In a few minutes, shortly before 3 p.m. this Saturday, the municipal council room of the town hall annex of Zonza, in Sainte-Lucie de Porto-Vecchio, was filled. About 300 people came. Anonymous, activists, local or regional elected officials and representatives of the State, including the prefect of Corsica, Jérôme Filippini, and the sub-prefect of Sartène, Anthony Barraco, were there in support of Nicolas Cucchi. The mayor of Zonza was targeted on Saturday January 11 by the arson of three chalets on the campsite he operates, located in his town.
In every mouth, “surprise” to see so many of us despite the bad weather: “Even if we suspected that there would be people there, we didn’t imagine to this extent”. And in everyone's mouths, the same speech: “Collegiality, union, cohesion” against the “cowards, cowards, imbeciles” for Pierre Marcellesi, president of the community of municipalities of Alta Rocca; of the “mafia practices against which we must speak out”according to Jean-Paul Panzani, territorial advisor representing Gilles Simeoni; THE “duty to be united and firm” facing the “attacks on the values that unite us and found our society”supported the president of the association of mayors of Corsica-du-Sud, Jean-Jacques Ciccolini, while the prefect Jérôme Filippini said it, in Corsican: “A viulenza basta. It's abhorrent to imagine that, from the rest of the world, people look at us and say to themselves that Corsica is reduced to this violence”.
“Unbearable” to try to “intimidate an elected official of the Republic”
We also felt in the speeches a certain exasperation with regard to the “menaces” Who “fuse every day” against elected officials, “500 mayors resign every year”insisted the mayor of Porto-Vecchio, Jean-Christophe Angelini, while Nicolas Cucchi returned, laconically, to the tensions that the development of a PLU can cause.
A point on which the prefect, Jérôme Filippini, denounced an act “all the more unbearable as he is clearly trying to intimidate an elected official of the Republic” who has the “democratic legitimacy to conduct business on its territory”. He wanted to tell “those who imagine they can intimidate or instill fear” that they have “tort”. “Let all those who think of using violence to assert their personal, ideological or material interests, not imagine for a moment that they will be peaceful.” The message is clear.
-The need for a popular uprising and state support
What means to fight? There are two of them, complementary, according to elected officials: popular surge – “it is high time that our society looks in a big mirror and examines its conscience”urged Jean-Christophe Angelini – and support from the State, requested in particular by the deputy Paul-André Colombani, supported, among others, by Jean-Paul Panzani for whom the “convergence between the authority of the State, the responsibility of Corsican elected officials and the Corsican economic fabric” will allow “find an answer over time” pour “block what is destroying Corsican society as a whole”.
The investigation carried out over the past week, assured Prefect Filippini, will shed light on the arson and its perpetrator(s). “And with the judicial authority, we will not spare our efforts”. Three separate fires, which destroyed as many bungalows within the campsite operated by Nicolas Cucchi, were noted by investigators in Zonza. An investigation was opened by the Ajaccio public prosecutor's office for “destruction by dangerous means” and entrusted to the Sartène gendarmerie brigade.
