A camel, two potatoes and a Lego pyramid: When political gifts get weird

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Surely we can all agree that there’s one big question that needs answering in French politics. No, not who will be this week’s prime minister (my money is on Vincent Cassel), but what on earth happened to the second (and rather beautiful) camel gifted to François Hollande by the country of Mali?

In France’s P.M. era (that’s pre-Macron), Hollande was the president whose popularity once slumped to a mere 4 percent (which is Truss-esque), and — in a case of what can only be described as Peak France — was photographed driving around with his lover on a scooter.

He was also once given a camel by the government of Mali in a show of gratitude for France’s assistance in driving out Islamist militants. Hollande took one look at the camel and decided that a creature with a bad attitude and terrible breath would be an ideal addition to the back benches of the National Assembly, preferably sitting next to Jean-Marie Le Pen. Alas, it was decided that the even-toed ungulate (camel, not Le Pen) should remain in West Africa, and it was given to a family in Timbuktu for safekeeping. They promptly slaughtered it and used it in a tagine.

Obviously, that was a rather embarrassing (if also potentially delicious) diplomatic error, so Mali jumped into action. “As soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking camel,” an unnamed Malian official told Reuters at the time.

That was 12 years ago and the camel has been barely heard of since. Declassified can now reveal that the creature is preparing for its Bal des Débutantes and hoping to secure a place at the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration.

Choosing a present for a senior politician is a tricky business, of course. Sometimes, a country absolutely nails it: just this week, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen gave his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, a Lego pyramid. That works on many levels as Denmark is the home of Lego and is one of the so-called Frugal Four fiscally conservative European countries — and you can buy the Lego version of the Great Pyramid of Giza for just €139.99.

Even cheaper were the two potatoes that former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in 2014, presumably so Lavrov could have a chip on each of his shoulders — or throw them at a Ukrainian! Lavrov suggested the potatoes may have a symbolic purpose ahead of negotiations on a peace conference for Syria (oh, the irony).

“The specific potato which John handed to me has the shape which makes it possible to insert potato in the carrot-and-stick expression. So it could be used differently,” Lavrov said. Nope, me neither.

Making much more sense was noted japester Xi Jinping of China, who this week gave South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung a pair of smartphones and then joked that they contained spyware. I say joked …

U.S. presidents get some lavish gifts. In 1972, China gave Richard Nixon two giant pandas following the U.S. president’s visit to the country. Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were given to the National Zoo in Washington DC, which sadly did not rename them Woodward and Bernstein after Watergate. George W. Bush received 300 pounds of raw lamb in 2003 from Argentina’s then-president Nestor Kirchner, and Bush’s dad was gifted a Komodo dragon by the president of Indonesia in 1990 (handy if there was any of that lamb left).

Then there’s the European Commission and its fabled “Ali Baba cave”, a sort of clearing house for nice gifts (they sit there for a few months and then get sent to auction). As POLITICO discovered on a 2016 visit to the “cave”, there are some odd things in there, including at the time a didgeridoo given to former European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen.

Alas, there are no camels (alive or served in a tagine) kept in the bowels of the Berlaymont, as far as we know.

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“The sad state of today’s so-called supermodels.”

by Mr LJ