Georges Frêche

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Georges Frêche (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. Frêche was a member of the French socialist party until he was expelled on January 27, 2007.

A long-time political figure within French political circles, Frêche 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 References
5 External links

[edit] Legacy

Frêche 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, Frêche expanded Montpellier in all directions, propelling it from the 25th largest city in France to the 8th, in less than 30 years. Under Frêche, Montpellier, whose slogan, in the 1980s, reflecting Frêche's ambition, was "the overachiever", specialized in clean, tertiary industries such as banking, electronics and drinkable water processing.

While he was a member of French's Socialist Party (PS), and the leader of one of the largest socialist federations in France, Georges Frêche 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 Frêche 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 would cause a major political scandal in France). It is also to be noted that he had antagonized François Mitterrand as early as the foundation of the current French Socialist Party in 1971, being cast aside even at that date.

On January 27, 2007, the French Socialist Party announced that, after reviewing his case, and especially one of his many "outings", about how many Black players are in the French soccer team, Frêche was permanently expelled from the Socialist Party. Allegedly, Frêche wasn't trying to be racist, and was instead talking about Caucasians being bad at sports, because they aren't "hungry" enough, but he did have much more worrysome "outings" in the past, and it can be said that the Party has finally come to terms with the long list of controversial speeches during his entire career.

[edit] Management style

Georges Frêche 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. Frêche 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 Benedict 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: "On [the French national football team], there are 9 blacks out of 11. The normal number would be three or four. This would reflect [French] society. But there are so many, because white are lame. I'm ashamed for this country. Soon, there will be eleven blacks. When I see certain football teams, it makes me sad.", "Dans cette équipe, il y a neuf blacks sur onze. La normalité serait qu'il y en ait trois ou quatre. Ce serait le reflet de la société. Mais, là, s'il y en a autant, c'est parce que les blancs sont nuls. J'ai honte pour ce pays. Bientôt, il y aura onze blacks. Quand je vois certaines équipes de foot, ça me fait de la peine."^[1]

Frêche 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^{[citation needed]}. 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.

Frêche received support from political opponents such as Jean-Pierre Grand during the media storm that occurred after his outburst on the French soccer team. This may however be due to the aforementioned management style he uses in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.