Former mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, the member paris, Claude Goasguen died at the age of 75 years. "This is my last term. That is for sure. I would like to have a life after this one, î he told in 2017, the evening of his election to the national Assembly. The death has prevailed before. The sudden death of this figure of the political life of paris, famous for his big mouth and his temperament eruptive, leaves orphan the most fashionable districts of paris. A liberal and a supporter of a right uninhibited, the old lion, who had supported – to the general surprise – Rachida Dati during the campaign by the municipal city hall of Paris, shall roar more.
Nothing predisposed Claude Goasguen politics : this native of Toulon, whose family is originally from brittany, who dreamed of a career naval officer. It is his father, a civil servant who sent him to Paris as a student at the prestigious lycée Henri-IV to pass a tray of philo. It will not keep a good souvenir of her early years in the capital. "I had the impression of living at the North pole. I felt very alone, " he confided in 2012. This did not prevent him to remain there to study law and later to be elected as a Paris councillor before becoming an mp and mayor of the 16th arrondissement.
President of the Corpo
in Contrast to his political friends Alain Madelin, Gérard Longuet, or Patrick Devedjian – who has also just died away by the coronavirus – Claude Goasguen has always denied having been a member of the West, small group of extreme right-wing of the 1960s. It has, however, been to the Corpo students of law which he chaired in 1967 and 1968. At this time, the student defended French Algeria, and supported Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, a candidate of the extreme right in the presidential election of 1965. "The Corpo was not better than the West. She was also violent. I am too often beaten... ", admitted it, seeing it as " an error of youth ".
Goasguen begins in the 14th
The policy catches up to him a little later, in the early 1970s : during a dinner among friends, he made the acquaintance of Eugène Claudius-Petit, who was to be his first mentor in politics. He agrees to help the former minister of Reconstruction and town Planning (1948 to 1953), which presents itself to the legislation of 1973 in the 14th district. It is in this arrondissement popular and not in the 16th Claude Goasguen conducts its first combat in an election. He was defeated in legislative elections of 1978 when he was the deputy Eugène Claudius-Petit. The latter has in the meantime introduced in the family centre. In 1977, he became national secretary of the Centre des démocrates sociaux (CDS).
Dean of the faculty of law and political sciences of Paris-Nord, he is finally elected for the first time advisor of Paris on the 14th in 1983. His political career is launched : he became a regional councillor of Île-de-France in 1986. The same year, he entered as a technical advisor in the cabinet of René Monory, then minister of national Education. This earned him to be named inspector general of national Education in 1987, and then principal and director of the Cned in the same year. Deputy Jacques Toubon after the parliamentary elections of 1988, he became a member of parliament for the first time in 1993, when Jacques Toubon was appointed minister of Culture in the government of Balladur.
"Chirac taught me everything"
But it is Jacques Chirac, met in the early 1980s, which puts him truly in the foot in the stirrup. His second pygmalion in politics made him his deputy in charge of international Relations. Elected and re-elected councillor of Paris from the 14th until 1995, Claude Goasguen has accompanied Chirac with great fidelity. He repeated often that the former president of the Republic he had " learned all of the practice policy and that nobody was stronger than him on the ground." The two men, who shared the same love of women, got on well. Claude Goasguen is the first centrist to support Jacques Chirac against Edouard Balladur during the 1995 presidential.
Parachuted into the 16th of 1995
much appreciated support since he was appointed minister of State Reform and of the Decentralization in the first government of Alain Juppé. The adventure is short-term (6 months), the two men not appreciating much. Capable and strong in the mouth, Claude Goasguen annoys the Prime minister. Regardless, in the meantime, he successfully completed his parachute in the 16th arrondissement, where he was elected councilor of Paris. Jean Tiberi, then mayor of the capital he was entrusted with matters relating to academic affairs and university. Here again, the association does not : elected as member of the 16th with over 70 % of the vote, Claude Goasguen has had the misfortune of participating in a coup orchestrated by Jacques Toubon to reverse Tiberi. Very angry, he would withdraw his delegation at the Paris city hall.
The quarrels multiply, and the man fine-tunes its already solid reputation of grognard. Thus, in 1998, he broke with François Bayrou and his party can Force a democrat to join Alain Madelin, who founded in 1997 his own movement called liberal Democracy (DL). "DL suited me better. But it was a shambles incredible : we were 50 members to live in isolation, " explained Claude Goasguen at the Point in 2012. Some say that the centrist high in the seraglio chiraquien has never forgiven his former friend Bayrou of having him barred from the ministry of Education in 1995.
This does not prevent him to engage again behind Jacques Chirac at the time of the presidential election of 2002. This time, we do not offer any leather... An injury ? Without a doubt... In 2012, he said he would have taken the path of a ministry or a secretariat of State " which nobody wants, such as Immigration or school Reform ".
He dreams of the Paris city Hall in 2006
Becoming a lawyer in 2003, Claude Goasguen begins to dream of the city Hall of Paris. He is a candidate for the primary election for the nomination of the UMP in the municipal elections of 2008. With 23,43 % of the vote, he arrived in second position behind Françoise de Panafieu (40,69 %), and ahead of Jean Tiberi and Pierre Lellouche. In the delicate situation in the face of the favorite supported by the other two candidates, he chose to retire in the second round. During the campaign for municipal, Claude Goasguen hardly helped the candidate UMP... It is, however, elect UMP mayor of the 16th arrondissement, squeezing out as without warning the outgoing Pierre-Christian Taittinger, who thought to keep his seat.
This betrayal does not affect his re-election at the head of the town hall of the 16th of 2014 : indeed he is widely re-elected in the first round with 63,04 % of the vote. Law on the accumulation of mandates oblige, he chooses to leave his seat of mayor of the 16th when he was re-elected mp in June 2017. This last electoral battle is the most difficult of his long political career. After a first round that put him in a tie adverse against the candidate LREM, it will ultimately prevail in the snatch, beating the pavement tirelessly, as Chirac had taught him.
Jessica and Marilyn
Remains that behind the political animal roaring hiding a lover of cinema and literature. As evidenced by his office whose walls were covered with posters, when he was mayor. He worshipped Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci, " the great masters transalpine ". It was literally crazy about Jessica Lange. "She is beautiful and extremely intelligent ", he marveled. But his idol, whose photograph stood on his desk was none other than Marilyn Monroe.
beyond the seventh art, this hellenist and latiniste also loved to read. He went back regularly to The Odyssey, his bedside book. Ulysses was his hero, " because he is the one who renounces philosophically to be a god to remain a mere mortal ". In her moments of blues, he confided that one of his greatest regrets was not to be a writer. Is this the career that he was after ? Not sure ! Great traveller, the member lover of Israel and Jerusalem, which had been around the world when he was deputy for foreign Affairs at the Paris city Hall, would, no doubt, gladly resumed his distant travels.
