A champion of a united Europe, a life tainted by scandal
President who kept France out of invasion of Iraq dies at 86
JACQUES Chirac, the former president of France who refused to let his country join the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, died yesterday, aged 86.
He was the first French leader to acknowledge his country’s role in the Holocaust but was tainted by scandal and failed to reform the economy or defuse tensions that led to youth riots in 2005.
Chirac died “peacefully, among his loved ones”, his son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux said.
He did not give a cause of death but the politician had suffered health problems since leaving office in 2007.
Born in Paris in November 1932, he was the only child of a businessman and was expelled from school for firing wads of paper at a teacher.
Chirac served in the army in Algeria during the independence war, which France lost, before enrolling at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the elite training ground for the French political class.
Nicknamed Le Bulldozer, he quickly climbed the ladder,
BY ELAINE GANLEY reporters@dailyrecord.co.uk
serving as France’s prime minister from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.
After Francois Mitterrand defeated him in presidential elections in 1981 and 1988, he finally won the top job in 1995.
In office, he crushed the myth of his nation’s innocence in the persecution of Jews and their deportation in World War II.
A consummate diplomat, he embraced European unity and embodied an independent streak treasured in France.
Despite patchy reform at home, he was most popular during his 2002 re-election campaign, when the moderate right and the left united behind him to crush far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who took second place in the first ballot.
Later that year, an extreme right militant shot at and missed Chirac during a parade.
Chirac’s opposition to the Iraq War in 2003 rocked relations with France’s top ally, and led some Americans to pour wine into the gutter and restaurants to call their chips “freedom fries”.
Dogged by corruption scandals, he was found guilty of misuse of public money and given a two-year suspended jail sentence in 2011.
As news of the father of two’s death was released, Chirac’s successor Nicolas Sarkozy said he “embodied a France faithful to its universal values”.
German chancellor Angela Merkel described him as an “outstanding partner and friend”.