Georges Frêche

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Georges Freche (born July 9, 1938) is a French politician. As of 2006, he serves as President of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, as well as President of the Agglomeration of Montpellier. A former mayor of Montpellier, and a former Deputy in the National Assembly, he is a history of law professor at University Montpellier 1. Freche is a member of the French socialist party.

A long-time political figure within French political circles, Freche is an extremely controversial character, on one side a great builder and visionary, on the other side criticized and condemned in court for his controversial, sometimes racial remarks.

1 Legacy
2 Management style
3 Controversial and racist speeches
4 External Links

[edit] Legacy

Freche served as the mayor of Montpellier from 1977 to 2004, when he became President of the Languedoc-Roussillon region and had to give up his other political mandates. Building on the trend started by his predecessor François Delmas who landed the Southern Europe IBM factory and headquarters as well as the scientific university, Freche expanded Montpellier in all directions, propelling it from the 25th largest city in France to the 8th, in less than 30 years. Under Freche, Montpellier, whose slogan, in the 80's, reflecting Freche's ambition, was "the overachiever", specialized in clean, tertiary industries such as banking, electronics and drinkable water processing.

While a member of French's powerful socialist party, and the leader of one of the largest socialist federations in France, Georges Freche was never given a minister position in any socialist government, not even as socialist François Mitterrand was France's president for 14 years. This could be due to both the fact that Freche is an embarrassing figure for the socialists, prone to multiple politically incorrect speeches with racist overtones, and his alleged refusal to let the socialist party be secretly financed by fake bills emitted by private company urba (urba became a major political scandal in France). It is also to be noted that he had antagonized François Miterrand as early as the foundation of the current French Socialist Party in 1971, being cast aside even at that date.

[edit] Management style

Georges Freche is, at the same time, respected and feared by both his opponents, and members of his own party. He is known to be generous to his supporters and crush anyone who opposes him, whatever political party they belong to. As a result, he is not grooming anyone as his "political descendent".

[edit] Controversial and racist speeches

July 1, 2000: "This is the longest tunnel in the world. You enter it in France and you come out in Ouarzazate", a city in Morocco. Freche was referring to the then-newly installed tramway line, of which one of the two terminus is in Montpellier's La Paillade, an area chiefly populated by citizens of Arabic origin and Muslim religion.
April, 2005: "I hope he does better than the other idiot", referring to the election of the new pope Benoit XVI, replacing pope John-Paul II, the "idiot" in his sentence.
February 11, 2006: "You are sub-humans", talking to a group of Harkis, who fought alongside France in the independence war of Algeria.
November 15, 2006: "Soon, in France, all soccer players will be black. This is not representative of the French population. This is a catastrophy", referring to the fact that most players in the French soccer national team are Black.

In fairness, while he should know better and his "outings" shouldn't be excused, as a politician and a representative of the French republic, some of Freche's speeches have been truncated into sound bites by the press and recuperated for political purposes.

Freche is a long-time supporter of the Harki community, generously allocating them jobs as city employees of Montpellier and giving them priority for low-cost housing projects. His "outing" about them was, according to him and to the full text in French press, to express his disappointment that a group of Harkis chose to join UMP, the political party that is a spiritual descendant of Charles de Gaulle's ideas. De Gaulle allegedly allowed the French army to kill tens of thousands of Harkis.

His speech about the French soccer team was more anti-white racism, being appaled at the lack of competitiveness of white people in soccer.

Freche received support from political opponents such as Jean-Pierre Grand during the media storm that occured after his outing on the French soccer team. This may however be due to his aforementioned way of managing style of the Languedoc-Roussillon region.