FRANCE:Economically the 12 years of Chirac's presidency have been a failure, writes Lara Marlowin Paris
Almost exactly 40 years to the day after he was first elected to public office, President Jacques Chirac announced the end of his political career last night on French television and radio. His term will end at midnight on May 16th. For the first time, France will have a president born after the second World War.
On March 12th, 1967, Chirac was elected as a deputy in the National Assembly from his native Corrèze. For more than half of his 74 years, Chirac has been lodged, fed, laundered and chauffeur-driven at the expense of the republic. He was elected four times as a regional councillor, nine times as a deputy, three times as mayor of Paris and twice as president of France.
Chirac absorbed blows like a boxer, losing the presidency twice to the socialist François Mitterrand. In both his 1995 and 2002 victories, he rallied after opinion polls predicted he would lose. One by one, Chirac politically destroyed his rivals on the right: Jacques Chaban- Delmas, Valéry Giscard- d'Estaing, Edouard Balladur . . . except for the last one, Nicolas Sarkozy, the nervy upstart who was a close family friend, serving as Chirac's daughter Claude's witness at her marriage. But Sarkozy betrayed Chirac by supporting Balladur in 1995, then hijacking the UMP, the big party of the right which Chirac created for himself.
Sarkozy pushed Chirac into announcing on Bastille Day, 2004, that he would hold a referendum on the European constitutional treaty. It was Chirac's undoing. The president long hoped to stand for a third term, but the referendum defeat in May 2005, a minor stroke the following September, weeks of rioting in November 2005 and more demonstrations against the "First Job Contract" last year destroyed his chances.
Foreign policy has been Chirac's strong suit, though his European record was tarnished by his mishandling of the constitutional treaty referendum. At the summit in Brussels on Friday, he claimed credit for breakthroughs in three areas of European integration: the launching of the euro, European defence, and progress towards a European policy on the environment.
Chirac showed foresight and strength of character in opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, though French critics say the manner in which it was done needlessly damaged relations with Washington. In his last New Year's wishes to the diplomatic corps, Chirac indulged in an "I told you so".
"This adventure [ the Iraq war] has worsened the divisions among communities and threatened the very integrity of Iraq. It has undermined the stability of the entire region, where every country now fears for its security and its independence. It has offered terrorism a new field for expansion," he said.
Chirac's favourite themes - the need for a multipolar world, the urgency of avoiding a "clash of civilisations", the environment and a more equitable distribution of wealth between north and south - have all become fashionable.
In domestic policy as well as foreign, Chirac has been a better diagnostician than practitioner. He won the 1995 election with promises to heal France's "social fracture". Twelve years later, the gap between have and have-nots is greater than ever. In the words of Eric Le Boucher of Le Monde, Chirac has been "the president of aid, subsidies, credits, guarantees, the principle of precaution, insurance. . ." This winter, faced with a tent city of the homeless alongside a Paris canal, in a typical exercise in "compassionate Chiraquism", the president invented an "enforceable right" to housing.
Economically, the 12 years of Chirac's presidency have been a failure. The pro-Sarkozy economist Nicolas Baverez says the French population have been "pauperised", with a standard of living now 38 per cent below that of the US, 20 per cent behind Ireland and 12 per cent behind Britain.
The public debt has mushroomed from 58 per cent of GDP in 2002 to 66.6 per cent at present. Last week it emerged that France's jobless rate is probably 9.5 per cent and not 8.7 per cent as claimed by the government. A quote from Chirac's first presidential campaign 26 years ago shows how little has been accomplished in the past quarter century. The same words hold true today: "France has a rich history and culture," Chirac said.
"She has the means to achieve grandeur and progress, yet she is weakening. Her economy is shaky. Her position in the world is eroding. Weariness and doubt have wormed their way into the heart of the French. Is it possible to stop this deterioration?"
The "weariness and doubt" have not dissipated, but Chirac has shown leadership in his abhorrence of racism, and in forcing the French to admit the errors of their past, from slavery to assisting the Nazis in deporting Jews.
His most concrete achievement was the rigorous emphasis on road safety that is estimated to have saved more than 9,000 lives in the past four years.
A spate of scandals involving the corrupt financing of Chirac's former party, the RPR, exorbitant spending at Paris city hall under his stewardship, and the Clearstream affair, in which Chirac may or may not have colluded with prime minister Dominique de Villepin in an attempt to smear Sarkozy, seem to have subsided. It is unlikely that Chirac will ever be called to account.
Chirac has acquired a statesman-like aura. He wants to leave office as the non-partisan president of all the French. But he is unlikely to go away. In recent weeks, he has exhausted the Élysée's protocol office and speechwriters by hosting international conferences on Lebanon, the environment and Africa.
The severe, lifelong anorexia of the Chiracs' daughter, Laurence, has created a powerful, tragic bond between Chirac, his wife, Bernadette, and their other daughter, Claude, who has been her father's close adviser at the Élysée. In retirement, he may play a more active role in the newly renamed Fondation Jacques Chirac for the handicapped. Or he may seek the position of secretary general in the UN Organisation for the Environment which he seeks to establish.