2023-06-15 12:00:10
Book. Before dying, on July 2, 2016, he had a last smile when Sylvie, his third wife, slipped him this news: the supporters of Brexit had won in the referendum of June 23. Ultimate satisfaction for Michael Rocardconvinced that the “English would do better to leave Europe rather than piss him off”. Thanks to unprecedented access to his personal archives, journalist Jean-Michel Djian introduces us to an unknown Rocard. Rocard, the disenchanted enchanter is a very well written book, with a lot of finesse and a real tenderness for its subject, which is full of anecdotes.
First there are the texts of the former prime minister: his scout notebooks, under his totem of “erudite hamster”, where he multiplies, even invents, quotations and slips “lunar objects” which are as many “little pebbles of light”. I will go to sleep in Corsica, a testament of overwhelming sincerity on his life lessons, which he composed in 2014 in Monticello (Haute-Corse), where his ashes will rest. A year later, the ephemeral first secretary of the PS (1993-1994) started the unfinished drafting of a Matignon love dictionary, in forty-four chapters. We learn in passing that he was not in favor of marriage between people of the same sex.
A novel about François Hollande
Among the secrets that Djian reveals, there is also the incredible handwritten letter, unanswered, that Rocard sends to his friends, which, as “His Majesty Jospin”, have come to power, and that he does not hesitate to scold. “We were me and my friends, he wrote to François Hollande in 2014, good managers and bad candidates. In your own family, that of François Mitterrand, it borders on the opposite. » To Lionel Jospin, with whom he applied for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1997, he advises for the second round of the 2002 presidential election, convinced that he will be elected, to “surprise”. To Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of the Economy, whose wedding he attended in 2007, he addressed a “plea” in October 2014, where we learn, between two economics lessons, that he is preparing a… novel on François Hollande. He then judges, before becoming disillusioned, that the future president is ” the only (…) which can advance social democracy”.
The author mentions his “a priori unnatural relationship” with Nicolas Sarkozy. To the great displeasure of his friends, he had made a pact with the number one opponent of the left, in particular as ambassador of the poles. In 2010, when he celebrated his 80th birthday, Rocard did not use his very Rocardian formula, and therefore impossible to decipher, on the “ protocolo-politically rotten system” (sic). But the eternal minority who failed to change the PS admits that « [la] renovating graft did not take”. In July 2015, when he was very weakened by his lung cancer, François Hollande gave him the insignia of Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. “You continue to surprise, the president told him. (…) You always move forward, intrepid, tireless despite the physical trials. » Between two cigarettes, Rocard confided to the author: “I discover myself Sisyphus even more today than yesterday. His rock is my drama. »
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