Who's behind SarkObama?

It's a question that has been causing a certain amount of head scratching in Paris over the past couple of days and created quite a buzz in certain sections of the French media.

Posters have been slapped up recently in several spots around the French capital, based on the design of one created by graphic artist Shepard Fairey and used during Barack Obama's presidential campaign in the United States.

But instead of Obama's face, there's an image of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with policy statements such as "Making polluters pay" with the now world-famous famous slogan underneath "Yes we can."

The campaign has sent some sections of the French media into a real tizzy, with the weekly national magazine L'Express asking its readers for more pointers as to who exactly is behind it.

As a follow up, a French website, LePost.fr contacted Sarkozy's office at the Elysée palace to see whether the president or his center-right party Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) were behind the campaign. "No" was the answer.

Meanwhile another French website Rue 89 (created a couple of years ago by former journalists of the left of centre daily Libération) not wanting to be left out of the buzz, helpfully guides anyone who's interested to another site, where users can actually run up their own version of the famous Obama poster.

Finally back to L'Express which in its efforts to shed light on the mystery tells us that apparently two SarkObamaniaque camps exist.

There are those who plastered Paris with the posters in the first place (true Sarkozy supporters the magazine suggests) and then those who opened a blog on Tuesday claiming that the first group are imposters (sic OUCH).

And what do you know, that's exactly what the first group claims of the other in an email sent to L'Express.

Confusing or what?

Apparently the mystery as to who is doing what, and why will be revealed some time soon.