Socialist senator from Essonne Olivier Léonhardt dies at 58


Founder, among others, of SOS Racisme in the 80s, the elected PS died overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.

The Socialist Party can sometimes speak with one voice. Since the announcement of the death of Senator Olivier Léonhardt at the age of 58 following cancer, tributes within the party have been unanimous. Presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo greets a “committed activist, fighter of secularism”. This was an important battle in the life of Olivier Léonhardt: he was a member of the Observatory of secularism and was, as former First Secretary Harlem Désir recalls, “one of the founders of SOS Racisme”. The current boss of the PS, Olivier Faure, says to himself “very sad to learn of the premature death of Olivier Léonhardt”, who had a wife and three daughters.

Julien Dray, deputy for Essonne for more than twenty years and behind, with others, the creation of SOS Racisme in 1984, remembers for Release of one “A sympathetic and endearing man who gave his all”. “We fought a lot of fights together”, he remembers about the one who had also been his parliamentary assistant in the National Assembly.

At the opening of the session of Questions to the government this Wednesday afternoon, the President LR of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, also expressed his “great sadness” and traced some important stages in the career of the man who was mayor of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois for sixteen years and elected senator of Essonne since 2017. At the Luxembourg Palace, Olivier Léonhardt sat within the centrist group Democratic Rally and European Social Security (RDSE). He was also a member of the Social Affairs Committee.

The declarations multiply, but the message remains the same: “The left is losing one of its pillars.” This is what Luc Carvounas, mayor of Alfortville (Val-de-Marne) and spokesperson for Anne Hidalgo, says, who adds: “My friend Olivier Léonhardt died after ten years of courageous battle against the disease.” Harlem Désir evokes a “great elected republican” and Rachid Temal, senator from Val-d’Oise, as a “a man of the left, sincere in his commitments and with a rare political analysis”.

Tributes came from all sides. The Minister of Public Service, Amélie de Montchalin, elected from Essonne, also welcomed a “humanist, committed, authentic”. On the right, the senator of the same department Jean-Raymond Hugonet speaks of a “very bitter day” and describes Olivier Léonhardt as a lover of “politics, the real one, the one that talks about our municipalities, their inhabitants, their problems and their many assets”.

In 2013, Olivier Léonhardt sent a letter to the inhabitants of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, a town of which he was mayor, to tell them of his illness. He was explaining to Parisian : “I don’t know in advance how I will feel, what the impact of the treatment will be. Today I have no pain. But whatever happens, I want to keep working.”





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