“Giscard is the smartest man I have ever met”.
He lets it go without thinking too much, Hervé Morin.
Reached by phone, the president of the Centrists learned of the death of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, like everyone else, at the end of the evening on Wednesday.
A little groggy, when he had just savored the victory of PSG over Manchester on TV.
Yet he had known since midday that it should only be a matter of hours.
The word has passed from one centrist's mouth to another - "you know, Giscard is dying," he was whispered.
The first and only president of their sensitivity ever elected in the history of the Fifth Republic (all do not agree that Emmanuel Macron is a form of heir), gone forever.
"He had a lot of class"
"He had a sharp voice, a lot of class, a distinguished man as they say", continues Hervé Morin, who, then Minister of Defense under Nicolas Sarkozy, was going to have breakfast with the former centrist president, twice a year. an, rue Bénouville (16th arrondissement) where he resided.
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Giscard, he had met him in person for the first time in the National Assembly, when he had just become a deputy.
The young parliamentarian that he is consults with benefits from his encyclopedic knowledge of recent political history.
“It was a treat, if only I could record that.
He had been one of the major players in French political life ", continues Morin, specifying moreover that the person concerned never seems to have digested his defeat of 1981," convinced that the betrayal of Chirac had made him lose ".
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According to the president of the Normandy region, France owes him "the modernization of French democracy".
VGE was elected in 1974, a few years after the events of May 68 which considerably shook the company.
“He was the first to be convinced that political expression had to change,” explains Morin, recalling that it is he who will lower the majority and the right to vote to 18 years.
He had the will to appease French society.
"
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