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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.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.