WASHINGTON – Former Mayor Marion Barry Washington, which has dominated politics in the US capital for decades despite the scandals and a brief stay in prison for drug possession, died at the age of 78 years, said Sunday the hospital where he died.

According to the Washington Post , Marrion Barry, who was diabetic and had undergone in recent years for a kidney transplant and cancer of the prostate, was in cardiac arrest when he arrived at the hospital and could not be revived.

Son of a farm laborer born in Mississippi, active in the civil rights movement, Councillor in the capital, Barry quickly acquires influence with an undeniable charisma and his willingness to improve the lot of the population black large majority in Washington.

Elected mayor, he set up a number of social programs, particularly to promote the employment of blacks.

But in January 1990, while it is in his third term, a video FBI can send to jail for six months for drug use and possession, whom the media called him “mayor for life” of Washington.

This does not prevent him from returning to the town hall, re-elected for a fourth time in 1994, after a campaign which, far from obscuring his stay in prison, puts forward the theme of redemption.

But during this last term, the situation is worsening in the city, with a huge deficit and an increase in crime.
Even after leaving office, Barry did not come out of public life, and was back in 2005, and was still at the time of his death, Councillor Washington.

This summer, while some compared his career to that of Rob Ford, he told He Rob Ford has nothing to do with me, my accomplishments are better, he makes a fool. It should not use the fact that drugs are to laugh at him.

I sympathize because I know what’s going through, but I do not agree with what he does, “refusing any parallel with the former mayor of Toronto.