Word: mitterrand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lenoir has made a habit of jumping gender barriers. Now she's bridging political divides as well. Despite links with Socialist leaders dating back to the late President François Mitterrand, the leftist Lenoir was named France's Minister of European Affairs last week by new conservative Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The nomination of Lenoir surprised many on both ends of the political spectrum. But her appointment was described by some observers as proof of Raffarin's determination to assemble a government attentive to - and comprising - all segments of French social and political life. "I think...
Chirac insisted that his declaration had been planned for some time, but just how long is the subject of some debate. Chirac's original battle plan - drawn up by his daughter and P.R. supremo Claude - replicated the tactics used by Socialist President François Mitterrand to foil an earlier Chirac bid in 1988. Back then, Mitterrand remained regally above the fray until four weeks before the election, when he launched a blistering campaign focused on a united France. Mitterrand trounced Chirac with 54% of the vote in the second round runoff, the biggest presidential majority of the past...
Jean-Christophe found such aristocratic behavior stifling and complains that he "never wanted to be the prince of a king but rather a child of a father." Yet by the time he was born, Mitterrand senior was already a deputy in the French National Assembly, and his family was often in the spotlight. The social pressures, along with lonely periods in boarding schools, turned Jean-Christophe from a sociable teenager into a hermit. "I wasn?t born solitary," he writes, "but, separated from my family, I became that as a consequence of my successive absences." Rather than rebelling against...
...into illegal arms trading to Angola, Jean-Christophe was jailed for three weeks. After being officially placed under investigation for influence peddling, he was freed from custody on a $700,000 bail - a sum paid by his mother, with whom he has lived since his release. In his book Mitterrand denies the charges, which were dismissed last summer on a technicality, claiming the $1.8 million that ended up in his Swiss bank account came from consulting, not illegal arms trading. And again he says that he is a victim - this time of judges, the French press and former Socialist Party...
That defense ignores the "everyone is doing it" environment of the Mitterrand years. But it is true that France?s power establishment - and public - has never been kind to the Mitterrand boy. In the preface to the book, journalist Pierre Péan backs Jean-Christophe?s claim that he provides a handy target for all the accumulated hatred and frustration generated by his father. Péan admits to having been among those who "adopted, without verifying, the numerous rumors about...