Biography: Francois Mitterand
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Born on:
1916,
October
26th
Dead on:
1996,
January
8th
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Countries:
France
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Categories:
Heads of state
Politicians
Presidents
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Related works:
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François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French politician. He was elected President of France in May 1981, re-elected in 1988 and held office until 1995.
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 his political views evolved as he met prisoners from all kinds of social backgrounds. He escaped in 1941 on his second attempt. He then reached the so-called free zone and became an employee of the Vichy government and served as a spy for the Free French Forces.
Later he worked with the French Resistance in a group including several Vichy officials, while still holding his 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 received the Francisque, the honorific distinction of the Vichy regime. When Mitterrand's Vichy past was exposed in the 1950s, he initially denied having received the Francisque.
After the war he quickly moved back into politics. In 1946 he was elected as representative for the Nièvre département and in 1947 joined a centerist grouping, the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR). He held various offices in the Fourth Republic as deputy and minister (with eleven portfolios), before resigning in 1957 over the French policies during the Algerian war of independence. Mitterrand is said to have covered up, as justice minister, various illegal acts, including torture, during the repression of the independence movement.
In 1958, he was one of the few to object to the nomination of Charles de Gaulle as head of government, and de Gaulle's plan for a French Fifth Republic. This attitude may have been a factor in Mitterrand losing his seat in the 1958 elections, beginning a long "crossing of the desert" (note: this term is usually applied to de Gaulle's decline in influence for a similar period). 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.
In the Fifth Republic he stood in the Presidential elections against Charles de Gaulle in 1965 but was defeated. President of the Democratic and Socialist Federation of the Left (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.
In the French Presidential Election of 1981 he became the first socialist President of the Fifth Republic, and his government the first left-wing government in 23 years. One of his first decisions was to ask Parliament to abolish the death penalty; Parliament also voted in 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). Various "great projects" 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 Nationale 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.
Controversy surrounding the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was intense after American researcher Robert Gallo and French scientist Luc Montagnier both claimed to have discovered it. Both scientists had given the new virus different names!. The controversy was eventually settled by an agreement (helped along by the mediation of Dr Jonas Salk) between President Ronald Reagan and Mitterand which gave equal credit to both men and their teams. This was an extraordinary event, which ignored scientific realities and was the first time a biological controversy had had to be resolved at such an elevated political level. Clearly, Mitterand and Reagan felt that this was not an issue for two great nations to fall out over.
On 2 February 1993, in his capacity as co-prince of Andorra, Mitterrand and Joan Martí Alanis, who was Bishop of Urgell and therefore Andorra's other co-prince, signed Andorra's new constitution, which was later approved by referendum in the principality.
Because the Left had had a series of defeats in national elections since 1958 when Mitterrand was elected in 1981, he was largely regarded as the savior of the Left and for this reason was highly regarded by many Socialists, perhaps to the point of ridicule (the so-called tontonmania, from tonton, or "uncle", Mitterrand's nickname). Critics contend that this led to complacency and tolerance for Mitterrand's shortcomings: a monarchic style of presidency reminiscent of that of Charles de Gaulle, lack of transparency regarding his early career and his ties to Vichy, and other scandals (see below).
His term as President ended in May 1995, having served longer in the post than any other man. He was succeeded by Jacques Chirac, with whom he had previously shared power from 1986 on after Mitterrand had lost his majority in the parliament, a time in which Chirac as his conservative prime minister handled mostly interior politics while Mitterrand concentrated on foreign affairs. Mitterrand died of advanced prostate cancer eight months later at the age of 79.
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; see below. His nephew Frédéric Mitterrand is a journalist, and his brother-in-law Roger Hanin a well-known actor.
After being diagnosed with cancer, Mitterand spent time in Egypt communing with the Pharaohs, contemplating a suitable last act for a man of his stature. He decided to have his last act involve a meal – the centerpiece of which was ortolan, a tiny, yellow-throated songbird that is said to embody the soul of France. Ortolan is a delicacy, but since it is an endangered species, it is actually illegal to eat it in France.
A typical ortolan weighs only 55 g and is about the size of a man's thumb. Depending on the preparation, the diner is sometimes required to first bite off the head of the bird and discard it on the plate. Then, the rest of the bird is eaten in one mouthful, including the bones and internal organs. A napkin is worn over the diner's head to prevent the aroma from escaping.
Thirty close friends and members of Mitterrand's family sat with him as they all indulged in this last meal of ortolan. Several members spit up the bird, which is common among first-time ortolan eaters but considered extremely gauche.
Mitterrand, in a deteriorating state of health, drifted in and out of consciousness during the meal. He refused to take any further sustenance and died eight days later. Michael Paterniti wrote an article about this famous last meal for the May 1998 issue of Esquire magazine magazine and was later interviewed for the November 27, 1998 broadcast of the popular public radio show, "This American Life".
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 numerous affairs; one was with Anne Pingeot, out of which a daughter, Mazarine, was born. Mitterrand sought secrecy on that issue, which lasted until November 1994, when Mitterrand's failing health and impending retirement meant he could no longer count on the fear and respect he had once engendered among French journalists. Also, Mazarine, a college student, had reached an age where she could no longer be protected as a minor.
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 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.
Admiral Pierre Lacoste, the former head of the DGSE, confirmed in July 2005 that Mitterrand had personally authorized the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, on July 10, 1985. The vessel was preparing to protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific when the explosion sank the ship, killing photographer Fernando Pereira. The New Zealand government called the bombing the country's first terror attack. |
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