MAYBE it was just a ploy for attention by a politician on the campaign trail. But an outburst against the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) by Mr Alain Madelin, the former centre-right minister of finance, has created a furore.
"Ireland has the IRA, Spain has ETA, Italy the Mafia and France the ENA," Mr Madelin announced at a rally near Paris.
In jest, Le Monde then published a short list of "a few well known terrorists and mafiosi" who attended the ENA: President Jacques Chirac, the Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe; the outgoing speaker of parliament and possible next prime minister, Mr Philippe Seguin; leading centre-right politicians Mr Francois Leotard and Mr Edouard Balladur, as well as the Socialist party leader, Mr Lionel Jospin, and former prime ministers Mr Laurent Fabius and Mr Michel Rocard.
The ENA was created by Gen Charles de Gaulle in 1945 to provide France with first-class civil servants. It fulfilled its purpose, providing two of France's last three presidents as well as five of the past seven prime ministers.
But the French increasingly resent the enarques, as graduates are known. The school has come to symbolise elitism and the immobility of France's all-powerful state sector.
Even Mr Juppe, in a campaign appearance, said his alma mater should be replaced by "something closer to reality".
The first demand of Charter 98, a group of bankers, businessmen, lawyers and professors petitioning for a more modern state, is the dismantling of the ENA.
Another group called OCSENA (Organisation against the ENA System) is fielding four candidates in the May 25th and June 1st elections. Their slogan is "yesterday the Bastille, today the ENA".
Only 100 of the thousands of French youths who prepare for the ENA entrance exam are accepted each year. Aspiring enarques sacrifice years of their lives in study. Once admitted, they are guaranteed the best government jobs for life.
Today, 4,300 enarques lord it over 2.8 million government employees, who have no hope of advancement because they did not attend the ENA. The two-year programme costs the French tax-payer close to £100,000 per graduate. The 20 students ranked highest receive the added bonus of admission to one of three grands corps, the Inspection des Finances, the Cour des Comptes (Court of Accounts) or the Conseil d'Etat (Council of State).
Membership is the equivalent of a title of nobility, retained even if the enarque should move from the government service to the private sector.
Free marketeers, such as Mr Madelin and Jean-Michel Fourgous, an outgoing centre-right deputy who proposed legislation to ban the ENA, see it as a source of hated state interventionism.
Mr Alain-Serge Clary, the president of OCSENA and a civil servant at the French foreign ministry, has different motives. "We don't contest the quality of the enarques," he told The Irish Times. "Our grievance is that it is undemocratic. Democracies should not produce aristocracies."
Recent graduates recognise the need for reform, but claim the system, which is based on merit, is more fair than a society where privilege depends on money and family ties. The ENA is also a way of bringing women into government; 34 per cent of last year's class were female.
But critics are sceptical of the ENA's ability to change. "My deep feeling is that France today is incapable of reforming itself," Mr Clary of OCSENA said.
"The worst storms here change nothing. We are stuck in a pyramidal society without energy or imagination. France evolves very slowly. Historically, this country has advanced only through explosions.
