Un first name and a blond sauerkraut. The movie poster Bernadette, in theaters since October 4, does without any surname: a glance is enough to understand the subject of the feature film by director Léa Domenach. A sign that Bernardette Chirac has integrated the national heritage on an equal footing with her husband – a certain Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic for twelve years, from 1995 to 2007. An emancipation which was initially not at all obvious. case if we refer to the first lines devoted in The world to the now nonagenarian.
If her husband held the position of prime minister between 1974 and 1976, then was elected mayor of Paris, a year later, the name of Bernardette Chirac did not appear in the pages of the daily newspaper until March 2, 1979. She was then , at 46, candidate for cantonal elections in Corrèze. A departure from rank treated as that of a pawn in a broader strategy aimed at ensuring the reappointment of Jacques Chirac as president of the general council. The latter, writes Thierry Pfister, “personalizes the ballot, for example by presenting his wife, Mrs. Bernadette Chirac, in the canton of Corrèze, whose outgoing councilor (…) died, and Ms Annie Lheureux, one of his collaborators in the canton of Eygurande ». At that time, women often only occupied the folding seats.
Six months later, Bernadette Chirac triumphs. Not because of her election as general councilor, but because she obtained the head of Marie-France Garaud, her husband’s eminence grise, omnipotent, authoritarian and conservative. The debacle (16.31%) of the RPR in the European elections in June signaled the end of the influence of the duo that the latter formed with her sidekick Pierre Juillet. “His mistake was not to distrust me enough, exults the wife in a magazine interview She, widely taken up by The world, September 14, 1979. We can never be wary enough of good women. Nor, above all, self-effacing women. »
This feat of arms does not, however, put Bernadette Chirac at the forefront. For around fifteen years, his name found itself attached to simple detours of sentences, to signal his activism among the little hands of the RPR, his concern for a baron of the right in decline, his presidency a gala evening at the Opéra Garnier or her role as ambassador at international events. So many points which, once connected, create a presence, sometimes an influence. Nothing spectacular, however. “We only take the wives out during peak periods,” she squeaks, in 1987, in Danielle, Bernadette, Françoise and the others (Belfond editions), by Marie-Thérèse Guichard, a book dedicated to “women of”.
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