Re: "Chirac as a "nasty, petty racist creep"
July 21, 2005
Troubled Chirac's adopted daughter rides to his rescue
From Charles Bremner in Paris
AN UNUSUALLY intimate portrait of Jacques Chirac as a tender, loving father — rather than the stubborn, beleaguered politician of recent weeks — has been presented to the French in a rare interview by his “third daughter”.
Anh Dao Traxel, 47, is a former Vietnamese refugee whom M Chirac informally adopted in 1979 when he was Mayor of Paris. She spent two years with the Chiracs and is still considered one of the family. She expresses great affection for the French President, who she predicts will defy expectations and fight for a third term in 2007.
“He has not said his last word. When he falls, he always gets up,” Mme Dao said when asked about the recent humiliations that have left the President at rock bottom in the opinion polls.
“I cannot see him stopping there . . . and retiring. I think he will fight to the end,” she said.
The thought of M Chirac refusing to retire after 12 years in power causes dismay among his rivals, notably Nicolas Sarkozy, a Cabinet minister and leader of the Union for a Popular Majority party, who is manoeuvring to succeed the President.
Unlike Mazarine Pingeot, the illegitimate daughter of the late President Mitterrand, Mme Dao has never led a secret existence but the “third daughter”, who calls M Chirac Papa and Bernadette Chirac Maman, has until recently kept in the background.
Now she has written a book about her life. “I thought that my story was only the business of myself and the Chirac family,” she told Le Parisien. “But I felt the need to tell the story of my journey and show my gratitude towards the Chiracs, without whom I would not be there.”
Mme Dao, whose second husband, Emmanuel Traxel, is a police lieutenant, describes in her book how M Chirac spotted her as a frightened young woman in a crowd of newly arrived boat people at Orly airport, Paris, and on the spur of the moment decided to take her home to live with Laurence and Claude, his daughters. She was then 21.
“I did not speak a word of French and I was crying in a corner,” she said. “Then this tall gentleman came up and said: ‘Don’t cry, ma chérie. You are coming home with us.’ ” Someone explained that he was the Mayor of Paris.
“Later I saw Bernadette Chirac, who took me in her arms and started crying. I understood that I had found a foster family. It was a fairytale, the two marvellous years that I spent with them.”
Mme Dao worked for 18 years in the Paris city hall, most of them in the office of her foster father. She named her three children after the Chiracs: Bernard-Jacques, Laurence-Claude and Jacques. The children call the Chiracs “Grandpa and Grandma”.
The media appearance of the Chiracs’ “adoptive” daughter is part of an increasing openness about France’s first family. In December Mme Chirac spoke publicly for the first time of the pain and guilt that she and her husband feel over the anorexia that afflicts their elder daughter, Laurence, 47. Mme Dao’s sympathetic portrait of the ageing President, due out in February, may be what he needs if he is indeed preparing for another term in the Élysée Palace.
women.timesonline.co.uk |
