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03-27-2006, 01:40 PM
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New book takes aim at Chirac
28mar06
PARIS: A bestselling new biography accuses French leader Jacques Chirac of presiding over a national drift into inertia, division and debt.
The Tragedy of the President, by political journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert, has sold almost 200,000 copies in two weeks - a new print run is under way - and is the talk of Paris for its damning yet affectionate portrait of the 73-year-old French President.
According to Giesbert, who edits the Centre-Right news weekly Le Point, Chirac has "been transformed with age into the incarnation of French decline".
Through a political career that began in 1962 in the cabinet of Georges Pompidou, led to two terms as prime minister and concluded with 12 years in the presidency, he has come to live "in concubinage" with the Republic.
"So close are they that at the end they have come to resemble each other: which, given their respective states, is a compliment neither to the Republic nor to Chirac," he writes.
Emptying notebooks of interviews conducted over 20 years with Chirac and other leaders, Giesbert takes the reader through the President's political ups and downs - setbacks, capitulations and about-turns redeemed by an insatiable energy and electoral hunger.
According to the author, Chirac shares with his predecessor Francois Mitterrand responsibility for 25 years of missed reforms, at the end of which national debt has spiralled out of control, the state is employing 25 per cent of the workforce, city suburbs are filled with an angry immigrant underclass and, more recently, the country has been torn by violent protests over a labour law reforms.
Tracing Chirac's fear of the "street" to 1986, when as prime minister he gave in to student demonstrations after police killed a protester, Giesbert says his instincts are soft-Left consensual and he accuses him of accompanying rather than leading the country.
"He brings up the rear. He's the shepherd from behind. History is made by people who don't drift down the slope, who dare to say no against the dictates of the time. But Chirac doesn't give a fig for all that," he says.
"A long time ago he decided that he would not make history, but history would make him." AFP
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New book takes aim at Chirac
28mar06
PARIS: A bestselling new biography accuses French leader Jacques Chirac of presiding over a national drift into inertia, division and debt.
The Tragedy of the President, by political journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert, has sold almost 200,000 copies in two weeks - a new print run is under way - and is the talk of Paris for its damning yet affectionate portrait of the 73-year-old French President.
According to Giesbert, who edits the Centre-Right news weekly Le Point, Chirac has "been transformed with age into the incarnation of French decline".
Through a political career that began in 1962 in the cabinet of Georges Pompidou, led to two terms as prime minister and concluded with 12 years in the presidency, he has come to live "in concubinage" with the Republic.
"So close are they that at the end they have come to resemble each other: which, given their respective states, is a compliment neither to the Republic nor to Chirac," he writes.
Emptying notebooks of interviews conducted over 20 years with Chirac and other leaders, Giesbert takes the reader through the President's political ups and downs - setbacks, capitulations and about-turns redeemed by an insatiable energy and electoral hunger.
According to the author, Chirac shares with his predecessor Francois Mitterrand responsibility for 25 years of missed reforms, at the end of which national debt has spiralled out of control, the state is employing 25 per cent of the workforce, city suburbs are filled with an angry immigrant underclass and, more recently, the country has been torn by violent protests over a labour law reforms.
Tracing Chirac's fear of the "street" to 1986, when as prime minister he gave in to student demonstrations after police killed a protester, Giesbert says his instincts are soft-Left consensual and he accuses him of accompanying rather than leading the country.
"He brings up the rear. He's the shepherd from behind. History is made by people who don't drift down the slope, who dare to say no against the dictates of the time. But Chirac doesn't give a fig for all that," he says.
"A long time ago he decided that he would not make history, but history would make him." AFP
privacy (javascript:void(0)) terms (javascript:void(0)) © The Australian