The presidential declarations in Mayotte, Thursday, December 19, in the face of the anger of poor residents after the passage of Cyclone Chido were strongly denounced from all sides.
François Bayrou, had already come under fire on Monday, December 16, for having gone to Pau rather than to the crisis meeting devoted to Mayotte. It is now up to Emmanuel Macron to spark controversy for his attitude towards the French department. The head of state has been visiting there since Thursday and until Friday, a short week after Chido’s visit. On site, Emmanuel Macron faced the distrust of angry residents. Taken to task and booed Thursday evening by a crowd of people shouting “Macron resignation” At the end of his first day in the devastated French archipelago, the President of the Republic lost his temper.
In shirt sleeves, an outfit which he has made his trademark in this type of situation, he responded by saying: “Don’t pit people against each other! If you pit people against each other, we’re screwed, because you’re happy to be in France. Because if it wasn’t France you would be 10,000 times more in trouble!” Shouting into a microphone, Emmanuel Macron continued by pleading that“there is no [avait] there is no place in the Indian Ocean where we help people so much”. Earlier in the day, during an altercation with a disgruntled Mahorais, the President told him that, while other people were there to help, “you come here to yell at everyone and you don’t help”. Words that did nothing to calm the boos. Stunned, residents responded: “You shouldn’t get angry with us, we didn’t do anything, we’re hurt, we lost everything.”
“An institutional abandonment”
In mainland France, the words of the head of state do not get through either. “Emmanuel Macron went there in […] an arrogant attitude and teacher of lessons. […] I saw him in a shirt saying “Are you proud to be French?” […] That’s not the point actually.”reacted environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau on France 2. “We have the greatest human catastrophe since the Second World War and we are putting on a Macron show. It’s not up to par.”she lamented.
For the president of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly Eric Coquerel, this exchange “self-explanatory”. “Message to those who believe that he must not leave: who imagines this still possible for 30 months?” until the end of the presidential term in 2027, the LFI deputy asked about X. On the RN side, MP Sébastien Chenu estimated, on RTL, that these words were not likely to “to comfort our Mahorese compatriots who, through this kind of expression, always have the feeling of being treated separately”.
Haidari Nassurdine, President of the Representative Council of Black Associations and Soilihi Chahidati, elected in Marseille, also reacted to this sequence in a column published by Liberation. They denounced the arrogance of the President of the Republic during a scene “worthy of the time of the colonies”. The words of the head of state are “of a crass indecency and an incredible indignity, [qui] resonated like a slap in the minds of the residents,” said the co-signatories. For the two authors, who speak of a “insult” to people treated like “sub-citizens”, “these presidential remarks are not just words; they embody a deep contempt, an institutional abandonment.”
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