Paris - There is a growing feeling in France that President Nicolas Sarkozy has created a kind of "elective monarchy," in the words of one of his critics, in which the prince wields his power to benefit primarily himself, his family and his friends.

The latest incident to raise this image was the forced transfer of two highly respected law officers after an anti-government demonstration disturbed an appearance by Sarkozy in the northern city of Saint-Lo.

During the protest, primarily by teachers protesting the government's planned slashing of 13,500 jobs from the national education system, some demonstrators threw shoes, an echo of the shoe tossed at former US president George W Bush in Baghdad last year.

But what bothered Sarkozy the most were, reportedly, the whistles that the 3,000 or so protesters directed at him. As a result, the top police official of the region and his director of regional security were demoted and transferred.

Criticism from Sarkozy's opponents was swift, with centrist Francois Bayrou calling the gesture the "arbitrary ... act of a prince." However, some of the most withering comments came from the ranks of Sarkozy's own UMP party.

UMP Senator Jean-Francois Legrand, who is also head of the region's governing council, said it was "appalling that a representative of the state could be used the way one uses a Kleenex. It's scandalous. This is a practice from another time."

Even the fiercely pro-Sarkozy daily Le Figaro was at pains to justify the gesture, noting that its editors had chosen the region's police as the nation's top-performing law-enforcement force in 2008.

Like other media, Le Figaro pointed out the similarity to another incident involving the punishment of a top police official.

In September 2008, the coordinator of security for the island of Corsica, Dominique Rossi, was fired after a few dozen local nationalists occupied the summer home of one of Sarkozy's best friends, the actor Christian Clavier.

The intruders wanted to protest against what they saw as the over-development of the island by the rich residents of the mainland. No damage was done to the house; the protesters stayed an hour, drank some water and left.

The weekly Le Point reported at the time that Rossi was punished after Clavier phoned Sarkozy to complain about the incident. However, Sarkozy denied that his friendship with Clavier had moved him to act.

"Whether you are the speaker of the Corsican National Assembly or a friend of the president, it does not mean you have fewer rights than other citizens," he said, slyly avoiding the charge that it could mean having more rights.

However, the most glaring example of what could be described as Sarkozy's "royal court" rule involved his mother-in-law's sewerage system.

On August 19, 2008, just hours before he was scheduled to travel to Afghanistan after the deaths of 10 French soldiers there, Sarkozy called an "emergency meeting" at the
14-room villa of Marisa Bruni-Tedeschi, the mother of his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

The aim of the meeting - which resembled the emergency summits he liked to call when he was EU president - was to settle the problem of a municipal drainage system for the exclusive Riviera peninsula of Cap Negre, where Bruni-Tedeschi's villa is located.

At the meeting, Sarkozy tried to convince the 50 other Cap Negre home owners to agree to have a mains drainage system installed, with state funds promised to cover much of the estimated 40,000 euros (51,000 dollars) it would cost each one to make his sewage system conform to European standards.

But 14 home owners refused to go along because, they say, upgrading their existing septic tanks would cost only some 15,000 euros and because a complex system, involving an elaborate pumping mechanism, would be difficult to maintain in the very steep terrain.

In fact, the construction of a common sewerage system would primarily benefit Bruni-Tedeschi, whose home is the only one on the peninsula without a septic tank.

One of the so-called rebels, an 85-year-old retired researcher named Magdeleine Huetz, told the daily Le Monde that Sarkozy's intervention was an "intolerable abuse of power.... the president rammed head-first into a case he doesn't know at all."

Her 87-year-old husband, Jacques, called the promise of public funds for work benefiting private property owners "aberrant."

Unlike his experience as EU head, Sarkozy did not get his way. But his interference in the affair, revived in a recent front-page article in the Le Monde weekend magazine, has reinforced his image as a "royal president" serving primarily the favourites of his court.

In February 2007, when running for the presidency, he provided a quite different view of how he would govern: "I want an irreproachable democracy where competence has priority over friendship and complicity." (dpa)