During Francois Mitterrand's 14-year rule as President of France, political satirists referred to him as "Dieu". And indeed, he often behaved as if he were God. The constitution made him almost omnipotent, and his network of dirty tricksters and phone tappers - disguised as an elite "anti-terrorist" unit at the Elysee gave him a form of omniscience. God-like, Mitterrand told the French people in his last New Year's Eve address on December 31st, 1994, "I believe in the powers of the spirit and I shall never leave you."
When he died on January 8th, 1996, Mitterrand was mourned by millions of Frenchmen. Notre Dame Cathedral was packed for his funeral Mass, and 180,000 people made the pilgrimage to Jarnac, the place of his birth and burial, in the year following his death. His friends, led by the former foreign minister, Roland Dumas, and Mitterrand's illegitimate daughter Mazarine Pingeot, founded the "Francois Mitterrand Institute", to which Mazarine entrusted the personal archives left to her by her father. Today, the Institute will complete a three-day colloquium devoted to the initial years of Mitterrand's presidency.
But Dumas will have a hard time restoring Mitterrand's reputation. Rarely has a politician fallen so far, so fast, in public esteem.
"It is certain that in three years his image has altered, tarnished," the historian and professor Rene Remond, who has co-presided the Mitterrand colloquium with Dumas, told The Irish Times. Yet even he is puzzled by the public disavowal of a man who was worshipped when he came to power in 1981. "True, there were lots of `affairs'," Remond says. "But there haven't been many new revelations since he died - we knew most of it, or suspected it."
Among the indignities suffered by Mitterrand on the third anniversary of his death this month, the Mayor of Jarnac, Maurice Voiron, confirms that only a few hundred people had visited his grave. "This year, there were no official visitors - even people like Jack Lang (Mitterrand's Minister of Culture and a true believer) didn't show up," Voiron says. "I think people are put off by the scandals."
"The affairs" are "drying up the source" of pilgrims to the town of 5,000, the Mayor adds. The souvenir boutiques that used to sell Francois Mitterrand busts, T-shirts and medals have shut down.
It is hard to know where to start cataloguing "the affairs" referred to by the historian and the mayor. From the very beginning of his mandate, when Francois Mitterrand confided in his prime minister that he was suffering from prostate cancer, he lied to the French people. Every year, Mitterrand's doctor published a phoney health report for public consumption. That Mitterrand could rule France for 14 years while undergoing cancer treatment - and keep it secret - is a measure of his hunger for power.
In Mitterrand's case, power was also an aphrodisiac. His appetite for women was legendary - the Bebete Show television puppets mocked his intimate relationship with his Prime Minister, Edith Cresson. Through sometimes vicious tactics, Mitterrand managed to keep the existence of his long-time mistress, the museum curator Anne Pingeot, and their daughter Mazarine, secret for nearly two decades - while lodging them at taxpayers' expense in an annex of the Elysee. After his death, another mistress, a Swedish journalist named Christina Forsne, recounted her night-time visits to the Elysee in a book.
The French do not hold sexual indiscretions against their politicians. But the honesty of Francois Mitterrand was questioned long before another of his prime ministers, Michel Rocard, created a scandal last November by announcing "my real problem was that Mitterrand was not an honest man". Throughout his career, Mitterrand was dogged by doubts about his second World War record. He received the "francisque" medal awarded by the Vichy collaborationist regime, and for decades protected Rene Bousquet, a friend who had been a Vichy-era police chief responsible for deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps.
After Mitterrand survived an assassination attempt in the avenue de l'Observatoire in 1960, there were widespread allegations that he staged the attack for his own political benefit.
Two close associates of Mitterrand, Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy and Francois de Grossouvre, an aide, committed suicide during his presidency - Grossouvre shot himself in the head in his Elysee office. Mitterrand's defence minister resigned after a photographer was killed when French frogmen blew up the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior. One of Mitterrand's closest friends, Patrice Pelat, was accused of using information supplied by the president for insider trading. In another financial scandal, the Socialist party treasurer was stripped of his seat in parliament. Mitterrand's sports minister, a shady, self-made millionaire named Bernard Tapie, was imprisoned for fixing a football match and evading taxes.
A 1994 book called Mitterrand and the 40 Thieves sold 800,000 copies. This week, the tabloid France-Soir interviewed Bernard Pichon, a former French secret agent who claims that Mitterrand acolytes creamed off 18 million French francs in commissions on a $25 billion secret loan from Saudi Arabia to France in 1983.
In 1998, "the keeper of the Mitterrand flame", Roland Dumas, was placed under investigation for fraud in the Elf-Acquitaine scandal. Dumas cannot explain how 9 million French francs in cash was deposited in his bank accounts. Dumas's mistress received 59 million French francs from the French state-owned oil company to influence him - and published a book called The Whore of the Republic in which she told her story. Dumas refuses to step down as president of the Constitutional Council (where Mitterrand ensconced him), but this month scolded his fellow socialists, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and three cabinet ministers, for failing to praise Mitterrand in celebrations for the advent of the euro.
While mired in sleaze, Mitterrand was obsessed by his place in history. With great literary talent, he wrote close to a dozen books. "At the end of his second term," Roland Dumas has said, "he repeated to me several times, `I have confidence in the judgment of history'." Like Louis XIV, Mitterrand raided public coffers to build monuments to his long rule: the Bastille Opera, the Grande Arche de la Defense, the Tres Grande Bibliotheque, the glass pyramid at the Louvre.
Mitterrand's economic policies led to three devaluations of the franc and the companies he nationalised were re-privatised by the right just a few years later. Unemployment reached unprecedented levels under his rule. The historian Rene Remond nonetheless believes history may partially rehabilitate Francois Mitterrand. "At the end of the day, `the affairs' will not transform society," he says.
It was Francois Mitterrand who brought the left back to power after 23 years in opposition. Among his achievements, Remond cites decentralisation that gave more power to French regions, three laws intended to clean up the financing of political parties, the abolition of the death penalty, the end of the state radio and television monopoly, reconciliation with Germany and European construction. "It's true there was dishonesty, that the very image of public life has been affected," Remond adds.
"The judgment of Mitterrand the man will remain mixed . . . He was guilty of indulgence towards people who were known to have no morality - starting with Roland Dumas."