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French ex-president Giscard laid to rest in low-key ceremony

France's former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, credited with leading social and technological reform of the country and placing it at the heart of Europe, was laid to rest Saturday in a low-key funeral attended only by family and his close circle.

Published: 5 December 2020 16:03 CET

French ex-president Giscard laid to rest in low-key ceremony

The funeral was held in the town of Authon in the Loire region. Photo: AFP

It had been the wish of Giscard, who ruled France from 1974-1981 and died on Wednesday of Covid-19 aged 94, to have such a small-scale ceremony, which was attended by around 40 people.

The ceremony, in the town of Authon in the Loire region of central France where he lived, contrasted with the lavish send-off for former president Jacques Chirac when he died in 2019.

Chirac was given a lying-in-state with thousands paying respects at his coffin in Paris before a funeral ceremony at the Saint Sulpice church attended by all France's living former leaders.

That ceremony in September 2019 was also the last time Giscard was seen in public.

“The president (Giscard) wanted the funeral to take place in the strictest privacy with family,” his son Henri Giscard d'Estaing told AFP on Friday.

“It turns out that the circumstances (due to the pandemic) mean that there would have been no other choice. We will therefore only have family members and the people who live around us in Authon,” he said.

With police standing guard outside, his coffin draped in French and European flags was carried into the Saint Hilaire church in Authon, an AFP correspondent said.

France will on Wednesday observe a day of national mourning in his memory decreed by President Emmanuel Macron, with people able to write tributes in books placed in town halls.

Under Giscard, France made great strides in nuclear power, high-speed train travel and legalised abortion.

He ensured that Paris was at the heart of Europe in a post-war partnership with Germany and also played a key role in what would become the G7 group of major world powers.

But ambitions to carve out a deep place in history were derailed in 1981 when he lost a tightly contested election to his Socialist rival Francois Mitterrand, who would rule France for the next 14 years.

READ MORE: Ex-French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing dies aged 94

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'Serious political crisis': Anger grows in France over Macron's dithering

Never in the history of the Fifth Republic — which began with constitutional reform in 1958 — has France gone so long without a permanent government, leaving the previous administration led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in place as caretakers.

A left-wing coalition emerged from the election as the biggest political force but with nowhere near enough seats for an overall majority, while Macron’s centrist faction and the far-right make up the two other major groups in the National Assembly.

To the fury of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition, Macron earlier this week rejected their choice of economist and civil servant Lucie Castets, 37, to become premier, arguing a left-wing government would be a “threat to institutional stability”.

Macron insisted during a Thursday visit to Serbia that he was making “every effort” to “achieve the best solution for the country”.

“I will speak to the French people in due time and within the right framework,” he said.

READ MORE: OPINION: Macron is not staging a ‘coup’, nor is he ‘stealing’ the French elections

‘Serious political crisis’

Macron’s task is to find a prime minister with whom he can work but who above all can find enough support in the National Assembly to escape swift ejection by a no-confidence motion.

Despite the lack of signs of progress in public, attention is crystallising on one possible “back to the future” option.

Former Socialist Party grandee Bernard Cazeneuve, 61, could return to the job of prime minister which he held for less than half a year under the presidency of Francois Hollande from 2016-2017.

He is better known for his much longer stint as interior minister under Hollande, which encompassed the radical Islamist attacks on Paris in November 2015.

But Cazeneuve receives far from whole-hearted support even on the left, where some in the Socialist Party (PS) regard him with suspicion for leaving when it first struck an alliance with hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) — a party which in turn sees the ex-PM as too centrist.

Another option could be the Socialist mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, 51, who has said he would consider taking the job if asked. Bouamrane is widely admired for seeking to tackle inequality and insecurity in the low-income district.

The stalemate has ground on first through the Olympics and now the Paralympics, with Macron showing he is in no rush to resolve the situation.

“We are in the most serious political crisis in the history of the Fifth Republic,” Jerome Jaffre, a political scientist at the Sciences Po university, told AFP.

France has been “without a majority, without a government for forty days,” he said, marking the longest period of so-called caretaker rule since the end of World War II.

‘Rubik’s cube’

Macron’s move to block Castets even seeking to lead a government provoked immediate outrage from the left, with Green Party chief Marine Tondelier accusing the president of stealing the election outcome.

National coordinator for the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI), Manuel Bompard, said the decision was an “unacceptable anti-democratic coup”, and LFI leader Jean-Luc Melanchon called for Macron’s impeachment.

READ MORE: Can a French president be impeached?

Some leftist leaders are urging for popular demonstrations on September 7, although this move has alarmed some Socialists and led to strains within the NFP.

France is in a “void with no precedents or clear rules about what should happen next,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy.

The president was “confronted with a parliamentary Rubik’s cube without an obvious solution,” said Rahman.

October 1 is the legal deadline by which a government must present a draft budget law for 2025.

The president has a constitutional duty to “ensure” the government functions, said public law professor Dominique Rousseau.

“He’s not going to appoint a government that we know will be overthrown within 48 hours,” he added.

For constitutional scholar Dominique Chagnollaud, Macron has backed himself into a corner, creating “unprecedented constitutional confusion”.

The logical choice is to appoint a leader from the group that “came out on top,” said Chagnollaud. “In most democracies, that’s how it works. If that doesn’t work, we try a second solution, and so on.”

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