It is probably rare to find, in the same place and at the same time, without it being for a decoration or a prestigious burial, a former President of the Republic flanked by his three Prime Ministers. Michel Rocard succeeded in this small feat.
Last Monday, March 27, at the end of the day, director Jean-Michel Djian screened, at the Arab World Institute, his documentary Me, Michel Rocard, I will go to sleep in Corsica, with a host of political and non-political figures, Rocardians or not, fans or not.
We found there, apart from François Hollande and his Prime Ministers – Jean-Marc Ayrault, Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve –, the faithful of Rocard – Jean-Paul Huchon, Yves Colmou, Claude Evin… –, the former chief of staff of François Mitterrand Jean Glavany or even Mazarine Pingeot.
They did not yet have in their hands the work Rocard, the enchanted enchanter, which the same Djian wrote from the same unpublished sources. The director had access, through his last wife, Sylvie Rocard, to the archives of the former Prime Minister of François Mitterrand, who died in 2016.
We discover a few nuggets, which paint the portrait of an anguished man, “lonely and fiercely determined to practice his ‘truth speaking'”, announces the book. This is the case with the amuse-bouche recorded in his scout notebooks, reproduced in the book, or with the letters that Rocard, sure of his acuteness, sent as a manual of good governance to those whose practice he judged to be the incomplete State – François Hollande or Emmanuel Macron, in particular.
What remains of Rocardism today? Jean-Michel Djian notes that this family of thought “is no longer embodied”. All that remains, he says, is “humus.” Emmanuel Macron tried to capture the legacy, but Michel Rocard somehow repudiated it. “He realized he was like the others,” Djian said. Rocard was probably not “like the others”. Extracts.
“Rocard is to political writing what Proust was to literary production, a kind of cash cow of polished French. Or convoluted, depending. After having explained laboriously to “his dear François [Hollande, NDLR]” that he wanted to “use the explanatory power of the differences between our spiritual families to tell the present”, the still Rocard goes there with his victim couplet for putting the presidential winner in an awkward position:
“The fact remains that the great mastery of the moment, of the instant of daily life which makes you win is accompanied by a lesser sensitivity to the long term.”
He adds in the margin:
“The absolute priority of the event and the need for immediate results contribute to preventing us from taking and accumulating the time for reflection, the time for attentive preparation for action and the time for waiting for progressive results. We were, me and my friends, good managers and bad candidates. In your own family, that of François Mitterrand, it borders on the opposite.”
Seventy-one years after joining the SFIO, why does he still have to lecture, to say otherwise what his recipient knows but does not or no longer want to hear? To relieve himself of course, an obsession; but above all let its truth invade all the bad political consciences that roam the corridors of power. Unless this beautiful mind is so afraid of emptiness that filling it with blue ink is enough, in both senses of the word, to fill it. »
“The big difference between these two [Michel Rocard and Lionel Jospin, editor’s note] is not fate but political strategy alone. Rocard is quite simply alone when Jospin is accompanied. One was against Mitterrand, the other with. However, it was the former Trotskyist who benefited in 1997 from the rallying of the Rocardians to his flag of the plural left. “We didn’t want to languish in our corner”, cowardly Manuel Valls a quarter of a century later to the author, speaking on behalf of his friends Alain Bauer and Stéphane Fouks. But against all expectations, the day after the dissolution, the new Prime Minister Lionel Jospin did not call the former to participate in the government. Seeing history made without him Michel Rocard remembers once and for all to his good memory in a handwritten letter dated June 9 and curiously bundled up:
“My dear Lionel,
A quick word in an emergency. I understand very well, and better than that, I approve and I would do the same, that you do not open any discussion with anyone about the composition of the government. There is hardly a more hellish task than this. But maybe it is useful that you know the wishes and then you will do what you can. I am a candidate for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs.”
No answer. Worse, no friendly explanation will relieve the suitor of his legitimate spite. Since he was ousted from the leadership of the PS, three years earlier, the former Prime Minister is persona non grata. He has become the biting mosquito, because, it seems, the new MEP, highly coveted in the Strasbourg hemicycle, spends his time intriguing on the right and on the left.
It didn’t take much to make him a respected renegade, but a renegade all the same.
Rocard does not disarm for all that. In 2002, the ungrateful Jospin, sure of himself, prepares to lead the country by leading a campaign that leaves no doubt as to its result. It’s so true that on the left all the leaders of currents already have their heads in the stars, including the Renegade who is playing with the candidate’s nerves. On April 21, 2002 in the morning, that is to say a few hours before the explosion, the MEP sent him a letter giving him his roadmap for the next day so as to “take the piece away” a fortnight later as soon as possible. the final duel engaged. In a tone of camaraderie, Rocard delivers his shopping list on seven handwritten pages, while apologizing beforehand for not having had time to have them typed before taking the plane for je-ne- know where. Excerpts:
“Granted, exes always piss the world off when they pretend to give their successors the advice of their wisdom. Give me note that I took good care of it… I only worked for your government when it asked me to […] and I never made any comments except laudatory ones.”
After having taken care to specify that its recipient can “swing this letter” if it does not please him, Michel Rocard, certain that Jospin will reach the second round in a few hours, proceeds to the injunction. It’s a mania.
“After the result tonight of the first round, you will have 24 hours to change the game by changing the tone and the stakes. You have to surprise. It is played on your first performance. The campaign of the first round is generally considered unconvincing, bordering on boring and too full of private gestures (Barou’s slap). Why don’t you say: My fellow citizens, the first round is over. The sixteen candidates together could only produce noise and cacophony, I would like on the social, educational, judicial, fiscal and other levels to detail to you what I believe possible right now. »
“He still likes to put the church back in the middle of the village, especially when it’s time to ring the bells of the Christian Democrats. When Rocard returned from a trip to Vietnam and Thailand on December 2, 2007, he discovered, on returning, that on behalf of the UDF, François Bayrou intended to declare himself a candidate for the next presidential term. It is his right. But the centrist leader openly and publicly proposes a solution to outdo the pawn on the right and on the left: to form an alliance with Nicolas Hulot, Michel Barnier and Michel Rocard. The latter then comes out of his hinges and torches a letter dated December 5 to put the dots on the i:
“I do not accept that it is implied that I can constitute, even in part, the sketch of the outline of an improbable political solution put forward by a centrism in which you believe. Unfortunately for you, there are no political forces without roots. Those of Christian Democracy were trampled on and massacred by de Gaulle and true centrism never recovered. You obviously embody the possible culture of a centrism reborn from its ashes with the possibility that would make it strong to change alliances. It is a work of public safety and I sincerely wish you good luck.” »
“Some time after his death, on July 2, 2016, and at the request of his wife Sylvie, President Hollande, still in office, came in person to greet his memory in Corsica. He had indeed decided that his ashes would be buried in Balagne, more precisely in Monticello under a stele designed by his friend Pierre Soulages. There is no doubt that at that time, facing the sea and after Jacques Dutronc, present as a neighbor during the ceremony, was able to say aloud as a farewell “a Rocard or nothing!” »
