Jacques Chirac<\/a> In a power-sharing arrangement called “cohabitation.”<\/p>\nAs Prime Minister, Jospin opposed the shift to the French left towards the free-market reforms adopted at the same time in Britain.<\/p>\n
He enacted France’s equality law, required political parties to field an equal number of male and female candidates in national elections, established civil unions for LGBTQ+ and straight couples and reduced the working week from 39 hours to 35 hours, hailed by supporters as a social breakthrough but criticized by opponents as a drag on the economy.<\/p>\n
Jospin never embraced her role as a public figure, hampered by a reserved personality that became even harsher in front of the cameras. <\/p>\n
She left politics in 2002 after a shock defeat by Le Pen in the first round of presidential voting. <\/p>\n
The polarizing Le Pen qualified for a second-round runoff against incumbent and first-round winner Chirac, pushing Jospin into third place. Le Pen and Jospin both received more than 16% of the vote, but Le Pen’s lead of about 200,000 votes over Jospin advanced her to the second round, a victory for the anti-immigration founder of the far-right National Front and a major blow to Le Pen’s opponents. <\/p>\n
Voters determined to keep Le Pen out of the presidential Elysee Palace rallied around Chirac, who won a second term in a landslide.<\/p>\n
Jospin was born on July 12, 1937, the son of a midwife who, according to family knowledge, used Voltaire’s work to elevate her pelvis during childbirth.<\/p>\n
“He believed I had the spirit of Voltaire,” he said.<\/p>\n
Jospin said that his childhood memories of Nazi-occupied Paris influenced his outlook in adulthood.<\/p>\n
He said, “I remember the importance of silence. If you were not quiet, you risked putting people in danger. Certainly in political life I have retained a certain terror of talkativeness.”<\/p>\n
He grew up in a Protestant family and attended the prestigious \u00c9cole d’Administration Nationale, the former institution for the disproportionate share of French leaders and intellectuals. <\/p>\n
Like many people in Paris and beyond, he was caught up in the leftist protests of 1968. Before joining the Socialist Party he was close to the Trotskyists. <\/p>\n
Despite softening over time, Jospin never lost his concern for the free market, retaining his trademark phrase: “Yes to a market economy, no to a market society.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris– Lionel Jospin, former Prime Minister of France, who gave France its due 35 hour work week And then withdrew from politics after leading France’s Socialist Party to a shocking presidential election defeat against the far-right firebrand Jean-Marie Le PenIs dead. He was 88 years old. His death was confirmed by the current prime minister,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[7750,7749,1499,1577,7748,3945,936,1266,441],"class_list":{"0":"post-15964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-35hour","9":"tag-architect","10":"tag-dies","11":"tag-french","12":"tag-jospin","13":"tag-lionel","14":"tag-minister","15":"tag-prime","16":"tag-week"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15966,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15964\/revisions\/15966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}