Editorial of the “World”. He dispatched in Corsica to try to bring calm after two weeks of events and violent clashes with the police, Gérald Darmanin did not try to finish. In an interview in Corse-morning, see Wednesday, March 16, on the first day of its displacement on the island, the Minister of the Interior mentioned a track that no government is Until now, we wanted to put on the table: “We are ready to go to the autonomy,” he promised while making a quiet condition of a sine qua non.
This opening gesture, made in the middle of the presidential campaign, did not raise, on the bottom, from tolerated. The extreme right hammered that Corsica had to “stay French”, but the candidate the Republicans Valérie Pécresse did not closing the door to a statutory evolution provided that autonomy is “under the Republic”. Most left candidates have also been favorable.
On this thorny file, the problem does not reside in the proposal formulated by the government but in the volte-face operated by Emmanuel Macron and in the moment when it intervenes. For five years, the President of the Republic has indeed closed the door to all the political demands made by the leaders of the island. The tension has seen its culminating point during its first trip to the territory, in February 2018. The Head of State opposed an end to the autonomist Gilles Simeoni and the independentist Jean-Guy Talamoni, who then shared the power and asked him to recognize the “political character of the Corsican issue”. Perceived as a humiliation, the presidential tone showed all expectations.
A major concession
In June 2021, the comfortable re-election of Gilles Simeoni at the head of the Corsican community could have been an opportunity for a new beginning. Rid of its sometimes bulky alliance with Jean-Guy Talatoni, freed the balancing of the various nationalist fractions, the autonomist has this time sought allies, particularly with regions of France, now favorable to the development of a status autonomy for the island. A displacement of the Prime Minister was considered, but nothing came because the health crisis again struck and because the Elysee was, in the end, not convinced.
The operation operated intervenes at the worst moment: the state is indicted because he did not know how to protect Yvan Colonna, who was serving at the central house of Arles a prison sentence for participating in The assassination of the Prefect Erignac in 1998. The wild aggression of which the nationalist was victimized by a particularly dangerous corderer triggered a new cycle of violence on the island that the government is now trying to extinguish by making a major concession even before even the opening of any discussion. Not only gives the impression of throwing his convictions to save his campaign, but he suggests that, to unlock complicated files, two weeks of muscular events are better than five years of work. Elected.
The crisis of “yellow vests” had already begun to accredit this idea that violence pays. The Corsican case reinforces it, with which more is a serious risk of overbidding between the different nationalist currents that had been dormant. It’s called playing with fire.