Paul Quilès, socialist figure and former minister of François Mitterrand, is dead

He had long accompanied François Mitterrand, of which he was the campaign manager during the victory in the presidential election in May 1981. Former minister Paul Quilès died, Friday, September 24, at the age of 79, announced one of his daughters, Emmanuelle Quilès, at World and Agence France-Presse (AFP). “My father passed away this morning in Paris. He fought to the end as he always had done in his life for others ”, she told AFP.

His death was announced in error on September 21 by the president of the Tarn departmental council, Christophe Ramond, and repeated by several media, of which The world.

Son of an officer and a teacher, Paul Quilès was born on January 27, 1942 in Saint-Denis-du-Sig, in French Algeria. After Polytechnique, he worked until 1978 as an engineer in the energy sector with the oil company Shell. At the same time, this left-wing Catholic, former Christian student youth (JEC), entered the PS in 1972 and militated in the Mitterrandist current. His political rise took a real boom in 1981, when he became the director of the presidential campaign of François Mitterrand who, in May, acceded to the Elysee Palace.

He was then a figure of socialist governments, in which he occupied multiple portfolios:

• housing (1983-1985 then 1991-1992);
• transport (1984-1985 then 1991-1992);
• defense (1985-1986, before resigning following the case of Rainbow Warrior);
• post and telecommunications (1988-1991);
• interior (1992-1993).

He was then deputy for the first constituency of Tarn from 1993 to 2007, as well as mayor of the Tarn commune of Cordes-sur-Ciel, from 1995 until the last municipal elections, in 2020.

In 1997, he was elected chairman of the National Assembly’s defense committee and, the following year, he chaired the parliamentary fact-finding mission on Rwanda.

This father of three children was the president of the organization “Initiatives for nuclear disarmament”, aimed at “Building a more secure world”. He had written, alone or in collaboration, three books on the question, “Nuclear, a French lie”, “Stop the bomb! “ and “The nuclear illusion”.