It is a figure of the RPR which is dying out. Bernard Pons died on Wednesday at the age of 95, we learned from his family. The former minister and deputy, who held many key positions during a long political career, died at his home in Aigues-Mortes (Gard).
Bernard Pons knew several great presidents of the Fifth Republic. He was Secretary of State to the Minister of Agriculture under Georges Pompidou between 1969 and 1973 before being between 1986 and 1988 Minister of Overseas Departments and Territories under the mandate of François Mitterrand, under the Chirac government. .
A devotee of Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac, of whom he was a faithful – he had participated in the founding of the RPR, of which he had also been secretary general – had integrated him into the Juppé government in 1995, as Minister of Regional Planning, Equipment and Transport, then Equipment, Housing, Transport and Tourism, until 1997. The general practitioner by profession had also been a deputy for more than twenty-seven years, for Lot, Essonne and then for Paris .
“The disappearance of Bernard Pons marks the end of an era. That of the great moments of companionship, of epic politics, of triumphant Gaullism. I loved this man who gave so much to his political family, ”tweeted Nicolas Sarkozy.