World leaders pay tribute to Chirac
France holds day of mourning for popular ex-president
PARIS — Dozens of world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, gathered in Paris on Sept 30 to pay their final respects to France’s late former president Jacques Chirac as the country held a national day of mourning for its popular former head of state.
Putin and other world leaders joined French President Emmanuel Macron at Saint-Sulpice church in central Paris, a day after thousands of people lined up to view the coffin.
Dai Bingguo, former Chinese state councilor, attended the memorial service as President Xi Jinping’s special envoy.
Chirac’s death on Sept 26, at 86, prompted a flood of tributes to a man whose high-profile political career spanned four decades, capped by 12 years as president from 1995 to 2007.
But it also sparked questions about how much the consummate politician actually achieved during a long spell in office and again threw the spotlight on a 2011 conviction for graft over his time as Paris mayor.
Nevertheless, a poll in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper showed that the French consider him their best president of the modern era, alongside Charles de Gaulle, with his finest achievement seen as opposing the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq.
On Sept 29, thousands stood in a line that wound around the Invalides memorial complex, braving rainy weather and the prospect of an hourslong wait, to glimpse Chirac’s coffin draped in the French flag.
The national day of mourning on Sept 30 saw a minute of silence observed in all public institutions and schools.
After a private service for his family at Invalides, Chirac’s coffin was driven under military escort through the streets of Paris to Saint-Sulpice church for the final memorial.
The Elysee had said that nearly 30 heads of state and government were expected to be present, including Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, German President FrankWalter Steinmeier and Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
Former leaders who worked closely with Chirac, notably German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, attended. European Union Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and former US president Bill Clinton were also there.
Much of France’s current political class attended, but absent was far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who pulled out after reservations expressed by the Chirac family.
In a rare public appearance, also present was the third president of France’s modern Fifth Republic, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, 93, who has now outlived his successor Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, and Chirac.
In the final act, Chirac was buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in southern Paris, next to his daughter Laurence who died in 2016 aged 58, following a battle with anorexia.
As well as opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Chirac also presided over a significant cut in road deaths, acknowledged France’s role in the deportation of Jews in World War II and warned of the risk of climate change before it rose high on the political agenda.