REMEMBERING FRANCE'S D'ESTAING.
Champion of united Europe lifted economy
Valéry Giscard d'estaing, who has died of complications from COVID-19 aged 94, was France's president from 1974 to 1981, bringing in his own liberal right-wing elitism.
Although not a Gaullist, Giscard entered government under President de Gaulle in 1959 and was elected to the presidency in 1974 with barely 200,000 votes more than the left's François Mitterrand.
Giscard was a master of political management who exploited rivals' ambitions.
He was accused of acting like an aristocrat. “He thinks he's Louis XV,” some grumbled. Yet Giscard enjoyed a high degree of popularity in opinion polls, despite unemployment and inflation increasing during his term.
Valéry Giscard d'estaing was born on Feb. 2, 1926 in Germany, where his father was attached to the French High Commission.
His climb began at the Ministry of Finance; he learned the workings of power when in 1955 he was seconded to the finance minister.
In 1956, he entered Parliament through the “family” seat on the right-wing independents list held by his maternal grandfather, Jacques Bardoux.
Appointed Minister of Economy and Finance in 1962, Giscard was out of office only between 1966 and 1969, when he co- formed the Independent Republicans, rejecting de Gaulle's anti-americanism and chauvinism toward the EEC.
Under Giscard, France became a big exporter with a standard of living higher than any West European country except West Germany, and steered the country through the world economic crisis in the 1970s. His seven-year term saw some important social reforms.
But he was shown to have secretly collaborated with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and, in 1973, accepted and failed to declare a personal gift of diamonds worth $250,000 from Jean-bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic, leading to suggestions he had sent in paratroopers to depose Bokassa and remove evidence of their close relationship.
The allegations overshadowed Giscard's 1981 re-election campaign. Mitterrand won by three points.
Giscard and his wife, Anne-aymone de Brantes, had four children.