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City Councilor, Mayor, Deputy, Minister, Head of Government, and finally President of the Republic. He is one of those who will have most marked the Fifth French Republic. Jacques Chirac died on Thursday, September 26, 2019, he was 86 years old. Portrait.
May 7, 1995, around 9 pm It's time to party in the streets of Paris. From the Avenue d'Iéna to the Concorde, the French right celebrates the victory it has been waiting for 14 years. In the town hall of the Hotel de Ville, a tall figure in gray suit advances in front of the assembly, who chants his name by clapping his hands. Jacques Chirac - since it is him that it is - savor the moment. " As I speak to you, the known results show that you have decided to entrust me with the highest office of the State, " he begins under the vivas of his supporters and the chandeliers of the show.
An hour earlier, that of consecration, his face appeared on TV screens. In legend, a figure: 52%, his score in the second round of the presidential election against the Socialist Lionel Jospin. The one who started his political career more than 30 years ago finally sees his fierceness rewarded . Mayor, deputy, secretary of state, minister and prime minister, he has already taken almost everything a political career can offer. " Tonight, continues Jacques Chirac behind his desk in plexiglass, I think of my parents ... "
A frustrated adventurer
Abel-François and Marie-Louise Chirac, nee Valette, have long passed away when their son attains supreme office. They were married in 1921 and very quickly, their life as a couple was marked by a tragedy: the death of their daughter at the age of 2 years. Jacques was born almost ten years later, on November 29, 1932, in the fifth district of Paris. His father, a bank clerk, is a cold and authoritarian man, while his mother, energetic and warm, covers him with attention.
The only child growing up between the beautiful Parisian districts and the countryside of Corrèze. He describes himself as a turbulent boy, more quick to make the 400 moves than to revise his lessons, but also enamored of poetry and distant arts. Jacques Chirac knows his first political commitments in high school without his beliefs are still very strong. First adherent to the Rally of the French people founded by General De Gaulle, he encanaille in the early 1950s with the Communist Party, and signs the Stockholm Call for the prohibition of nuclear weapons.
At the age of 18, Jacques Chirac dreams of being a long-distance captain. With his baccalaureate in his pocket, he sails aboard a cargo ship that makes the connection between Dunkirk and North Africa. The odyssey lasts only one summer, broken by his father who brings him back to Paris. A year later, the thwarted adventurer enters Sciences Po. It is there, on the benches of the prestigious institution of the rue Saint-Guillaume, that he meets a young blond woman from a good family, Bernadette Chodron de Courcel. She likes her charm and her ease, he finds it daring, they marry on March 16, 1956. Together, they will have two daughters: Laurence in 1958, Claude in 1962, and will collect in 1979 a third, Anh Dao, a boat- Vietnamese people then aged 21.
Two weeks after his marriage, Jacques Chirac leaves for Algeria, plunged into a war that does not say his name. He wants to be of all the delicate missions. He gets the Cross of Military Value for rescuing a section under fire from the insurgents. One time, he thinks of embracing a career in the army. But his father has other ambitions for him: he sees him at the head of Civil Aviation or director of the Banque de France. Jacques Chirac can only submit and soon, too quickly to his liking, he joined the ENA, the National School of Administration. He is bored stiff, tired of the pettiness of his comrades, desperate to get the best place in the contest exit. Jacques Chirac finished 16th out of 52 and entered the Court of Auditors.
The "bulldozer"
Jacques Chirac is 28 years old and refuses to lock himself in the monotonous shackles of a civil servant career. He needs action. Through one of his former classmates of Sciences Po, he joined the team of Georges Pompidou, new Prime Minister of Charles de Gaulle. His propensity to act without bothering with administrative formalism quickly earned him the nickname "bulldozer". He found his way, his political career is launched. In 1967, he won his first electoral victory by becoming a deputy of Corrèze, the land of his ancestors. From this provincial stronghold, he sets out, sword clear, to conquer the highest functions.
His rise is blazing. Secretary of State then Minister under the presidency of Pompidou, he became in 1974 Prime Minister Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing. But the "bulldozer" does not intend to remain in the shadow of this president whom he helped to be elected. He left Matignon two years later and created the RPR, the Rassemblement pour la République. Mayor of Paris since 1977, Jacques Chirac is now only one thing: the supreme investiture, the presidency of the Republic. He tried his luck for the first time in 1981, then a second in 1988 against François Mitterrand where he is the Prime Minister. Without success. " The French do not like my husband, " says his wife Bernadette bitterly.
The third attempt is the good one. At the end of 1994, however, the press gave it far behind the head of government Edouard Balladur, also from the RPR. Jacques Chirac will never forgive this treachery to one who has been a friend of thirty years. But for now, he launches body and soul in this campaign that is announced to him lost beforehand, surfing on the theme of "social fracture". His long years of political exercise have made him pragmatic. The "bulldozer" has turned into a chameleon that adapts its convictions to the concerns of society.
A motionless president
The strategy is winning: on May 7, 1995, Jacques Chirac becomes President of the French Republic. But just elected, he announced a budget tour. To fight against the deficits and the debt of the State, the government accelerates the privatizations and attacks the reform of the pensions and the social security. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets. The popularity rating of Jacques Chirac collapses in the polls with that of his Prime Minister, Alain Juppé. The president then plays his all-out: he announces the dissolution of the National Assembly on April 21, 1997 in the hope that the ballot boxes give him the advantage. Missed. The victory of the PS in the legislative elections forced him to choose Lionel Jospin as prime minister. The latter manages to make him propose the modification of the Constitution to transform the septennat in five years. The project is submitted to referendum in September 2000; he obtains 73% of the votes.
In 2002, at the age of 69, Jacques Chirac was reelected against the leader of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen. This second mandate, marked in particular by the burning of the suburbs and the student movement against the CPE, is one of immobility. Chirac the "bulldozer", Chirac the "brawler", inherits a new nickname: the "lazy king". In his book Jacques Chirac, a French history , Simon Laplace sees in this inertia " the protective obsession " of a president who wishes to preserve national unity. Others interpret it as the result of a policy more guided by opinion polls than by a desire for reform.
When Jacques Chirac leaves the Elysee Palace in May 2007, his record is dull. History, however, will retain at least two things from his twelve years as head of state. The first on July 16, 1995. During the commemoration of the roundup of Vel 'd'Hiv in 1942, he delivered a speech in which he recognized the responsibility of the French state in the crimes committed against the Jews of France under the l 'Occupation. No one else had done it before him. This speech is his greatest pride, he will confess a few years later. The second in 2003, when he refuses to engage France in the war in Iraq. This decision earned him a resurgence of national and international popularity.
The favorite political personality of the French
Now retired, Jacques Chirac becomes the favorite political personality of the French. His past mistakes seem far away and nostalgia is in full swing. In a country shaken by the shocks of the economic crisis, it seems to embody a bygone era, that of recklessness and full employment. Because since always, he cultivates an image of franchouillard with the raw speech, amateur of women and good food. Trousers to the chest and engaging smile, he likes more than anything to contact the people, plunging into the crowds and multiplying the handshakes and hugs with obvious pleasure. We also discover behind this gargantuan character a cultured man, lover of Asia and sumo, passionate about the first arts and forgotten peoples. A passion concretized by the creation of the Quai Branly museum , renamed since musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac .
But very quickly, deprived of his presidential immunity, the former head of state is overtaken by the justice which investigates the hidden financing of the RPR and the fictitious jobs in the city hall of Paris. He is sentenced in this case on 15 December 2011 to two years in prison suspended for breach of trust and embezzlement of public funds. Jacques Chirac decides not to appeal. He explains that he no longer has the necessary forces " to lead the fight against the truth ".
Since a stroke in 2005, his health has indeed continued to deteriorate. His public appearances have become more rare, his traditional visits to the Salon de l'agriculture less long. Hospitalized several times, the former president was also severely affected by the death of his daughter Laurence in April 2016. Her last participation in an official ceremony was in November 2014. Diminished, the hand on the shoulder of her bodyguard he had arrived under the applause of the public.