A two-term French President Jacques Chirac has died at the age of 86, as the man who was the first leader to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust and defiantly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, died on Thursday 26th September 2019.
According to the report by Associated Press, the son son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux explained that Jacques Chirac died “peacefully, among his loved ones.” But failed to give a cause of his death, even though Chirac had repeated health problems since leaving office in 2007.
The report also stated that Jacques Chirac 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 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 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 U.S. 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.”
Chirac was also remembered for another trait valued by the French: style, AP had reported. #restinpeace