From dishwasher to France’s leader
Former French President Jacques Chirac, who died on Thursday aged 86, dominated French politics for decades and stirred national pride with his opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
His son-in-law said he died peacefully surrounded by family. For many, Chirac’s statesmanlike but jocular air reflected France’s rural roots and its central diplomatic role envisaged by president Charles de Gaulle.
The frenetic energy and brashness of his successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, left many pining for the quieter days of Chirac’s 12-year presidency and the slower pace he set for public life. Chirac was often recalled through his persona as a puppet on a popular TV show and for quirks like his taste for the Mexican beer Corona, his poor English and seeming aloofness.
He was a puzzle: he enjoyed Asian art and Japanese poetry but liked to play down his intellectual side. A commentator once said he was the sort of man who would read a book of poetry behind a copy of Playboy.
His changing political views earned him nicknames such as Chameleon Bonaparte and the Weathervane. He was also nicknamed Houdini for his knack for wriggling out of tight spots. His reputation survived a conviction for misuse of public funds in December 2012, which made him the first head of state convicted since Nazi collaborator Philippe Petain in 1945.
Following in the footsteps of De Gaulle, Chirac devoted much of his presidency to defending France as a great nation on the world stage, a reputation he bolstered when he threatened to use his UN Security Council veto against a resolution to authorise military force to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.
Three days later, the US and Britain invaded Iraq without UN approval. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
After retiring, Chirac drew crowds of journalists and admirers in one of his last public appearances, which was, characteristically, a visit to the 2011 annual Farm Show.
Suffering from neurological problems, he was rarely seen in public at the end of his life.
Born in 1932 in Paris to a middle-class family from the central rural region of Correze, Chirac began his political career in the late 1950s after studying at the elite Sciences Po university and ENA civil service academy.
As a teenager, he briefly sold the communist newspaper L’Humanite on Paris street corners. He developed an enduring love of the US, crossing the country doing odd jobs including a spell washing dishes.
Yet his early leanings seemed forgotten when he became an army officer and linked up with the ultranationalist Algerie Francaise party, only to change tack again to become a moderate Gaullist and, by 1967, an ambitious junior minister.
He rose fast, and made enemies fast. He ripped apart the old Gaullist movement in 1974, backing non-Gaullist moderniser Valery Giscard d’Estaing for president. Chirac was 41 when Giscard made him prime minister in May 1974, after winning power, but quit two years later after falling out with Giscard on his powers.
Chirac formed a Gaullist party of his own, the Rally for the Republic in 1976, which become the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), and changed name again to the current Les Republicains.
The next year he was elected as Paris’ first mayor, starting an 18-year career at City Hall that would come back to haunt him.
After nearly two decades of investigations, he was sentenced in 2011 to two years in prison for channelling public money into phantom jobs for political cronies as mayor from 1977 to 1995. Chirac was excused from attending the trial due to his failing memory. Supporters would prefer he be remembered for electoral victories in 1995 and 2002, when he was re-elected after a battle with far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Chirac won a landslide victory in that election, but it was more a vote against Le Pen than a resounding vote of confidence.
President Georges Pompidou once called him a “bulldozer” for his ability to get things done, but Chirac’s presidency is remembered mostly as a time of stasis.
He ended military conscription and began moves to reintegrate France in the Nato defence alliance, reversing a 1960s policy. He tried to cut unemployment and public debt, and steered France into Europe’s monetary union, but did little to modernise economy or state.
Chirac was one of Europe’s main standard bearers. He forged an alliance with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, which brought Europe’s two traditional powers closer together but upset some EU partners.
Still, he is acknowledged as the first French head of state to recognise the Vichy regime’s role in the Holocaust and the first to apologise formally to Jews.
After leaving the Elysee in 2007, he lived quietly with wife Bernadette on Paris’ Quai Voltaire in an apartment lent by Lebanon’s Hariri family, and worked on his memoirs. His wife, often at social events, said he preferred to stay at home watching television.
At one of his last public sorties in mid-2011, Chirac sparked a furore, saying he would vote in the presidential election for Socialist François Hollande rather than Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he disliked. Hollande won. It was not clear how the ailing Chirac voted. His wife cast his ballot. /