The image of Jacques Chirac is everywhere in Corrèze. Here, bottles and bags with the effigy of the former President of the Republic, sold at the Brive store Here it’s Corrèze. Pascal Lachenaud for Le Figaro
REPORT – On the land of his family roots and his first electoral conquests, the former President of the Republic, who died in 2019, left an indelible mark. Beyond the major infrastructure projects he has carried out to open up this isolated department, his political vision continues to nourish the local economy and the social fabric.
In Sarran (Correze)
During the first spring heat, it is not uncommon to come across young Corréziens wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of Jacques Chirac in the streets of Brive-la-Gaillarde. However, many of them were not born when he won the 1995 presidential election. Unlike Robert Bredèche, mayor of Lignareix, in the north of the department. “Ah, that night in May 1995! We celebrated that in Ussel, and what pride for Corrèze! All the elect kissed each other,” remembers the aedile. In his sixth term, at 87, he is inexhaustible on the man he affectionately calls “Jack”. And no need for a garment to mark his filiation: the presidential portrait of his friend still sits in the small town hall of Corrèze. That of a former communist anxious to put himself in the little papers of the “Big” to develop its commune of 160 souls. “When we saw him arrive for the legislative elections in 1967, we nicknamed him “the envoy of Pompidou”! Then he knocked me down…
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