Alain Juppé alongside Jacques Chirac during his 1995 campaign. -

WITT / SIPA

Alain Juppé recounts his “strong political friendship” with Jacques Chirac, “a humanist”, in “Mon Chirac, une friendship singulière”, a book published Thursday by Éditions Tallandier.

With "melancholy but without bitterness", Alain Juppé returns to "an essentially political friendship" which lasted more than 40 in this book in the form of a posthumous letter to the former President of the Republic who died nearly a year ago. , September 26, 2019.

"Rare for a president and a prime minister to remain faithful"

"It is rare that a President of the Republic and a Prime Minister remain faithful to the end," said Thursday on France Inter the former mayor of Bordeaux, 75, who now sits on the Council. constitutional.

A loyalty often mentioned at the time of his conviction in 2004 to 14 months suspended prison sentence and one year of ineligibility for "illegal taking of interest" in the case of fictitious jobs of the City of Paris.

"On the case of the trial, I assumed my responsibility fully and I have nothing to reproach anyone else, at least not him", said Alain Juppé, who was Prime Minister of Jacques Chirac from 1995 to 1997, in an interview with

Le Parisien.

A book that talks about Chirac as much as Juppé

In his book, where he talks as much about himself as about Chirac, Alain Juppé also looks back on his failure in the right-wing primary in 2016. “I confess that, perhaps, I was not totally devoured by the ambition to be President of the Republic ”, tells the one who describes himself as“ a cold-blooded animal ”.

On France Inter, he returned to the controversy of "noise and smell", a sentence that he invites "to put in its context".

"Racism was absolutely loathed by Jacques Chirac," he said, also recalling the consistency with which the former president had refused to approach the extreme right even if it sometimes "cost him dear" politically. .

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  • Friendship

  • Alain Juppe

  • Books

  • Jacques Chirac