who engage in politics and stand for public election,” said Ms Dati, seated with The Times at a corner café table. “I don't do fictional politics. I am doing this to help win back Paris and also to expose myself to voters.”

Ms Dati entered politics as Justice Minister after a career as businesswoman, junior judge and staff aide to Mr Sarkozy. Her rise from the immigrant estates is one of the big narratives of the presidency. “I never imagined being a minister one day or the candidate's spokeswoman,” she said in the no-nonsense tones that intimidate her Cabinet elders.

In the staunchly conservative 7th, Ms Dati heads the local list for Mr Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement. She will not say whether she will take the mayoral job but she is determined to be active locally and also on the main Paris council, where she will be allotted a seat.

For a time it appeared that Ms Dati could face trouble from disgruntled conservatives of the kind that derailed David Martinon, the President's spokesman, last month. Local opposition to Mr Martinon forced him to end a campaign to be mayor of the rich suburb of Neuilly, Mr Sarkozy's own political power base.

Polls show that the formidable Ms Dati will win but it is clear, watching the petite minister working the streets, that not all the locals have adopted her. “I won't vote for you, because you are parachutée!”, a middle-aged man says after shaking her hand. “She is an outsider who has been foisted on us,” said a lifelong resident in her sixties. “It's typical of that vulgar President.”

Ms Dati said: “Of course some people are suspicious of me. That's political life . . . That's part of campaigning in the field.” The minister, who faces little real opposition from Socialist and centrist candidates, is greeted like a star as she walks down the Rue Clerc, the main shopping street. Children call out “Rachida!” and take her picture. Shoppers seek autographs.

Disapproval of Mr Sarkozy's “nouveau riche” ways and disappointment with his presidency are not helping Ms Dati and the other “Sarko Babes” — ministers seeking local election in and around Paris. They include Christine Lagarde, the Finance Minister; Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister; Rama Yade, junior Minister for Human Rights; and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, junior Environment Minister.

Ms Dati shrugs off criticism of Mr Sarkozy and the sniping at her own authoritarian style. “I just do my job,” she said. “I have a duty to deliver to the French on justice and law and order and I have to convince them in this local campaign that our project is the right one. The President is carrying out reforms and putting his campaign commitments into action. He has to account for his actions not now but in the four coming years.”

Mr Sarkozy's party is expected to take a beating in the national council elections, which end with a second round on March 16. Several big cities, including Marseilles, Toulouse and Strasbourg, are expected to fall to the Socialists.

WINNING OUTSIDER

— Rachida Dati was born in 1965, one of 12 children. Her father was a Moroccan bricklayer and her mother was from Algeria

— She began working in a clinic at 16, studying at night for degrees in economics and law

— She is the highest-ranking person of North African descent in France

— As Justice Minister she has clashed with the judicial Establishment several times

— Nicolas Sarkozy has described her as “a sister” and ma beurette - “my little Arab girl”

Source: Times archives

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