REUTERS — At 8 p.m. on April 21, 2002, voters learned the shocking first-round results of France’s presidential election. For the first time in the republic’s history, a far-right candidate – Jean-Marie Le Pen – would advance to the runoff.

Minutes later, Lionel Jospin addressed his supporters. The leading candidate of the left, who many had believed would be the next president, said he took full responsibility for the unexpected defeat.

As cries rose from the crowd, Jospin – pale but composed – announced that he was withdrawing from political life.

The Socialist prime minister would never again hold elected office.

Asked years later about that career-ending vote, he said: “One may regret not having had the chance to prove oneself when there was a single step left to climb, and one stumbled before that step.”

It was a typically restrained reflection from a politician often viewed as austere.

Jospin, who was unable to convert his leadership of France’s government at the turn of the century into a winning presidential bid, has died aged 88, two sources in his Socialist party said on Monday.

The cause was not immediately known.

In an interview four days before the 2002 presidential election, Jospin dismissed the prospect of coming third as fanciful.

But what had seemed a conventional rematch between him and President Jacques Chirac, who had beaten Jospin previously, was upended by Le Pen’s high score and competition from numerous left-wing candidates.

Jospin finished behind Le Pen, triggering mass street protests. His score – 16.18 percent to Le Pen’s 16.86% – ended his hopes of occupying the Élysée presidential palace.

Chirac eventually won by a landslide thanks to a big left-wing vote that plumped for him.

“I overestimated the extent to which Jacques Chirac was rejected, and I overestimated how positively the public viewed my record,” he told documentary filmmaker Patrick Rotman in 2010. “I underestimated the impact that the left’s divisions had. I underestimated the first round.”

Asked about his failures to win more votes than Chirac, who was found guilty after retirement of funding phantom work for political friends at the taxpayer’s expense, he spoke of sticking to principles.

“For my part, I simply strove in politics to respect the rules, to cultivate the principles of the republic, to be honest and to keep my commitments,” he told Rotman.

He spoke with pride of leading a government that “worked well for five years and avoided every scandal.”

Le Pen died in 2025. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, is the current leader........

© The Times of Israel