Narrator:

Francois Mitterrand is coming home today, possibly for the last time. Slowly dying of cancer, and with just four weeks of his presidency left, he returns to his political birthplace, The Nièvre region where he was a senator for more than 20 years.

Far away from Paris, the tiny village of [inaudible 00:00:42] with it's 40 inhabitants, is awaiting one of his last official visits, and the onslaught of the presidential entourage. Tonton, the man they affectionately call 'uncle', is well known to them all. He's been coming here for 40 years to a place that's important to them. Where the Gauls first united against the invading Romans. This is the man who said of himself, "I am a part of the French countryside."

Speaker 2:

When Francois Mitterrand is somewhere present vulgarity disappears. His behaviour is always noble. How do we say? Noble.

Narrator:

The local nobility and the mayor of [inaudible 00:01:34] is an old friend. He's known Francois Mitterrand for 40 years.

Mayor:

[Foreign Language 00:01:48]

Speaker 4:

[Foreign Language 00:02:05]

Narrator:

This presidential office enjoys vast power, vested it in it by the fifth republic which was created in 1958. In substance and in style, it recalls European emperors of centuries ago with their unfettered political might. And no one knows more about using the powers of office than does Francois Mitterrand. He has ruled for longer than any other post-war European leader. He has dominated French politics, manipulated its institutions, even changed the country's culture.

Franz-Olivier:

The French, they are very proud of Mitterrand because he's one of the son of Machievelli. You don't have so many sons of Machiavelli in Europe or even in the politics in the world. He's very good at this job. Very good. It's really [inaudible 00:03:04] with the revolver in his office. And if you are a politician, a big prominent politician, you must take care.

Jean-Edern:

You know, he's not the president, he is not the chief. He's a king. He's the ugly king of France.

Francois Mitter:

[Foreign Language 00:03:28]

Narrator:

Francois Mitterrand was inaugurated on May 21, 1981. Following 40 years of right wing rule, the socialist stream had swept to victory.

Speaker 2:

The emotion came also from this miracle. How was it possible that this man who during 30 years has struggled against the establishment, against the people on the right is president? It was something unimaginable.

Narrator:

But this was a man of vaulting ambition with acrobatic principles capable of any somersault. Brought to power on the socialist wave, his history was right wing and opportunist. For 30 years he had used any coalition, any party to advance himself.

Jean Guisnel:

1960. He was nothing at all. With him, he had five or six friends and nothing else, and nobody else with him. He was alone. No party, no friends, no money, nothing,

Narrator:

So he had to reinvent himself. His the next major change set him up politically for life. He departed the right wing. He united the disparate elements of the left, brought in the communists, and relaunched the Socialist Party. It took the next 10 years with two failed presidential attempts to reach his goal. Once he gained the Elysee Palace, he started to construct his empire from within. Swiftly, they developed what amounted to a magisterial court of advisors, indeed admirers. Few were admitted to the inner sanctum, those who were required a particular kind of discretion.

Speaker 9:

[Foreign Language 00:05:19]

Narrator:

One of the principal's first acts was to establish the [inaudible 00:05:47] secret police ostensibly to deal with his personal security. Instead, what followed was the phone tap surveillance of his political enemies.

Yves Bonnet:

[Foreign Language 00:05:58]

Narrator:

Whether it was special police or major policy shifts, the goal was always power.

Francois Mitter:

[Foreign Language 00:06:32]

Narrator:

Early in his career, he was firmly opposed to the French nuclear programme, both power and weapons, not because he had commitment, but because president de Gaulle was in favour of it. After he became president, Mitterrand reversed this position.

Jean Guisnel:

He understood that in France, the bomb is the power. If you have the bomb, you have the power. That period he said, [Foreign Language 00:07:25] I am the deterrents. Everything proceeds from me. I am the bomb. I am the power. I am the fire and I can do what I want.

Narrator:

And when it looked as if Greenpeace might interfere with the French nuclear testing at Moruroa at all, decisive action was ordered. Now a deputy in the national assembly, Yves Bonnet was head of French Counter Intelligence when the Rainbow Warrior was attacked in Oakland Harbour.

The Rainbow Warrior affair. Can you tell me what was president Mitterrand's role?

Yves Bonnet:

[Foreign Language 00:08:07]

Narrator:

So, monsieur Bonnet, you are telling me that Francois Mitterrand himself ordered that the Rainbow Warrior be bombed?

Yves Bonnet:

Yes. Yes.

Narrator:

You can confirm that?

Yves Bonnet:

Yes.

Narrator:

Perhaps his greatest fault first was economic. His socialist programme of promise failed within 18 months of his inauguration. He promptly abandoned socialist policy and embraced the free market, laying the foundation for today's strong economy.

Franz-Olivier:

For years, you know, France is a Catholic country. Latin countries, they hate money. We hate money, and especially the left. For years, decades, the French left were thinking that it was bad to earn money. That it was bad for a company to have profits.

Narrator:

But Mitterrand himself was responsible for getting rid of that fear, that hatred of money.

Franz-Olivier:

Yes. He did it little by little of course, but he did it, and that's very important.

Narrator:

The president's vision manifested itself in his colossal programme of public buildings. His Grands Travaux, and there are 47 of them, the biggest of which are in Paris are his lasting monuments to France to history and to himself. Few modern leaders have enshrined their memory so massively or at such huge cost. This, the bibliotheque, cost the equivalent of 17,000 much needed dwellings.

1988 was a good year for the president. After a trying two year period of co-habitation when the voters elected the  right wing government headed by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, the socialists swept back with a powerful campaign and later on became the first French president to win a second term. The bicentenary was approaching and Mitterrand was at his political peak. But the party he had twice reinvigorated was starting a descent into scandal. The market dominated culture he had fostered brought corruption in its shadow.

Jean-Edern:

Never was corruption bigger, corruption every day. New corruption after another old corruption, and corruption coming with the corruption, so on so that you forget, and you never remembered what was the corruption of the day before. Such a big a mountain of corruption.

Franz-Olivier:

It's awkward at that time because suddenly everybody discovered money and especially the left. And for years even the right was very prudent with money, and suddenly everybody said, "Well, it's good to earn money", and it changed. Suddenly the mind changed. It was something really new and corruption came with that.

Narrator:

Jean-Edern Hellie, a painter, writer and former friend of Mitterrand, voices the dismay that many of the left now feel.

Jean-Edern:

The biggest stories where we the friends of president, we've  Grossouvre who shoots himself, with a one man who was a businessman and his best friend who died very strangely. The hearing of [Foreign Language 00:12:04] Hearing me, hearing most of the important French people-

Narrator:

You mean phone tapping? Tapping telephones?

Jean-Edern:

Yes, it was for the president.

Michel Rocard:

The president had probably a set of dangerous friends. This is what is in the press now.

Narrator:

Surrounded himself with them.

Michel Rocard:

You have all the information. Don't ask me to insist. This is public, thank you.

Narrator:

The voters though were sick of it all and in March 1993, the air thick with the odour of dirty tricks, the Socialists were trounced. The man who had recreated the Socialist Party 22 years before, now presided over it's collapse. President Mitterrand was forced into another cohabitation with the right. Philip [inaudible 00:12:56] was elected president of the 577-seat national assembly, which now contained only 67 socialist deputies. The parliament's most pressing business was to address that country's chronic unemployment. Nowhere are the failures of socialism more obvious than on the housing estates in the suburbs of Paris.Yet here at Athis-Mons, they still crowd to listen to the president.

Francois Mitter:

[Foreign Language 00:13:33]

Narrator:

Most of these people still believe in Mitterrand's socialism. It did deliver them a guaranteed minimum wage and a shorter working week.

Speaker 13:

[Foreign Language 00:13:56]

Narrator:

Francois Mitterrand clearly knows how to speak to the people, but the hard fact is that unemployment is as bad now as it was in the 30s.

Speaker 14:

[Foreign language 00:14:19]

Narrator:

The misery of defeat in the taint of scandal in Mitterrand's entourage led to tragedy. One week after the 1993 election, prime minister Pierre Bérégovoy committed suicide.

Speaker 9:

[Foreign Language 00:14:35]

Narrator:

One year later, a presidential advisor, Franois de Grossouvre shot himself in his Elysee palace office. Both men had lost Mitterrand's confidence and personal favour. Surrounded by scandal and himself facing death from cancer, the president remained above the turmoil. He had begun deliberately organising his posterity. In 1994, he decided to resolve the question of his war record. He cooperated with the writing of a book that detailed his role in the Vichy government until 1943, a period longer than he had previously admitted. In doing this, he confronted the French people on the country's most sensitive issue, France's collaboration with the Nazis.

Franz-Olivier:

You mustn't forget that at the beginning of the 40s, he was not so much against bitter, and then you felt he was a strong, brave resistance. And you always have that in Mitterrand. You have this mixture. Always on one side and on the other.

Narrator:

And he has resolved in his way a personal matter, the existence of his illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, who lived with her mother in an official apartment on the banks of the Seine. This year to celebrate her birthday, he took her to dinner at a restaurant where he knew they would be seen.

Jean Guisnel:

It was kind of a presentation to the world. I'm old, I'm dying, I'm very tired. I'm proud of my daughter, so I present her to you.

Narrator:

Francois Mitterrand's intellect, culture and passion have produced a president like no other in recent French history. As his era draws to a close, the people of France and those close to him have difficulty imagining how he can be replaced.

Speaker 9:

[Foreign Language 00:16:45]

Narrator:

The president alone faces his departure with stoicism.

Francois Mitter:

[Foreign Language 00:17:01]

Narrator:

And when he's gone, as the French would have it, he will still be part of the country's soul.

Speaker 2:

When he will have left Elysee, he will continue to appear as the president, moral president if you want.