Jacques Chirac was a two-term French president, who was the first leader to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust and who defiantly opposed the United States (U.S.) invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He was born in Paris on November 29, 1932 and the only child of a well-to-do businessman. A lively youth, he was expelled from school for shooting paper wads at a teacher. He sold the Communist daily “L’Humanite” on the streets for a brief time.
Chirac travelled to the United States as a young man, and as president he fondly remembered hitchhiking across the country. He worked as a fork-lift operator in St. Louis and a soda jerk at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant while attending summer school at Harvard University.
Chirac served in Algeria during the independence war, which France lost, and enrolled at France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the elite training ground for the French political class.
In 1956, Chirac married Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, herself involved in politics in the central farming region of Correze. They had two daughters, Laurence and Claude, who became his presidential spokeswoman.
A dominant figure in French politics for four decades, Chirac was long the standard-bearer of France’s conservative right, and mayor of Paris for nearly two decades. As president from 1995-2007, he was a consummate global diplomat, but failed to reform the French economy or defuse tensions between police and minority youths that exploded into riots across France in 2005.
Yet Chirac showed courage and statesmanship during his presidency.
In what may have been his finest hour, France’s last leader with memories of World War II crushed the myth of his nation’s innocence in the persecution of Jews and their deportation during the Holocaust when he acknowledged the actions of the French nation at the time.
“Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state,” he said on July 16, 1995. “France, the land of the Enlightenment and human rights … delivered those it protects to their executioners,” he added.
With words less grand, the man who embraced European unity — once calling it an “art” — raged at the French ahead of their “no” vote in a 2005 referendum on the European constitution meant to fortify the EU.
“If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, do it, but after don’t complain,” he said. “It’s stupid, I’m telling you.” He was politically humiliated by the defeat.
At home, a host of scandals dogged Chirac, including allegations of the misuse of funds and of kickbacks during his time as Paris mayor.
He was formally charged in 2007 after he left office as president, losing immunity from prosecution. In 2011, he was found guilty of misuse of public money, breach of trust and illegal conflict of interest and given a two-year suspended jail sentence. He did not attend the trial. His lawyers said he was suffering severe memory lapses, possibly related to a stroke.
Chirac ultimately became one of the French’s favorite political figures, often praised for his down-to-earth human touch rather than his political achievements.
In his 40 years in public life, Chirac was derided by critics as opportunistic and impulsive. But as president, he embodied the fierce independence so treasured in France. He championed the United Nations and multi-polarism as a counterweight to U.S. global dominance, and defended agricultural subsidies over protests by the European Union.
In 1995, one of his first decisions as president was to launch a series of nuclear tests in French Polynesia — prompting criticism from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the U.S. France stopped its tests the next year when it signed the international treaty banning all nuclear explosions.
In 2002, Chirac presciently made a dramatic call for action against climate change.
“Our house is burning down and we’re blind to it. Nature, mutilated and overexploited, can no longer regenerate and we refuse to admit it,” he said at the Johannesburg World Summit, adding the 21st century must not become “the century of humanity’s crime against life itself.”
Chirac was also remembered for another trait valued by the French: style.
Tall, dapper and charming, Chirac was a well-bred bon vivant who openly enjoyed the trappings of power: luxury trips abroad and life in a government-owned palace. His slicked-back hair and ski-slope nose were favorites of political cartoonists.
Yet he retained a common touch that worked wonders on the campaign trail, exuding warmth when kissing babies and enthusiasm when farmers — a key constituency — displayed their tractors. His preferences were for western movies and beer — and “tete de veau,” calf’s head.
Chirac’s outspoken opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 rocked relations with France’s top ally and weakened the Atlantic alliance. Angry Americans poured Bordeaux wine into the gutter and restaurants renamed French fries “freedom fries” in retaliation.
The United States invaded anyway, yet Chirac gained international support from other war critics.
Troubles over Iraq aside, Chirac was often seen as the consummate diplomat. He cultivated ties with leaders across the Middle East and Africa and was the first head of state to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But, all these became history yesterday as condolences poured in from French citizens, including political rivals, and international leaders following his death.
