France bade farewell on Thursday to former Socialist prime minister Michel Rocard with President François Hollande praising him as "great and good" during a somber ceremony at Les Invalides in Paris, reports The Daily Star of Lebanon.
Rocard, who died Saturday aged 85, served as prime minister for three years from mid-1988 under Francois Mitterrand, the two-term Socialist president who led the country from 1981 to 1995.
The late prime minister was "a great and good figure of the republic, a luminous person who through his struggles left his mark on several successive generations," Hollande said in the military complex's sun-drenched Court of Honor.
Hollande praised Rocard as a "brilliant intellectual" and a "citizen in awe of the world who saw his work only on a global scale."
While describing Rocard as a man of compromise, Hollande said he succeeded in carrying out "audacious reforms" -- notably by resorting 28 times to a measure that allowed him to bypass parliamentary votes.
Hollande's government used the same measure this week to force through labor reforms despite intense public opposition.
After delivering the eulogy, Hollande stood before Rocard's flag-draped coffin for several minutes before pall-bearers carried it away.
Read more of this AFP report published by The Daily Star of Lebanon.