Jacques Chirac, France’s second-longest serving president, dies aged 86
Former French president Jaques Chirac at a ceremony after he received an honourary doctorate at the Turkish-French Galatasaray University in Istanbul, Turkey. May 11, 2010.
As president from 1995-2007, he was a consummate global diplomat but failed to reform the economy or defuse tensions between police and minority youths that exploded into riots across France in 2005.Yet Chirac showed courage and statesmanship during his presidency. With words less grand, the man who embraced European unity — once calling it an "art" — raged at the French ahead of their "no" vote in a 2005 referendum on the European constitution meant to fortify the EU.
The pendulum swung the other way during Chirac's re-election bid in 2002, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen took a surprise second place behind Chirac in first-round voting. In a rare show of unity, the moderate right and the left united behind Chirac, and he crushed le Pen with 82 percent of the vote in the runoff.
He cultivated ties with leaders across the Middle East and Africa. He was the first head of state to meet with US President George W Bush after the September 11 terrorist attacks. While still president in 2005, Chirac suffered a stroke that put him in the hospital for a week. He had a pacemaker inserted in 2008.Jacques Chirac was born in Paris on November 29, 1932, the only child of a well-to-do businessman. A lively youth, he was expelled from school for shooting paper wads at a teacher. He sold the Communist daily "L'Humanite" on the streets for a brief time.
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