Georges Frêche: 'POLITICALLY INCORRECT . . . larger than life . . . politician of the old school." All of these epithets did little better than come close to describing Georges Frêche, president of France's Languedoc-Roussillon region and mayor of Montpellier for 27 years who has died aged 72.
It might even be an understatement to say that he was at the extreme range of each of them.
His outrageous statements, many of them verging on racism, contrasted sharply with an amazing record of turning Montpellier from a sleepy southern town into the city where, according to opinion polls, most French people would prefer to live.
Born in Puylaurens near Castres in the Tarn department of southern France, Frêche, the son of an army officer and a school headmistress, studied law in Paris and became professor of Roman Law at the University of Montpellier in 1969 when he was just 31 years old.
In politics he aligned himself to the Socialist Party but was expelled in 2007 for remarks about black members of the French soccer team. There were, he said, nine blacks out of 11 because the whites were “lame.” His opponents claimed he was being critical of the blacks while his supporters claimed he was attacking the whites. It is possible that he was having a dig at soccer itself, a game for which he had little time.
Frêche came from southern France’s fierce rugby tradition and suffered pain from scrum-induced vertebrae damage for most of his life. It is believed he regarded soccer players, black and white, as effete and wimpish.
Was he anti-Semitic? His description of former prime minister Laurent Fabius as having a “not very Catholic nose” might indicate that he was. But Catholics did not escape his acerbic tongue either. On the election of Joseph Ratzinger as pope he declared: “I hope he does better than the other idiot [John Paul II].”
Not surprisingly Frêche, although a highly-talented politician, was never appointed to a government ministerial post especially since he harboured a virulent dislike of socialist president François Mitterrand which was returned with interest. Instead, he concentrated on the city of Montpellier, turning it into what many consider to be a model city.
Motor traffic is banned from the centre leaving it clear for cyclists, pedestrians and trams. Montpellier, thanks to Frêche, has trams of the same design as Dublin’s Luas, but there the comparison ends. The two lines join up at the city’s Saint Roch railway station.
But even the tram system was subject of one of Frêche’s quasi-racist remarks. It contained he said, the longest tunnel in the world, running from France (central Montpellier) to Ouarzazate in Morocco (a reference to the largely Muslim suburb of La Paillade).
The Harkis (Algerians who supported French rule) also incurred his wrath. When they demonstrated in favour of colonialism he called them “subhumans” who didn’t know their history. “They killed your people in Algeria,” he told them, “and now you want to lick their boots.”
As well as the tram system and pedestrianised centre, his achievements include the emergence of Montpellier as a leading information technology centre and an astonishing downtown public housing project designed by the Catalan architect Ricardo Bofil. It includes an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an immense public library as well as squares, avenues and fountains.
Reflecting Frêche’s eclectic political views Montpellier also boasts a Place Seán MacBride an Avenue des Républicains Espagnols and, controversially, a statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Not all his projects, however, came to fruition. His plan to change the name of Languedoc-Roussillon to La Septimanie after ancient Rome’s seventh legion, which was based in the area, fell flat. Locals regarded the new name as portraying a mixture of mania and septicaemia.
Organisations representing Algerians, Jews and blacks have dissented from the praise lavished on Frêche’s achievements, including that manifested in a glowing eight-page supplement on his life in the local daily, the Midi Libre.
His popularity in the region has, however, been immense .
Running as an Independent he trounced opponents from the UMP, Socialist Party and Jean-Marie LePen’s Front National in this year’s regional elections.
Georges Frêche: born July 9th, 1938; died October 24th, 2010