Chirac, Jacques

   born 1932.

   (adj. Chiraquien)

   Former conservative (Gaullist) President of France, from 1995 to 2007. Chirac's reelection in 2002 was an unexpected twist of fortune, caused by the elimination of the front-runner, socialist Lionel Jospin, pipped into third place in the first round of the election by a surge in the vote for the far right wing leader of the French National Front, Jean Marie Le Pen.Facing Le Pen in the second round, Chirac was reelected with a massive majority in what was in essence a contest between the the extreme right and everyone else. Had the second round of the election been a classic left-right contest, Chirac's re-election would not have been guaranteed.

   Jacques Chirac was a highly ambitious career politician, who worked his way rapidly up the ranks of the Gaullist movement; yet his first steps in politics were actually as a militant for the Communist party, and as a student he sold the communist newspaper l'Humanité on the streets of Paris. After graduating from "Sciences Po", he changed tack, married into Parisian high society, studied at the elite ENA (Ecole Nationale d'Administration), and then began a career in politics, working for the office of the prime minister, Georges Pompidou. In 1976, he was appointed junior minister for employment in the third Pompidou government, and from then after he remained one of the most omnipresent of conservative politicians in France. From Gaullist, he became a supporter of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing during Giscard's 1974 bid for the presidency - against the Gaullist Chaban-Delmas - and was appointed Prime Minister when Giscard won. Two years later, he resigned, complaining that Giscard was cramping his style.

   This was the start of his rise to the top. No longer prime minister, in 1977 he set about building his own power base, or rather his own two power bases, firstly as leader of a new political party, the RPR, created out of the old Gaullist UDR, and secondly by becoming elected Mayor of Paris. In 1981, he challenged Giscard for the presidency, but came third in the first round of the election, which was won by François Mitterrand. By 1986 he was clear leader of the conservative opposition. When the conservatives won the general election of that year, he was appointed prime minister, ushering in the first period of cohabitation (see below) between a president and a government of different political persuasions.

   In 1988, he was again a candidate in the presidential election, and again lost; but with his power base in Paris and in the RPR, he then had seven years in which to prepare his third, and first successful, challenge for the presidency.

   He served two terms as president, the first of seven years, the second of five - though as already stated, his reelection in 2002 was more due to the failure of the Socialist campaign and the surprise presence of Le Pen in the second round, than in his own popularity. It is still rather early to judge the Chirac presidency in a historic perspective, but early appraisals suggest that it will not be remembered as a great period in French history. It was a time during which France dramatically failed to adapt to the changes in the modern world - the end of the Cold War and the challenge of globalisation - and failed to push through the social and economic reforms that were allowing other developed nations such as France, Germany or Spain, to find their place in the new world order.