We remember its massive silhouette, posted in front of the steps of the church of Jarnac, on January 11, 1996, holding on a leash the black Baltic Labrador, during the funeral of François Mitterrand. Michel Charasse, shadow man and former political adviser to the first socialist president of the Fifth Republic, died in the night from Thursday to Friday, at the age of 78.
Entered the PS in the early 1960s, Michel Charasse joined the Elysée in 1981, just after the election of François Mitterrand, as an adviser. In 1988, he was appointed Minister of Budget in the second Rocard government, a position he held until 1992.
Deeply anticlerical, a great lover of cigars, Michel Charasse was renowned as one of the main guardians of the Mitterrandie. In 2008, however, he had been excluded from the PS for having supported a dissident candidate for the presidency of the General Council of Puy-de-Dôme.