In June 2017, you had to see him striding fiercely through the streets of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, leaflets in hand and high verb, to understand that Claude Goasguen did not like to lose. Largely surpassed at the end of the first round of the legislative elections by a LREM candidate, he was given a loser, but had finally won the victory in the second round.
The opposite scenario unfolded with the coronavirus which finally prevailed this Thursday morning at the age of 75 years. Hospitalized very early, from March 24, and in a serious condition, the former minister of Jacques Chirac nevertheless seemed to have won the game against the virus after 22 days of artificial coma in the intensive care unit of the Georges Pompidou hospital. "He was better, I even spoke to him on Wednesday," said a family member on Thursday, still in shock, a few hours after her heart dropped.
A few days before embarking on his last battle, Claude Goasguen had won that of the first round of the municipal elections in his 16th arrondissement where he reigned supreme. The list which he supported, directed by the lawyer Francis Szpiner, flirted with the absolute majority, very far in front of that of the outgoing mayor Danièle Giazzi which he had however chosen himself to succeed him (multiple mandates obliges) to the borough hall. But this one had taken too much independence for his taste in the eyes of the volcanic baron.
"I have a Mediterranean temperament," said this Breton, born endlessly in ... Toulon and of Corsican mother. "At the UMP, he had the role of the right-handed imprecator that he played wonderfully," slips his friend Gérard Longuet who knew him, a high school student at Henri IV, then studying in far-right movements. "Me, I cofounded Occident, it was not part of it, assures the senator who later militated with the UDF with him. But we found ourselves in the demonstrations against the Vietcong ... "" Goasguen broke my face in 68 [...]. It was a beautiful lynching, since then we have reconciled! Dear Claude, I liked you […], you were a serious reaction, ”tweeted architect Roland Castro.
Goasguen broke my face in 68 with Longuet, Madelin and Devedjan. there were 30 of us 2: Patrick Macalise and me. It was a beautiful lynching, since we reconciled! Dear Claude I liked you very much and I greet you with friendship and respect! You were a serious reac
- CASTRO Roland (@rolandjcastro) May 28, 2020Both at the Paris Council, of which he led the opposition group for four years, and at the National Assembly, where he sat for twenty-two years without interruption, his interventions sometimes gave rise to intense exchanges with the left. " You're talking to me ? Look at me when you talk to me ”, he did not hesitate to let go, for example, addressing the Communist deputy in Paris, Ian Brossat.
Reputed to be seductive, he sometimes made comments that were not always very feminist. At the time of the primary for the municipal ones of 2008 in Paris, candidate vis-a-vis Françoise de Panafieu, he had declared during a debate in front of the militants that it was not a “beauty contest”.
Amazed by Rachida Dati's campaign
In 2013, he was one of the deputies who went to look for Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet to convince her to run for mayor of Paris… to finally distance herself from the candidate whom he considered too “boho” when the campaign seemed bad part. With Rachida Dati, whom he criticized in 2013 for "bringing back to the capital" his "9-3 manners", relations were abysmal until they buried the hatchet last November.
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“I thought we were going to take a monstrous jerk at the municipal level. So we talked on the phone and she said: I need you, you represent the right . I told him OK because there was no one else, "he confided less than a month before his hospitalization, amazed by the campaign of candidate LR who also paid him a tribute supported Thursday . Propelled "special adviser" of the campaign of Rachida Dati, Claude Goasguen will not see finally the result.
