Paris (AFP)

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Jacques Chirac opposed each other for more than thirty years, a rivalry which culminated in the "betrayal" of Chirac in 1981 which helped bring François Mitterrand to power.

A "shameful and stupid maneuver" that Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had unsuccessfully sought re-election, has never forgiven and which he recounts in his memoirs, "Le Pouvoir et la Vie".

Jacques Chirac was eliminated in the first round of the 1981 presidential election, in favor of outgoing President Giscard d'Estaing and the socialist candidate François Mitterrand.

He declares that "in a personal capacity", he will vote for Giscard in the second round.

Wanting to verify a rumor saying that Jacques Chirac's campaign staff advises to vote Mitterrand, Giscard calls a permanence of Mr. Chirac, a handkerchief on the handset to disguise his voice.

"You must not vote for Giscard", one replies to one who presents himself as an activist.

And while he insists: "we must vote Mitterrand".

Shortly before his death, the latter would have confided to him that he had been elected thanks to the votes brought by Jacques Chirac, who would have told him in substance during a secret dinner: "we must get rid of Giscard".

- Allies in 1974 -

"What drives him is a fanatical desire to accede to the presidency of the Republic. This obsession for him erases everything else, convictions as well as respect for the rules", writes Giscard about Chirac.

In 2009, he accused Jacques Chirac - who denied - of having had his 1981 campaign financed by the then President of Gabon, Omar Bongo.

Originally, the two men had yet made an alliance.

For the 1974 presidential election, Jacques Chirac had supported the candidacy of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing before the first round, to the detriment of the Gaullist Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

This had earned him a reputation as a traitor, but had opened the doors of Matignon to him, until his resounding resignation on August 26, 1976.

"I do not have the means that I consider necessary to carry out my functions effectively, and under these conditions, I have decided to put an end to it", he declares when he slams the door.

An anecdote told by Giscard illustrates the deleterious climate that reigned between the two heads of the executive.

The former president said his "surprise" to read, in the fall of 1975 in a weekly, that by receiving his guests at Fort Bregançon, he "sat on a throne".

His suspicions about the origin of this "slander" focused on his Prime Minister, although the latter denied.

A few months after his resignation, Jacques Chirac created the RPR (Rassemblement pour la République) at the end of 1976. The following year, he was elected mayor of Paris against the Giscardien Michel d'Ornano, which gave rise to a very hard conflict. between Chirac and Giscard.

In 1978, the latter founded the UDF (Union for French Democracy), with the ambition of challenging the domination of the Gaullist party within the right.

Hostilities continued during the European elections of 1979. Jacques Chirac launched his "Cochin appeal", in which he qualified the UDF, too pro-European in his eyes, as a "foreign party".

- "He doesn't interest me" -

In 1995, Giscard nevertheless supported Chirac's presidential candidacy, while a large part of the UDF chose Edouard Balladur.

An exchange of good practices, Chirac supported in 2001 Giscard's candidacy to chair the Convention responsible for drawing up the EU Constitution.

But the failure of the 2005 referendum stirs the resentment of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, convinced that the French voted against the power in place - Jacques Chirac is then president - and not against his text.

Yet he defends himself from any resentment.

"He's someone who doesn't interest me. De Gaulle fascinated me. Helmut Schmidt, I loved him. Chirac, he never occupied my mind. I don't think about it," says he in June 2005 to journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert.

Between 2007 and 2011, the two former presidents both sit on the Constitutional Council, which gives them new opportunities to bicker.

On September 30, 2019, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing attends in Paris, during one of these last public appearances, the mass in tribute to Jacques Chirac, four days after the latter's death.

© 2020 AFP