Former correspondent of Monde in Africa and former senator elected by the French abroad, Pierre Biarnès died in Vaison-la-Romaine (Vaucluse), on July 18, at the age of 90.
Born on January 17, 1932 in Tulette in the Drôme, this son of a winegrower undertakes law studies. A graduate of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, he moved to Senegal where he became Deputy Secretary General of the Dakar Chamber of Commerce in 1959. Two years later, he became director of the African Publishing Company. It publishes the weekly The African Trade and Industry Monitor and the monthly French journal of African political studies, considered as a reference in postcolonial French-speaking Africa. The editor-in-chief of this review, Philippe Decraene, who is also head of the Africa section at Monde, does not take long to hire him on a daily basis as a correspondent in West and Equatorial Africa.
Based in Dakar, Pierre Barniès travels in French-speaking Africa, from Mauritania to Gabon, most often combining his reports for The world and his activities for the African Publishing Company. A freelancer with special status, not a member of the Society of Editors, he is often considered the voice of the daily newspaper by African presidents, whose ear he has. Unaware of the production constraints of the newspaper, a productive correspondent, he sometimes took the cuts made in his long mailings, often coded for African use, badly.
But he is a loyal colleague and an attentive host for the special envoys of the editorial staff. His house in Dakar is open to them, with the warm welcome of his wife, Monique, author of a book on Senegalese cuisine. His confidences are sometimes used for articles signed by others than him.
Twice elected senator
In 1982, Pierre Biarnès entered the Superior Council of French Nationals Abroad, a consultative body that became an assembly in 2004. Partly thanks to a Masonic membership which he makes no secret of, he uses this Council as a springboard for his election. as a senator for French people living outside France, on the list of the Democratic Association of French Abroad, located on the left, in September 1989. A political ambition that led him to leave The world since 1985.
Re-elected in September 1998, he was then living in Paris. This regular at the Senate restaurant likes to show the author of these lines the variety of his parliamentary relations, beyond political differences. At the end of this second term, he was a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces Committee, considered to be close to Jean-Pierre Chevènement.
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