Jacques Chirac

22nd President of France .

After working as a politician, he was elected president in 1995 , and succeeded in re-election in 2002, serving his term until 2007. As a special note, at the time of his re-election, he had a record of being elected president with the highest vote rate in French history, the details of which will be discussed later.

After graduating from the Grand Ecole in Paris Sciences Po (French: Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris) and the National School of Public Administration (French: École Nationale d'Administration), he entered the political world through high-ranking government officials. did[4] Afterwards, he held various important positions such as Minister of Agriculture, Prime Minister, and Mayor of Paris, and finally became President of France.

Born in Paris as the son of a banker, he graduated from the Paris Political University (Sciences Po) in 1954.

Uniquely, he joined the Communist Party during his college days and had a history of working as a street public relations agent for the Communist Party's newspaper, ' Lümanite ' .[5] So, when I first visited the United States, I had to go through difficult interrogations. Of course, after catching the eye of Georges Pompidou and becoming his chief of staff, he left the Communist Party, ran for the general election in 1967, and was elected, after which he began his career as a right-wing politician. However, he was not ashamed of the fact that he was once a member of the Communist Party, and was rather proud of it, calling himself a progressive conservative .

After Pompidou became president, he became famous as a minister who defended the interests of farmers. Due to this popularity, he ran for president in 1974, but only came in fourth place.

After losing the election, he was appointed prime minister, and unlike during his second term as prime minister, he introduced many progressive policies. However, due to conflict with Valery Giscard d'Estaing, he resigned as prime minister. In the 1977 local elections, with the Socialist Party and the Communist Party winning a landslide victory nationwide and the right wing struggling, he was elected mayor of Paris for the first time in a direct election, defeating Michel d'Ornano, a friend of President Giscard d'Estaing.

With his victory in the 1986 general election, he became the first prime minister of the French Fifth Republic to have a cohabitation government and the first to have real power in internal affairs. However, at this time, its reputation was not so good, and it took a hard line of neoliberalism, including privatizing public broadcasting, which even Margaret Thatcher , who had promoted comprehensive privatization at a similar time, failed to do. But this has the opposite effect[6] His approval rating dropped dramatically, and he was defeated by left-wing candidate François Mitterrand in the 1988 presidential election .[7]

Afterwards, while seeking personal counseling, in the 1995 presidential election , he defeated Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, who was the same rightist, and took second place (first place was Lionel Jospin of the French Socialist Party ), advancing to the final vote. He defeated Jospin, the representative of the National Assembly, and was elected president.

At this time, unlike when he was Prime Minister, he put forward an economic policy based on the resolution of social gaps and a leadership-oriented line, and he also harshly criticized the neoliberal economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as Anglo -Saxon ultraliberalism .

However, the approval rating fell day by day due to the economic recession, and in order to make up for it, an early general election was held in 1997 to reverse the atmosphere like Charles de Gaulle, but the result was that the left wing won a large majority and Jospin became prime minister, and the right wing became the second party in the parliament, and Chirac lost real power.[8] In 2000, in order to align the term of office of the French National Assembly with the term of office of the president and coincide with the timing of elections to resolve cohabitation, the French referendum passed a constitutional amendment that shortened the term of office of the president from 7 years to 5 years.

After concentrating solely on diplomacy for five years, he ran into a close race with Lionel Jospin in the 2002 presidential election, thanks to his economic policies during his time as prime minister . As expected, Chirac advanced to the runoff in first place, but as the votes of left-leaning voters were dispersed due to the proliferation of left-wing candidates, Jospin was pushed to third place, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Front advanced to the runoff in second place, resulting in a shocking result. In the end, in the runoff election, even centrists and leftists voted for Chirac in the belief that he must stop Le Pen , and he was re-elected with an overwhelming vote rate of 82.21% (the highest vote rate ever). (For more details, see the 2002 French presidential election .) The right-wing coalition won the 2002 French National Assembly election that followed immediately, giving him strong power as president.

He tried to use his momentum to run for a third term, but due to health concerns due to old age,[9] Due to the rejection of his ambitious European constitution, he eventually declared not to run for president in 2007. Afterwards, he handed over his position to Nicolas Sarkozy and resigned after 12 years in office.

Four years after his retirement, he was sentenced to two years of probation from the Paris District Court for charges of paying 28 aides as a city hall employee . This is the first case of the French leader after the Philippe Petang . However, he was not arrested because he was sentenced to probation.[10]

There were also suspicions of collusion with TF1 . This is because the person responsible for privatizing TF1 in 1987 by selling it to Bouygues was the Prime Minister at the time, Jacques Chirac.

He hasn't appeared in public since 2014, but looking at his appearance in 2014, you can already tell that he's not that healthy from this point on.

2019 He died in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France, on Thursday , September 26, her wife said. She held a moment of silence in the French Senate and House of Representatives .

President Emmanuel Macron commemorated former President Chirac as a ‘free and great Frenchman’ in a special address to the nation. In addition, politicians who were his political opponents during his lifetime, such as Marine Le Pen of the National Coalition and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of Indomitable France, also expressed their condolences.

30 days. A state funeral was held at the Saint-Sulpice Cathedral in Paris . Originally, the funeral was held at Notre Dame Cathedral , but since Notre Dame Cathedral is still under restoration after a fire, the state funeral was held at Saint-Sulpice Cathedral, near former President Chirac's home.

This day was declared a 'National Day of Mourning', and a minute's silence was held in schools and public facilities.

At the funeral on this day , Vladimir Putin Russian President , Saad Hariri Current and former world leaders, including the Prime Minister of Lebanon , former U.S. President Bill Clinton , and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder , also attended.

The remains will be buried in the form of a family funeral at Montparnasse Cemetery in southern Paris, where his daughter Laurence, who died in 2016, is buried .

Since his death, his evaluation has been on the rise, but since the successive presidents have all been stubbornly unfavorable, he is being evaluated as the last giant in the French political world. He is also tall.

He is a recipient of the Order of Merit of the Russian Federation, 1st class.

When it comes to past history issues, despite his political position being on the right, he showed quite a bit of reflection, as he said he was a progressive conservative. Of course, there was no apology for the Algerian War of Independence , but for the Dreyfus Incident , the mistakes of the government and military at the time were officially acknowledged and apologized for the first time in 100 years. In addition, while François Mitterrand , who had worked in the Vichy government in the past, refused to make an official government apology for the 'Vel d'Hive incident', which was the Vichy government's Holocaust incident during World War II, Chirac showed an official apology for the 'Vel d'Hive incident' immediately after taking power. In the Oegyujanggak issue, it is said that he put pressure on librarians at the French National Library, who were skeptical about the return, and urged them to unconditionally accept Korea's demands.

During the 2002 French Revolution commemoration ceremony in front of the Arc de Triomphe, he was almost assassinated by Maxime Bruneri, a member of an extreme right-wing youth group. At the time, Maxim fired a .22-caliber rifle from a point only 40 to 50 meters away, but the first shot misfired and he was immediately suppressed by the crowd and police, allowing Chirac to avoid assassination. Because it was similar to the situation when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, it caused great shock in European society for a while.[11]

Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Atomic Bombing with the Pacific Nuclear Test In 1996, he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Peace.

He boasts of an incredible number of womanizers, to the point that even Mitterrand, who is second to none in womanizers, would be put to shame. He has faithfully continued the lineage of the splendid private lives of past French presidents, having flirted with numerous women since his tenure as mayor of Paris, to the point that he has earned the nickname “ 5 minutes including a shower.” The French, who believe in individual freedom, naturally do not pay much attention to the private lives of their presidents. The two had a fierce rivalry even outside of politics, to the point that rumors spread that their political rival Mitterrand had stolen Chirac’s mistresses. Some have said that “Mitterrand and Chirac competed to see who could have the most mistresses.” Chirac later recalled, “I had many secret mistresses.”

He is known to have loved Japanese culture , and was especially famous for his love of sumo . I named my dog ​​‘Sumo’ . He even got into an argument with Nicolas Sarkozy , who disparaged sumo . Gerhard Schröder recalled that whenever the two met, Chirac brought up sumo and Japanese culture. Coincidentally, along with his extravagant history with women, strong theories continued to spread that he had an extramarital affair with a Japanese man. In fact, Chirac had a Japanese bank account in which a large amount of money was deposited, and later there was speculation that it was money for living with his daughter out of wedlock. Meanwhile, he advised Japan to follow Germany's example regarding its past history . #

He ate haggis at the recommendation of Britain 's George Robertson, former NATO secretary-general, and then - German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin before the 2005 G8 summit. At the Russia -Germany summit meeting with the Russian president , he committed a serious diplomatic discourtesy by criticizing British cuisine and the British people , saying, "The only contribution Britain has made to European agriculture is mad cow disease . I can't trust people from countries with poor food."[12] At that time, it was interpreted that he was expressing his discomfort because the UK was holding France back on major issues such as the EU constitution, budget, common agricultural policy, Iraq war , and hosting the 2012 Olympics. However, of course, the British people and the British media greatly criticized his remarks. As if this wasn't enough, he also said, " British food is the second worst after Finland ," drawing aggro from Finland , which had been quiet.[13]

Comparison of support rates between Sirac and Materan

During his lifetime, he was close to Jean Chrétien, the 21st Prime Minister of Canada .

If you look, you will see that his experience as a member of the National Assembly (House of Representatives) and mayor of Paris are listed at the same time. This is because at one time in France, it was possible to simultaneously serve as a member of the National Assembly and the head of a local government . He was even able to hold the position of Prime Minister concurrently, so in 1986, he set the record of becoming a member of the House of Representatives of France, Mayor of Paris, and Prime Minister . Currently, concurrent positions are not possible due to changes in the law.[21]