With Chancellor Schröder, he bot in the Iraq war, the United States, the forehead, the European Constitution, he failed, and the justice condemned him. Now France’s Ex-President Jacques passed away Chirac at the age of 86.
In the end, he ventured only rarely to the Public. The man’s political opponents and supporters “the Bulldozer” – proclaimed, was hit after a stroke attached, both physically and mentally. If his wife Bernadette, his loyal companion of periods of study, learned the French from time to time news of his luxurious apartment on the left Bank of the Seine. Now, the family announced the death of 86-Year-old.
More than 40 years, Jacques René Chirac was in the political spotlight. Had begun his career in 1962. After the completion of the two Elite universities Sciences Po and ENA, the 30-Year-old landed a job as an employee of the government of Prime Minister Pompidou. Under his leadership, Chirac took over a few years later, the first Minister post, and then under President Valéry Giscard d’estaing for two years for the Prime Minister to ascend.
The first attempt to the highest office under the ambitious Conservative took at the age of 49 – and failed: 1981 to 1988, he had to give in to the socialist François Mitterrand defeated.
President in the third attempt
His political home was on the 29. November 1932 in Paris, Born in the rural Corrèze, what came out of his fondness for beer and hearty dishes benefit. However, his power base was the capital. Here he studied, here he founded in the 1970s with the “Rassemblement pour la République” (RPR) has its own Gaullist movement, and here he was elected in 1977 to the mayor.
Jacques Chirac from 1995 to 2007 President of France
In Paris, Chirac rose and in Paris, too, his star fell. Already with the first decisions of his presidency, he earned a fierce resistance. In the election campaign, Chirac had announced, to heal the “rupture in French society”; once in the Elysée Palace arrived, on he brought the people but against yourself. The plans for comprehensive social reforms of his government led to serious social conflicts, Chirac joined, as always in his presidency, the more or less orderly retreat to.
In the capital he experienced after the end of his political career, even the most severe humiliation. As he had lost his protective immunity as a state President, sentenced him in 2011, a Paris court due to “misappropriation, breach of trust and illegal acceptance of an advantage” to a suspended sentence of two years. The first criminal case in the history of the Republic against a past presidents was a legal settlement with Chirac’s 18-year Era of perpetual as mayor of Paris.
Be no to the war in Iraq, hits the nerve of the people
More successful than in domestic policy acted Chirac in foreign policy. But here, too, his presidency began with irritation: neighboring States, but also many allies protested against the announcement of new nuclear tests in the Mururoa Atoll. That Chirac not consulted his German Partner before a Consul, resented the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, the new President.
Also Kohl’s social democratic successor, Gerhard Schröder, fremdelte first with the Neogaullisten, before both of them to be found as the leader of the Anti-Iraq war front, close cooperation, and U.S. President George W. Bush, the end messenger. Chirac was in 2003, at the height of his popularity. His re – election victory a few months earlier – he owed mainly to the fact that Jean-Marie Le Pen, a right-wing extremist surprisingly, in the run-off election was reached.
Chirac (center), with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Chancellor Helmut Kohl (R.), 1995 at the signing of the Dayton agreement, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended.
But in his second term, Chirac left multiple otherwise distinct power of political instinct. Although the French Constitution does not obliged him to it, ordered the pro-European President victory is certainly a referendum on the project of a European Constitution, the lost, the advocates in may 2005 with a Bang. A resignation of the President would have been appropriate, however, Chirac remained and experienced the last two years of his term, in which the heavy suburban were riots, without the power of a political reboot.
Chirac seems to the French changes
As of 2007, his successor Nicolas Sarkozy is feeding in the Elysée Palace, changed once more the view of the French to the former President. Annoyed by the as Hyper-active and money fixed perceived Sarkozy, longed to return many of the subtle lover of Asian art, which was grown with its proximity to the people and jovial kind of the French to the heart.
His people behind Chirac had after twelve years of presidency, a mountain of unfinished social reforms, but also important choices. The abolition of conscription and the creation of a powerful use of army as well as the introduction of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in state schools and universities.
Great recognition at home and abroad, the President received also a Central correction of official History. As the first French head of state Chirac, known to be open to the involvement of France in the persecution and murder of French Jews during the Nazi occupation. Especially, this historical legacy will outlast his presidency until today.