|
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (October 26, 1916 - January 8, 1996) was a French politician and President of France from May 1981, re-elected in 1988, until 1995.
Early career
Mitterrand was born in Jarnac, Charente. In his youth he was a staunch conservative and an ardent Catholic. His first political act was to join the ultranationalist Croix de Feu, which he did in preference to the larger but equally conservative Action Française due to the proscription of the latter organisation by the Vatican. Enrolled during WWII, he was made prisoner in 1940 and escaped in 1941. He reached the so-called free zone and joined the Vichy government as a junior minister. Later he worked with the French Resistance in a group including several Vichy officials, while still holding his ministerial job. Almost until his death, Mitterrand would lay a wreath every year on the grave of Pétain, the head of the Vichy government and a French hero of the First World War; in 1943 he is said to have received the francisque, the honorific distinction of the Vichy regime, which he later denied.
After the war he quickly moved back into politics, joined a center-left resistance party and was elected as representative for the Nièvre département in 1946. He held various offices in the Fourth Republic before resigning in 1957 over the French policy for Algiers. In 1958, he was one of the few to object to the nomination of Charles de Gaulle as head of government, and lost his seat in the 1958 elections. In 1959, on the avenue de l'Observatoire in Paris, Mitterrand escaped an assassin's bullet by diving behind a hedge. The incident brought him a great deal of publicity, boosting his political ambitions. Some of his critics claim that he had staged the incident himself. Prosecution was initiated on the issue, but was later dropped.
Presidency In the Fifth Republic he stood in the Presidential elections against Charles de Gaulle in 1965 but was defeated. President of the Left Federation (coalition of socialists and liberals) from 1965 to 1968, he turned to the French Socialist Party (PS), becoming leader of the party by 1971, following the Congress of Epinay. He stood again in 1974 opposite Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and was again defeated. But in the French Presidential Election of 1981 he became the first socialist President of the Fifth Republic. One of his first decisions was to abolish the death penalty. He also imposed a wealth tax in the first year of his first term as President.
Domestically, his aims were blunted first by a series of financial crises, and then by a conservative parliament (from 1986 to 1988, and 1993 to 1995), although he worked well with the Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. Various Grand Projets were completed during his Presidency, including the Channel Tunnel, the pyramid at the Louvre (1988), the Grande Arche at La Défense (1989), and the Bibliothèque de France (1995). Mitterrand also presided over the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989.
His major achievements came internationally, especially in the European Economic Community. He supported the extension of the Community to Spain and Portugal (who both joined in January 1986) and in February 1986 he helped the Single European Act come into effect. He worked well with Helmut Kohl and improved Franco-German relations measurably. Together they fathered the Maastricht Treaty, which was signed on February 7, 1992.
His term as President ended in May 1995. He was succeeded by Jacques Chirac and died of cancer six months later.
His wife, Danielle Mitterrand, is a left-wing militant, with whom he had two sons: Jean-Christophe and Gilbert Mitterrand. He also had a daughter, Mazarine Pingeot. His nephew Frédéric Mitterrand is a journalist.
Scandals and controversies of Mitterrand's presidency and death Following his death, a controversy erupted when his former physician, Dr Claude Gubler, wrote a book called Le Grand Secret ("The Great Secret") explaining that Mitterrand had had false health reports published since November 1981, hiding his cancer. Mitterrand's family then prosecuted Gubler and his publisher for violating medical secrecy.
Mitterrand, a married man, had an affair with Anne Pingeot, out of which a daughter, Mazarine, was born. Mitterrand sought secrecy on that issue; this secrecy lasted until November 1994, when Mitterrand was not President any more and Mazarine was a college student, able to withstand media attention.
From 1982 to 1986, Mitterrand established an "anti-terror cell" installed as a service of the president of the republic. This was a fairly unusual setup, since such law enforcement missions against terrorism are normally left to the French National Police and French Gendarmerie, run under the cabinet and the Prime Minister, and under the supervision of the judiciary. The cell was largely made from members of these services, but it bypassed the normal line of command and safeguards.
Most markedly, it appears that the cell, under illegal presidential orders, obtained wiretaps on journalists, politicians and other personalities who may have been an impediment for Mitterrand's personal affairs, especially those who may have revealed the situation of Mazarine and her mother. The illegal wiretapping was revealed in 1993 by Libération; the case against members of the cells went to trial in November 2004. [1] (http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-387334,0.html) [2] (http://www.netscape.qc.ca/article/?cat=Monde&article=M111351AU&ch=a)
External link - "Mitterrand's Legacy" (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19960129&s=singer) (1996) in The Nation
|
Feeds |
Contact