"I can only say thank you in the name of my father and mother," the statesman's daughter Claude Chirac said in a tearful address at Sainte-Fereole, a small village in the Chirac fiefdom of the Correze region. He continued to represent the Correze department until becoming president in 1995, serving as head of state until 2007. Soulier said he had proposed and Chirac's family had agreed to rename the square after him in the village which they had insisted would be the site of the final homage to his life. The group then stopped by the village hall and the family home, of which Claude Chirac's husband Frederic Salat-Baroux vowed "we shall never sell this house. Among those attending Saturday was former Socialist president Francois Hollande, who was a political rival of Chirac in Correze, as well as Chirac's grandson Martin Rey-Chirac.

Source: The Local October 05, 2019 13:41 UTC