Claude Allègre, Minister of National Education in Lionel Jospin’s government between 1997 and 2000, died on Saturday in Paris, his son announced to AFP. The 87-year-old man, who suffered a major heart attack in 2013, had since suffered from health problems and his condition deteriorated last September, the same source said.
A shadowy character with small glasses and a round silhouette, endowed with the high words of a born juggernaut, this scientist was a media figure, known to the general public since his time in government between 1997 and 2000.
Member of the PS since 1973, long-time friend and advisor to Lionel Jospin, he became his Minister of National Education, Research and Technology. A minister determined to reform.
But one of his first outbursts, the one where he proclaims his ambition to “slim down the mammoth”, immediately alienates the teachers. An opposition which will continue to grow and will force him to surrender his portfolio in March 2000.
Member of the PS before joining Sarkozy
A sentence “never uttered publicly”, resulting from an “off with a journalist”, “but that’s what remained”, regrets his son Laurent. Claude Allègre was then replaced at the ministry by Jack Lang, which caused a temporary cooling of his relations with his friend and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, whom he had known during his studies.
A member of the Socialist Party from 1973, Claude Allègre chose to side with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. “If he rallied behind Sarkozy, it was because he saw that there was someone who wanted really change things,” emphasizes his son. “Deep down he had a naive side, he wanted to change people’s lives. He believed in Man and thought that he could be changed. »
-In 2009, he was cited for entering government, but was deprived of a job, probably because of his controversial positions on climate change.
Born on March 31, 1937 to a father who was a professor and a mother who was a schoolteacher, Claude Allègre, with a good-natured personality but also sometimes “abrupt” and “stubborn” according to his son, never renounced his positions on the subject. “It’s a shame to only keep that, everyone fell on him excessively,” laments his son
A “fighting man”
In 2013, he suffered a heart attack while participating in a scientific conference in Chile.
On alone against everyone »
“Even if he was wrong about the climate, he was someone with integrity,” underlines his son who hopes that “that will not only remain of him.” “The problem is that he was very stubborn, he was not in the consensus, in the agreed side. »
