Piero Basso
in Hommage à Léo Matarasso, Séminaire sur le droit des peuples, Cahier réalisé par CEDETIM-LIDLP-CEDIDELP, Février 1999
We worked with Léo for many years in formal meetings around the world, as many of you here will recall. He was not an easy chair, as we all know. He always called us to order, to the order of the day, to order in our presentations, to precision. I would even say that if he could be here he would have something to say about your invitation, because, finally, in the title given to Louis Joinet’s presentation, “the right of peoples, from the Algiers Charter to the 1990s”, we forgot that it was about the Algiers Declaration, because the Algiers Charter is that of the Algerian government, proclaimed in the same days as ours, when we were there. You all heard him when he reminded us of the precision of the words and the importance of our commitments.
All of this was Léo, the beloved president of the League. For a long time he supported us all with his spirit, with his presence. He never missed a single meeting. He was no longer young, but he was always present, always the first to arrive, perhaps after a good morning walk. Always present, always pushing us all to do our duty.
But it was especially when he allowed you to share his private life that we appreciated him the most. I have precious memories of the little dining room in the Rue de Tournon, of the excellent quality of the meals prepared by his cook, and above all of the evenings with friends like Bentoumi, like Cortazar, or with others, and then it was a flood of memories. He gave us insights into history, episodes that I knew very little about, from what I had read in the newspapers, and it was striking to hear them told by a protagonist, by someone who had known all the resistance fighters, all the democrats of a good half of the world, in any case of all the former French colonies, and one would have liked the evening never to end, because it was something that gripped you, that took your heart, that took your head, that took everything.
Vera reminded us that he was generous. Generous with his time, generous with his ideas, generous with his money. When we had ELEC meetings here in Paris, and this happened several times, he always invited us all to the restaurant, near Luxembourg, near his home, fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty people.
Sitting at the table, politics, organization, all of that took a back seat to his wit, to his welcome, to his way of making us all feel at ease, and to being a bit, although there wasn’t such a big age difference, but at least a bit of a father to us all.
I would have liked to say much more, and Léo deserved many more words, but I didn’t expect to speak and these are the first memories that came to me spontaneously. It is a strong memory, a sweet memory that he left to all of us.
Basso, Piero