Emmanuel Macron announced the death of the former Culture Minister, 81, on Tuesday. This close friend of Édouard Balladur, who oversaw the privatization of TF1, had previously served as Defense Minister during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
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| François Léotard |
François Léotard, former Culture and Defense Minister, died in the afternoon at the age of 81. On Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron broke the news on his Twitter account.
"François Léotard served the state and carried a great cultural idea." We have lost a free spirit, a guy of literature and commitment, with his absence. "His native Var, the France he defended, and the Republic he loved have suffered a great loss today," the president said on social media.
Life of François Léotard
This enarque, born in 1942 into a family of former monarchists, began his political career in the ministry of then-Minister of the Interior Michel Poniatowski. This is the beginning of a meteoric ascension.
After being elected deputy mayor of Fréjus in 1977, the man who had pondered restoring order established the UDF in 1978. With one goal in mind: to assist President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in facing challenging parliamentary elections. This electoral machine is a waste of effort because it does not prevent the centrist from losing to François Mitterrand three years later.
In 1984, François Léotard declined to join the RPR, which was then led by Jacques Chirac and was preparing for the Élysée. What to expect for certain presidential aspirations. Concerned about his public image, the forty-year-old surrounds himself with young shoots from the right, from Alain Madelin through Gérard Longuet via Claude Malhuret, dubbed "the Leo band."
When Jacques Chirac took office in Matignon in 1986, François Léotard was appointed Minister of Culture. The rue de Valois resident, whose brother is the actor Philippe Léotard, gladly sabers in the budgets of artistic organisations.
He is the one who defends the careful building of the Buren columns of the Palais-Royal at the foot of his cabinet, as well as the privatization of TF1.
The split was formally completed following the death of activist Malik Oussekine on the fringes of a protest against the Devaquet law. François Léotard expressed his refusal to endorse Charles Pasqua, then Minister of the Interior and close friend of Jacques Chirac, in the 1988 presidential election and approached Raymond Barre.
Following François Mitterrand's re-election, the Varois is coming closer to François Bayrou, who is attempting to compile a list of Europeans to block the route to the Corrézien. He was named Minister of Defense in 1993 after being praised by the new Prime Minister, Édouard Balladur. He subsequently arranged for the presence of French peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia, followed by the intervention of French forces in Rwanda, which was widely condemned.
Following Jacques Chirac's triumph at the Élysée in 1995, the elected southern delegate became president of the UDF before attempting, but failing, to become president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. After more than two decades as mayor of Fréjus, the mayor was hampered in the countryside by various judicial issues.
François Léotard is progressively disappearing from political life after major health issues and a 10-month suspended jail term for "illegal financing of political parties and money laundering" in 2004.
Prison sentence suspension in Pakistan's Karachi
In an essay headlined It's going to end horribly, the ex-aedile who backed Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 issues a harsh assessment of the new president one year after his arrival at the Elysee Palace.
He was given a 2-year suspended jail term and a fine of 100,000 euros in 2017 by the Court of Justice of the Republic for "complicity in the misuse of corporate assets" in the Karachi case.
François Léotard backs Emmanuel Macron's reelection in 2022. Many influential people in politics have praised him, including Renaud Muselier, the PACA region's president, who referred to him on Tuesday as "a man of states and territories."