PARIS: Jacques Chirac, a two-term French president who was the first leader to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust and defiantly opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, died on Thursday at age 86.

His son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux said that Chirac died “peacefully, among his loved ones”. He did not give a cause of death, though Chirac had had repeated health problems since leaving office in 2007.

His death was announced to lawmakers sitting in France’s National Assembly, and members held a minute of silence. Mourners brought flowers and police set up barricades around his Paris residence, as French people, and politicians of all stripes, looked past Chirac’s flaws to share grief and fond memories of his 12-year presidency and decades in politics. In a rare homage to Chirac, President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, planned a nationally televised speech on Wednesday evening in his honour.

Chirac was long the standard-bearer of France’s conservative right, and mayor of Paris for nearly two decades. He was nicknamed “Le Bulldozer” early in his career for his determination and ambition. As president from 1995-2007 he was a consummate global diplomat but failed to reform the 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 France’s part. “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.”

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 multipolarism as a counterweight to US global dominance, and defended agricultural subsidies over protests by the European Union.

In 2002, he presciently made a dramatic call for action against climate change, raising awareness at a time when the world did not seem to notice, or care. “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 that the 21st century must not become “the century of humanity’s crime against life itself”.

After two failed attempts, Chirac won the presidency in 1995, ending 14 years of Socialist rule. But his government quickly fell out of favour and parliamentary elections in 1997 forced him to share power with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

The pendulum swung the other way during Chirac’s re-election bid in 2002, when then-far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen took a surprise second place behind Chirac in first-round voting. In a rare show of unity, the moderate right and the left united behind Chirac, and he crushed le Pen with 82 per cent of the vote in the runoff. Later that year, an extreme right militant shot at Chirac and missed during a Bastille Day parade in 2002.

While he had won a convincing mandate for his anti-crime, pro-Europe agenda at home, Chirac’s outspoken opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 rocked relations with France’s top ally, and the clash weakened the Atlantic alliance. 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. He was the first head of state to meet with US President George W. Bush after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. Chirac was greeted by adulating crowds on a 2003 trip to Algeria, where he once battled Algerians fighting for independence from France. At home, myriad scandals dogged Chirac, including allegations of misuse of funds and kickbacks during his time as Paris mayor.

In recent years, Chirac was very rarely seen in public. He was visibly weak and walked with a cane at a November 2014 award ceremony of his foundation, which supports peace projects.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2019