He was one of the important figures in French politics for more than 30 years: Bernard Pons died on Wednesday April 27 at the age of 95. MP, minister, member of the Council of Paris, secretary general of the RPR… This right-wing man, very close to the late President Jacques Chirac for many years, exercised everything without forgetting his deep convictions.
Indeed, if this general practitioner entered politics in 1967 and occupied several posts of Secretary of State in the Chaban-Delmas and Messmer governments from 1969 to 1973, he refused to participate in the governments of the seven-year term of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing that he criticizes harshly. He then returned to politics with Jacques Chirac, his faithful friend and ally, who appointed him head of the RPR (which became the UMP and then LR) from 1979 to 1984.
He was elected Member of Parliament for Essonne in 1981, a position he held until 2002 and which did not prevent him from occupying various other positions: he was in fact Minister of Overseas Departments and Territories in 1986, a mandate marked by the massacre of the cave of Ouvéa in New Caledonia, which killed 21 people (19 Kanaks and 2 soldiers) between the two rounds of the presidential election of 1988, and for which he will be held responsible. He was also Minister of Transport from 1995 to 1997.
Father of four daughters, including a daughter Valérie who died in 2013, Bernard Pons has long shared his life between the metropolis and Martinique. Faithful to his legendary verve, he had broken with Jacques Chirac at the end of his political career. “I believed him for a long time to be open, attentive, generous, faithful in friendship. I see today that it is otherwise“, he said in 2005 to the Parisian.
“The disappearance of Bernard Pons marks the end of an era. That of the great moments of companionship, of epic politics, of triumphant Gaullism. I loved this man who gave so much to his political family“, for his part reacted Nicolas Sarkozy. A beautiful message for a man who left his mark on French politics.