Former French President Jacques Chirac died at the age of 86 on Thursday.
Chirac was born in the French capital on November 29, 1932 MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th September, 2019) Former French President Jacques Chirac died at the age of 86 on Thursday.
Chirac was born in the French capital on November 29, 1932.
He was educated at the prestigious Parisian schools, Lycee Carnot and Louis-Le-Grand, and in 1954, he received a diploma in political science at the Paris Institute of Political Sciences. That same year, he attended Harvard University's summer school.
In 1956, the future president served in the army reserve and was wounded in the French colonial war in Algeria.
The following year, he returned to France and entered the National School of Administration. Upon graduation in 1959, he worked as an auditor at the Court of Auditors.
In 1962, Chirac began working in the Georges Pompidou government under President Charles de Gaulle, which marked the start of his political career.
In 1965, he served as a municipal councilor in the commune of Sainte-Fereole, the Correze Department, where the Chirac family originated from.
Two years later, Chirac was elected to the lower house of parliament. Then, he worked in the Ministry of Social Welfare.
From 1968-1971, he served as secretary of state for economy and finance, and in 1969, Chirac was also appointed as treasurer of the Claude Pompidou Foundation.
From 1970-1979, he was the president of the Correze Department Council.
From 1972-1974, Chirac held the posts of minister of agriculture and rural development and interior minister in the Pierre Messmer government.
In 1974, Chirac became secretary general of a Gaullist party, the Union of Democrats for the Defense of the Republic.
From 1974 to 1976, he served as prime minister of France under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. In late 1976, Chirac founded his own right-wing and conservative political party, the Union for the Defense of the Republic.
From 1977-1995, the future French leader worked as the mayor of Paris. From 1986-1988, he served as prime minister under President Francois Mitterrand while retaining his post as mayor.
From 1995-2007, Jacques Chirac was president of France.
Under his presidency, France joined the European Union's Economic and Monetary Union, strengthened its position in the bloc and established closer ties with the United Kingdom.
In 2003, Chirac along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was a vocal opponent of the US-UK invasion of Iraq under the false pretext that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In the domestic policy, Chirac was a proponent of economic liberalism but did not reject government intervention in the economy.
Since 2007, he was a life member of the Constitutional Council, the highest constitutional authority, and participated in its meetings until March 2011.
In 2011, a Paris court sentenced Chirac to two years of probation over charges that he created fictitious jobs during his tenure as Paris' mayor. The former president was not present at the trial due to health problems.
On September 26, 2019, Chirac passed away.
During his life, Chirac was awarded numerous titles and awards, including the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the National Order of Merit, the Order of Arts and Letters, the Order of the Black Star, the Cross for Military Valour, as well as other national and foreign honors.
In 1997, the then-French president was awarded Russia's Order of Merit for the Fatherland, I degree, for his great personal contribution to the development of cooperation and friendship between the peoples of Russia and France.
Ten years later, Russia awarded Chirac the National Award for outstanding achievements in humanitarian work. Chirac was also an honorary doctor of Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
In 2016, Paris' museum of primitive art, Quai Branly, was named after Jacques Chirac, its founder.
Chirac was married to Bernadette Chodron de Courcel. They had two daughters, Laurence (1958-2016) and Claude (1962). In 1979, the couple adopted a girl from Vietnam, Anh Dao Traxel.
