Rachida Dati
Rachida Dati (Arabic رشيدة داتي rašīda dātī, born November 27, 1965 in Saint-Rémy, Burgundy) is a French politician of Moroccan and Algerian descent. She was appointed Minister of Justice on the 18th of May 2007 by Nicolas Sarkozy. She was Nicolas Sarkozy's spokeswoman during the 2007 French presidential election.
Rachida Dati is the first woman having a non-European immigrant background and the first Muslim to enter a key ministerial position in the French Cabinet. [1][2][3][4].
Biography
She was born to a Moroccan father who worked as a bricklayer and an Algerian mother who herself worked as a cleaning lady. The second child of a family of twelve, she spent her childhood in a poor suburb of Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy.
She went to Catholic school, where most of the girls came from wealthier backgrounds. At sixteen, she started working at night as a paramedical assistant. She then worked for three years as an accountant at Elf Aquitaine while continuing her studies in economics and business management.
After meeting Jean-Luc Lagardère in 1990 she entered the audit management team of Matra Nortel communication. She later spent one year in London at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development again in the financial auditing department. In 1994 she is an auditing supervisor and secretary general of the bureau of urban development studies at Lyonnaise des eaux. From 1995 to 1997, she worked as a technical advisor at the legal management division of the Ministry of Education.
In 1997, she was admitted at the École nationale de la magistrature (a public educational institution which offers the necessary courses to become a magistrate in France). Upon leaving in 1999, she became a legal auditor at the Bobigny tribunal de grande instance (first instance juryless court dealing with minor crimes).
She went on to become judge for collective procedures (equivalent to bankruptcy courts in the U.S.) at the tribunal de grande instance in Péronne and eventually an assitant to the attorney general of the Évry tribunal.
In 2002, she became Nicolas Sarkozy's advisor for whom she worked on a law project on prevention of minor offenses (prévention de la délinquance). In 2006, she joined the UMP party. On January 14th 2007 she was named spokeswoman for Nicolas Sarkozy as he was himself chosen that same day to be the UMP presidential candidate for the forthcoming April 2007 elections.
After Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in the French presidentials' second round on May 6th 2007, she was appointed Ministry of Justice.
One of Rachida's brothers, Jamel Dati, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2007. He was sentenced to a six-month suspended sentence. Judicial observers say the "letter of the Sarkozy/Dati project on multi-recidivism" means he should go straight to jail.[5]
Diplomas
- Master's degree in economic sciences - Maîtrise en sciences économiques
- Master's degree in public law - Maîtrise en droit public
References
External links
- Template:FrRachida Dati-Xavier Bertrand : les deux voix de Sarkozy, Libération, 18th of January 2007.
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