Former French president Jacques Chirac settles old scores in his memoirs to be released this week but avoids any mention of the corruption scandal for which he has been ordered to stand trial.
"Every Step Should Be a Goal" goes on sale in bookstores Thursday, less than a week after a judge said the 76-year-old statesman should be sent to the dock for diverting public funds during his time as Paris mayor.
The 500-page book is the first of a two-volume autobiography tracing his childhood years in Correze, deep in rural France, and his extraordinary rise to become a pivotal figure of the Fifth Republic.
Excerpts of the memoirs were published Tuesday in the French media just as Chirac was set to make a round of interviews to promote the book.
His 12 years as president up to 2007 when Nicolas Sarkozy took over at the Elysee will be the focus of the second volume, but the first book is already shaping up to become a bestseller with some 230,000 copies up for sale.
A secretive, enigmatic leader whose career spanned more than three decades, Chirac takes a few sharp swipes at fellow politicians in his memoirs and makes some surprising revelations about his personal life.
The ex-president expresses disappointment with Sarkozy, then a "nervous, overzealous and eager for action" minister for backing rival Edouard Balladur for the presidency in 1995.
But his most bitter remarks target former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, whom he served as prime minister at the age of 42 and later challenged for the presidency in 1981.
Chirac describes Giscard as arrogant, vindictive and with whom "communication was always difficult and eventually impossible at the end of his term."
"One day, Giscard assured me that he had thrown rancour to the river," Chirac wrote. "But that day, the river bed must have been dry because his rancour remained persistent and inexhaustible."
There is praise for Georges Pompidou, whom he described as a father figure, and for the late Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand "whose tactical intelligence is of the sort rarely seen in the world of politics."
Chirac recounts a "bout of anger" with former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher over farm subsidies and a tense exchange with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, whose reformist credentials he questioned.
Of his wife and confidante Bernadette, he writes her "opinions can at times be blunt, sometimes too blunt in my view, especially when they concern me."
"But her views, her advice and her criticism have always enlightened me."
One of the most surprising excerpts deals with Chirac's first sexual experience at the age of 18 during a night of revelry in a Moroccan port where he had traveled while serving in the navy.
The next morning, he wrote: "I was a new man."
There is also a candid admission that the years spent in pursuit of power meant that there was little time to spend with his children: his daughter Claude, who became an advisor, and Laurence, who has been battling severe anorexia and mental illness for more than 30 years.
Chirac has a third adopted Vietnamese daughter, Anh-Dao Traxel.
Turning to Sarkozy, Chirac made clear his successor at the Elysee had betrayed him when he chose to back Balladur, whom he described as a "cold calculator".
But the full story of the Sarkozy-Chirac relationship is expected to be detailed in the second volume, due out next year.
"This first defection did not leave me indifferent. Nicolas Sarkozy is in my view much more than simply an aide," he wrote, noting that the young Sarkozy even back then was a gifted communicator.
The memoirs make no mention of the corruption case that could see Chirac face up to 10 years in jail for handing out lucrative bogus jobs to political allies.
Despite his legal problems, Chirac has made a comeback in public opinion with many French voters feeling nostalgia for his avuncular style, one that stands in sharp contrast with Sarkozy's whirlwind approach.
An Ifop poll this month rated Chirac as France's most popular politician, with a 76 percent approval rating.
Source: AFP Global Edition
