Is Robert Badinter a transpartisan figure? With his induction into the Panthéon on Thursday, October 9, Badinter, the architect of France’s abolition of the death penalty, has become something of a commanding figure: the embodiment of a kind of moral left from days gone by. Among the left, to speak of him is to evoke a sense of nostalgia. «A socialist, but a socialist from a distance,» as former president François Hollande described him, adding that Badinter, a former justice minister (1981-1986), above all left behind «a courageous vision of political action.»
Hollande cited «his courage in abolishing the death penalty, in facing public outrage and police protests, in standing by what he believed was his truth.» His dignity and his stance, which Holland described as «somewhat above the fray, moral, coupled with a certain haughty intransigence at times, but always with a pedagogical approach,» did not win him any electoral victories, except for his election to the Sénat in 1995. Yet it boosted the prestige of an entire political camp.
Indeed, Badinter (1928-2024) featured among the intellectuals whom former president François Mitterrand (in office 1981-1995) rallied around him, a group which gave the Socialists a renewed and broader base. Libertés, Libertés («Freedoms, Freedoms»), a slim book published by the Committee for a Charter of Freedoms, led by Badinter, in 1976, sowed the seeds of 110 proposals that were later put forward by Mitterand in his platform for the 1981 presidential election. According to Gilles Candar, a historian of the Parti Socialiste, the book played a key role in attracting the non-Communist left, and in winning over an electorate comprised of teachers and others with intellectual professions.
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