“It was my political commitment that led to my loss”: this is the assessment that Bernard Tapie made, in
1996, of his own political career. Businessman launched into politics like a dog in a bowling game, politician thwarted by legal affairs… this is how we could, in our turn, summarize the political career of the businessman whose knowledge we have learned. died this Sunday. Take a look back at five memorable episodes that you may have forgotten.
“Stack on it!” »: When he trapped the National Front. “You are a tartarin” (JM Le Pen) against “It is not because you have a big mouth that what you say is true. »(B. Tapie). the
Le Pen / Tapie debate in 1989 has been told 150 times. In his biography – almost hagiographic – How they killed Tapie (1998),
André Bercoff tells a lesser-known anecdote. In 1992, in Orange, Tapie would have invited himself on stage during a meeting to trap the frontists. “We take all the immigrants, we put them on boats, and we send them very far from here,” said Tapie at first, eliciting applause from the crowd. “And when they are far enough away, we sink the boats,” he would have added, provoking a new round of applause. Which would have, according to Bercoff’s account, obviously provoked Tapie’s ire:
“I was not wrong about you. I spoke of a massacre, of a genocide, of killing men, women and children; and you applauded. Tomorrow, when it’s time to shave or put on makeup, when you see yourself in the mirror, stack yourself on it. “
“A missile from Mitterrand”: When Tapie whispered in Mitterrand’s ear. When at the end of the 1980s, François Mitterrand was looking for “opening personalities”, his advisers introduced him to the boss of OM. Good pick. The socialist president and the businessman met in 1987. Two years later, Tapie scored points with his legislative victory under the label “Presidential Majority” in the 6th district of Bouches-du-Rhône, a bastion from the right. A few months later, he is the only one to volunteer to face Jean-Marie Le Pen during the famous television debate on the subject of immigration. It was Mitterrand who propelled him to government, since
imposed on Bérégovoy to make him his Minister of the City, in 1992. And in 1994, it is in command service that he would have led a list to the European elections. “I was shot down by a missile named Tapie, fired from the Elysee Palace”,
said Michel Rocard, who led the PS list. His mediocre score (14%, against 12% for Tapie’s radical list) put an end to Rocard’s national ambitions.
52 days: When he was one of the most ephemeral ministers of the Fifth Republic. It was therefore Mitterrand who sent Tapie to the government on April 2, 1992. And a court decision which brought him out on May 23. Indicted in the context of the Toshiba affair, 52 days after his first council of ministers, Bernard Tapie had to leave the Ministry of the City, created especially for him – it was his condition to abandon his businesses. After a dismissal, Tapie returned to the government in December 1992 … Briefly: the left was swept away in the legislative elections in March 1993. According to the Huffington Post, Tapie is the 11th most ephemeral minister in the history of the Fifth Republic (far, however, behind Thomas Thevenoud, who spent 9 short days in government).
A surprise victory in 1992, an appointment missed in 1995: When his Marseille career did not go as planned. In 1988, Mitterrand chose Tapie to embody his policy of openness. But Solferino did not give the businessman a gift, by granting him the nomination in a constituency historically on the right. Under the label “presidential majority”, Bernard Tapie is defeated by the UDF Guy Teissier. But the election is canceled. Second chance in 1989, and this time Tapie won, with 50.9% of the vote. “He blew me away,” commented Mitterrand. After this first feat of arms and after, above all, having won the Champions League at OM in 1993, Bernard Tapie seemed in a chair to be elected mayor of Marseille. But the 1995 elections took place a few months after the VA-OM case was tried. “The only election that made me want was that of the town hall of Marseille in 1995, for which they hurried to make me ineligible”, he declared in 2015 to the Sunday Newspaper.
Support from Sarko who “prefers the left”: When Tapie gradually moved to the right. Bernard Tapie has spent his entire political career in the Radical Left Party, but in 2007 he decided to support Nicolas Sarkozy, while always specifying “to prefer the left to the right.” “” Ségolène Royal does not have the experience, “he explained to the Parisian. Five years later, it is more frankly that he supported the outgoing president: “He saved the banking system, he saved our savings”, he was carried away during a news report, on
France 2. Bernard Tapie then pinned François Hollande: “When he says,” my adversaries are the world of finance “, he forgets that billions are paid to us by the world of finance every month to pay our officials”. In a survey published in July 2014, The world asserted that Nicolas Sarkozy had “played a driving role in the process which led to the arbitration procedure”. Arbitration then
canceled by justice.