Former Minister of Culture and Defense, ex-boss of the UDF, François Léotard died Tuesday at the age of 81, resulting in a salvo of tributes on the right as on the left, Emmanuel Macron saluting “a free spirit ” and “of commitment”.

“François Léotard served the State and carried a great idea of ??culture (…) His native Var, the France he defended, the Republic he loved are experiencing a great loss today”, affirmed the Head of State on Twitter.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy said his “sadness to see one of the most brilliant figures of (his) generation leave too soon” and an “authentic, committed, whole” man who “placed France above everything “.

Former boss of the late UDF from 1996 to 1998, François Léotard had been minister during the two cohabitations under François Mitterrand: of Culture (1986-88) in the government of Jacques Chirac, then of Defense (1993-95) in the government of Edouard Balladur.

His successor in the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu hailed a “man of conviction and commitment, (…) deeply attached to the sovereignty and independence of France”.

Precocious and shady, sporty and stressed, this politician in whom many saw a potential presidential candidate had left politics in the 2000s.

“He could have been President. Young people, we believed in it. He was a talented expression of the French spirit” and “literature guided his pilgrim soul,” said former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Stricken with “weariness”, affected by the death in 2001 of his brother, actor and singer Philippe Léotard, the former minister will then explain that he “no longer supported” the political world, his “prostitutional” aspect, made of “flattery” and “lie”, that he had to find “his own language”.

“He had style, elegance, eloquence, all these gifts marked at the same time with a deep melancholy”, reacted François Bayrou. A “free spirit” for the LR president of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand, in tribute to a political author of several essays and novels.

Electoral failures and legal troubles – sentence in 2004 to ten months in prison suspended for money laundering and illicit financing of a party – had also weakened him.

In March 2021, he was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 100,000 euros for “complicity” in the abuse of corporate assets in one of the aspects of the Karachi affair, relating to the establishment of illegal kickbacks to fund the 1995 presidential campaign.

In the South where he was from, born in 1942 in Cannes in a family of seven children, the reactions were numerous on Tuesday.

LR president Eric Ciotti hailed a “great statesman” and “an elected official committed to his city of Fréjus, of which he had been mayor” for 20 years. The president of the South region Renaud Muselier for his part paid tribute to “a man of states and territories” who was also “four times deputy of the Var”.

“A formidable defender of the liberal right, we shared this fight against the extremes”, assured the mayor Horizons of Nice Christian Estrosi, while the deputy LR of the Alpes-maritimes Michèle Tabarot paid tribute to “a cultivated man” and “deeply attached to our sovereignty.

On the RN side, the vice-president of the party and mayor of Fréjus David Rachline said his “emotion” and the deputy of Var Julie Lechanteux greeted “a man deeply attached to his territory”.

The disappearance of this convinced Catholic, opponent of the Algerian war, was also welcomed on the left by the former communist minister Jean-Claude Gayssot who said his “emotion” in a press release. “He loved France and serving it,” said PS senator from Val d’Oise Rachid Temal.

04/25/2023 21:20:27 –         Paris (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP