BERTRAND DELANOë

'Bertrand Delanoë' (born May 30, 1950) () is a French politician, and has been the mayor of Paris since 2001. He is from the French Socialist Party.
Delanoë was born in Tunis, Tunisia to a French mother and a Tunisian father. He moved to France with his family in his teens. He is openly gay.^[1][2]

Contents

Political career highlights

Mayor of Paris

Assassination attempt

Olympic bid

Homosexuality

References

External links

Political career highlights

He has been involved in politics since the age of 23 as the secretary of the Socialist federation in Aveyron.
He was first elected to the Paris city council in 1977.
In 1993, he became the head of the city's Socialist Party.
In 1995, he was elected to the French Senate, where he was secretary of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense.

Mayor of Paris

Delanoë has been mayor of Paris since March 18 2001, when control of the city council was won by a left-wing alliance for the first time since the 1871 Paris Commune. His predecessors were Jean Tiberi (1995-2001), and Jacques Chirac (1977-1995), who resigned after eighteen years as mayor when he was elected president of France.
Delanoë won the mayorship of Paris, at the head of a coalition of Socialists, Greens and Communists, over the conservative candidates Jean Tiberi and Philippe Séguin, who were unable to resolve their differences and thereby split the conservative vote. This success in a city which has traditionally been a stronghold of the right was made all the more striking by setbacks to the Left in the 2001 elections that occurred more generally—has been partially attributed with the weariness of the Parisian public with respect to various scandals of corruption and graft in the preceding administrations (see corruption scandals in the Paris region).
Delanoë was virtually unknown before the election of 2001, but soon gained notoriety for organising new and unusual events in Paris, such as the "Paris Beach" ''(Paris Plage)'' on the banks of the River Seine every summer since 2002, an initiative that has been copied by many other international cities after.
Since becoming mayor, Delanoë's goals have been to improve the quality of life, reduce pollution, and cut down on vehicle traffic within the city (including a plan for a non-polluting tramway to ease Parisian traffic) and pedestrian malls. Recently he has become criticized by a majority of Parisians for the city's increased traffic problems and congestion, and by conservatives for having failed to deliver on his promises.
In an interview published on September 4 2007, he said that he would run for re-election as mayor in the March 2008 municipal elections.^[3]

Assassination attempt

He was stabbed on October 5, 2002 during the ''Nuit Blanche'', a night of festivities in Paris, while mingling with the public. His assailant, Azedine Berkane, was reported to have told police that "he hated politicians, the Socialist Party, and the homosexuals".
Before being taken to hospital, Delanoë ordered that the festivities continue. Delanoë's wound was reported not to be life-threatening and he left the hospital after about two weeks. Delanoë, Bertrand
At the beginning of the month of April, 2007, Azedine Berkane, who had been permitted time out of the psychiatric hospital he was interned in, as the doctors considered he caused no threat, did not come to his scheduled meeting with them, and has not been seen since.
^[4]

Olympic bid

The failure to secure the 2012 Summer Olympics for Paris on July 6, 2005 was Delanoe's first major setback as mayor. In the aftermath of the defeat in his Olympic bid, he accused British prime minister Tony Blair of unduly influencing the result in order to secure the games in London. However, Bertrand Delanoë's popularity in fact rose during July 2005 [1]. The French public appeared to have laid more of the blame on president Jacques Chirac, who allegedly said that "the only worse food than British food is Finnish" and "the only thing the British have done for Europe's agriculture is mad cow disease", which may have offended two Finnish members of the International Olympic Committee.

Homosexuality

Delanoë was one of the first major French politicians to announce that he was gay, during a 1998 television interview (before being elected mayor). His election as mayor made Paris the world's second largest city with an openly LGBT mayor, the largest being Berlin, Germany, whose mayor is Klaus Wowereit. The third largest is Hamburg, Germany, whose mayor is Ole von Beust. All three have taken office since 2001; previously, the largest city with an LGBT mayor had been Winnipeg, Canada, with mayor Glen Murray.
While not taking an active part in the gay and lesbian community, Delanoë wants to make a difference, especially in ending discrimination in municipal subsidies to civic groups. Political opponents argue though that such choices are just a new example of clientelism.

References

1. http://www.citymayors.com/mayors/paris_mayor.html
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2305849.stm
3. "Bertrand Delanoë candidat à sa succession à la mairie de Paris", AFP (''Le Monde''), September 3, 2007 .
4. L'agresseur de Bertrand Delanoë a disparu, April 7, 2007

External links

★ Bertrand Delanoë's web site

★ Paris and beaches

★ The Mayor of Paris, from www.paris.fr

★ BBC report on stabbing

★ CityMayors.com profile

★ Poll of Parisians on Delanoë, January 2006