Lucette Michaux-Chevry, Guadeloupe politician and former minister of Jacques Chirac, died at the age of 92 following a long illness, her daughter Marie-Luce Penchard announced on social networks on Thursday.
“Tonight (Thursday), at 7:48 pm, surrounded by her relatives, mom left us… I am in pain… and our grief is immense…”, she wrote on her Facebook page.
At 92, the iconic politician, deeply rooted on the right, died after several months of fighting throat cancer. The one nicknamed the Iron Lady of the Caribbean held all political positions: from mayor in the late 1980s to minister delegate in the 1990s, in the Chirac 2 government. friend of the former President of the Republic. She had announced to quit politics in early 2019, in a letter sent to Guadeloupe.
Born March 5, 1929 in Saint-Claude (Basse-Terre), Lucette Michaux-Chevry marked the political history of Guadeloupe, where she held all the local and national mandates in turn, sometimes at the same time.
The deputy of Guadeloupe Olivier Serva expressed his “immense sadness” after, he said, the death of the “great Lucette Michaux-Chevry”.
"In my opinion, he is the greatest politician that I have met," he stressed.
Corruption cases
Ms. Michaux-Chevry, a lawyer by training, had her first election in 1959 when she became municipal councilor for her town of Saint-Claude, when her son was barely a few days old.
First committed to the Socialist Party, in 1981 she supported the presidential candidate Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, thus marking the beginning of a commitment to the right that would never let go.
His long career remains punctuated with cases of corruption among other legal disputes. Cultivating an insular power not suffering from contestation, it will be confronted from the 1990s to several indictments, which will not all end with convictions. In 2019, Lucette Michaux-Chevry was however sentenced to two years in prison for environmental offenses and favoritism in public transport.
