By setting foot on an island shaken by nationalist anger on Wednesday March 16, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has three days to prevent the fuse lit by the attempted murder of Yvan Colonna, today between life and death, becomes a permanent inferno.
Since the aggression, on March 2, at the central of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) of the nationalist, sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of the prefect Erignac, urban guerrillas have caused 123 wounded among the forces order and set fire to public buildings, such as the courthouse in Ajaccio or the tax center in Bastia.
Gérald Darmanin had not yet arrived in Ajaccio when he was already paving the way to autonomy in the columns of Corse-Matin. While making a ” MEA culpa “ on the responsibility of the State in the aggression of Yvan Colonna “as a person protecting the people who are under his responsibility, in this case prisoners”he also condemned this violence and argued that the return to calm was a “prior”.
In a bunkered assembly in Corsica, where the press was kept away for a long time, on the sidewalk, Mr. Darmanin seemed to be going to Canossa to meet face to face with Gilles Simeoni, whom he designated as his privileged interlocutor. Not in the official office of the President of the Executive on the third floor, where the tricolor still does not appear, but in a meeting room on the ground floor.
The idea of ”a Polynesian status”
In the process, the resident of Place Beauvau played the score of the autonomy of the island, posing in particular the idea “of a Polynesian status”, conferring all powers except those relating to the sovereign domain, or evoking article 74 of the Constitution.
He also initiated dialogue with civil society and the chairs of the four groups of the Corsican Assembly and the representative of Corsica Libera. “The Minister pronounced an important term in the history of Corsica, that of autonomy. Tomorrow we have to move towards a fruitful mode of operation for Corsica, which is perhaps not the case with the one we have today”said Laurent Marcangeli, leader of the right-wing opposition (Un Soffiu nuovo, “a new breath for Corsica”).
Mr. Marcangeli, a founding member of Horizons, which has become Macronie’s strongest constituency on the island, also called for a referendum on the issue, “Who will appeal to all the Corsican people to determine their future.” But he also called for calm in the street, something that the nationalists who want to maintain the standoff with the state clearly refuse to do for the time being.
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