Many politicians, party leaders or elected officials from all sides paid tribute on Tuesday to journalist Gérard Leclerc, who died at the age of 71 in the accident of a small tourist plane in Loire-Atlantique.
“Gérard Leclerc was a great political journalist. Cultivated, rigorous, elegant. He loved debate and controversy while respecting the truth of the facts. I think of our interviews, I still hear his analyzes and I measure the talent that the press just lost”, wrote on the X network (ex-Twitter) the ex-president François Hollande.
“Deep emotion on learning of the disappearance of Gérard Leclerc in a plane crash. He was an immense journalist who spent a large part of his career at France Télévisions”, declared on the same platform the president of the Les Républicains party Eric Ciotti. .
Within the presidential majority, the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi said he was “deeply saddened by the disappearance of Gérard Leclerc, journalist and talented political columnist”. “We will miss his enlightened analyses, his passion for information and his sense of debate”, he added, while the president of the southern region Renaud Muselier paid tribute to a journalist “appreciated and respected for his professionalism”. .
“We are losing one of the most professional journalists of his generation,” added Macronist deputy for Yvelines Karl Olive, also on the X network.
Passed by France Télévisions, where he had become a figure in political journalism, then president of the parliamentary channel LCP, Gérard Leclerc had more recently joined CNews, one of the channels of the Bolloré group, where he participated in talk shows and played often a moderating role.
“Moved to learn of the disappearance of Gérard Leclerc, face of @CNEWS. I will remember him as a benevolent man and a passionate journalist,” said the president of the National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella.
“He loved debate, hated sectarianism and was one of those who had the courage to be part of the CNews adventure from the start,” also said Reconquest president Eric Zemmour on the same social network.
Many voices were also heard on the left to pay tribute to the journalist, like the first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) Olivier Faure.
“Gérard was interested in people, ideas, backgrounds. It’s hard to talk about him in the past tense,” he said in a more personal register.
“Gérard Leclerc was a journalist of great talent, enthusiastic, committed, and a charming, kind and elegant man. I am saddened by his death in a plane crash, in the company of two other people”, also wrote the president of the Court of Auditors and former socialist minister Pierre Moscovici.
“Very very sad news. Gérard Leclerc was a respectable and always warm man. Former President of @Lcp, passionate about politics, but also defender of the revolutionaries of 89 and 93 and rugby player”, greeted the deputy La France insoumise (LFI ) of Seine Saint-Denis Alexis Corbière.
08/16/2023 08:11:03 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
