PARIS - Opponents cried victory Friday after President Nicolas Sarkozy's 23-year-old son Jean, at the center of a bitter nepotism row, gave up his bid for a job running France's top business district.

"The sacrifice of the son," said front page headline of the left-wing Liberation, whose editorial concluded the president had been "forced to send his son to the guillotine to preserve his regime."

Jean Sarkozy, dubbed "Prince Jean" by the press, went on prime-time television Thursday to say he was abandoning a bid for the job managing France's top business district, the La Defense skyscraper park west of Paris.

"I would not want any victory to be tainted by suspicion. I will not accept being suspected of favoritism," he told France 2.

The second-year law student denounced a "campaign of manipulation and disinformation" against him but admitted -- without elaborating -- there was an "element of truth" in the storm of criticism.

Despite dropping his bid for chairman, Sarkozy was elected Friday to the board of the EPAD agency managing La Defense, home to 2,500 corporate giants such as Total and Societe Generale bank and employing more than 150,000 people.

Sarkozy was voted in by the Hauts-de-Seine regional council, which covers La Defense and where he has led the right-wing UMP majority since last year.

Outside the building, left-wing activists wearing powdered wigs, aristocrats' feathered hats and Jean Sarkozy masks, rallied to denounce the stellar rise of the young undergraduate.

"He's the Paris Hilton of French politics," charged one of them, brandishing a giant "Daddy's Boy diploma."

But Sarkozy told reporters afterwards his "passion for public service" was undented as he defended his "ambition for La Defense."

"It is Europe's top business district. But we still have to work hard to keep hold of that leadership and attractiveness," he said.

The Hauts-de-Seine council on Friday formally approved a major expansion of the business district, with EPAD's remit to be extended to take in half of neighboring communist-ruled Nanterre.

Critics had slammed Sarkozy junior's chairman bid as evidence France was becoming a "banana republic" run at his father's whim, and were quick to declare defeat for the right-wing president.

Opposition Socialist party spokesman Benoit Hamon said it showed that "the president of the republic has retreated under the pressure of the indignation of an immense majority of the French."

Sarkozy had staunchly defended his son -- even saying he had been "thrown to the wolves" -- despite creeping concerns in his camp over a voter backlash.

The furore began just days after another major row, over Sarkozy's culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, who was forced to defend himself over a book describing his sex tourist past.

Britain's Independent newspaper said that "the president's imperious ways are provoking a growing outcry. Last night Sarkozy and son were forced into a humiliating climbdown to regain the public's trust."

It concluded its article with: "The French Republic 1, The Emperor Nicolas Premier 0."

But Prime Minister Francois Fillon, commenting on Sarkozy's decision, predicted that "this step backwards will serve him well," while the head of Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, Jean-Francois Cope, half-jokingly said he could one day be a future rival for the presidency.

In less than two years Jean Sarkozy has gone from a little-known Sorbonne University student to a major political player in his father's former fiefdom. He rejects suggestions the president is behind his rise.

Elected councillor for Neuilly, the rich Paris suburb that catapulted his father to prominence 30 years ago, in 2008, he soon took the head of the right-wing majority in the Hauts-de-Seine council.

Last year he married Jessica Sebaoun, heiress to the electronics retailer Darty. The couple are expecting their first baby, a boy.

In recent weeks Sarkozy has undergone a full makeover, clipping off his flowing blonde locks and donning business-like new spectacles as he staked a claim to a political career of his own before millions of French viewers.

"What is certain, is that I will be fighting more battles before French voters in the years to come," he warned.