“To get out of the tense situation that Corsica is experiencing and a logic of conflict that has prevailed for fifty years, there is only one lasting and effective solution: the start of the discussion process agreed between Corsica and the State. » The pithy tweet, accompanied by another supporting the mayor of Ajaccio, is Gilles Simeoni’s last public speech and dates from April 3. Since then, there has been a deafening silence, which is surprising in the usual strategy of omnipresence of the media space of the President of the Executive.
This Sunday, April 3, in Ajaccio, Mr. Simeoni was part of the procession that went up the rue Napoleon, behind a banner “Statu francese assassinu” – “the French state assassin”. From the first clashes, the boss of the local executive left the scene. The next day, the Minister of the Interior canceled the first meeting of the series of discussions on autonomy between the government and Corsican elected officials to be held in Place Beauvau on April 8. “The conditions for a normalized dialogue are not met”, said the interior, which had laid the appeasement of the street as a precondition. Gilles Simeoni, abused on the island by his former allied opponents, sometimes even calling for his resignation, had been bolstered by the government as the preferred interlocutor. But the fact that Mr. Simeoni carried Yvan Colonna’s coffin to the resting place as soon as he arrived in Ajaccio, and that he marched in processions with attacks on the state, quickly called into question his reliability. for Paris.
Tuesday, April 5, the president of the executive brought together the group presidents of the Assembly of Corsica to act on two elements: “Democracy is our common good, there is no other path than the political process and we must create its conditions of possibility, including through appeasement. » “Gilles Simeoni reflects, slices through his surroundings. Everything that needed to be said has been said, we must open the process as soon as possible. » Saving an inaudible speech during the presidential election and a constrained electoral calendar until the summer, the president of the executive refuses to categorically condemn the violence, as required by the interior ministry.
This week, the “M. Corse” of Place Beauvau, Grégory Canal, was on the island to meet local elected officials to ” to take the pulse “ and discover a Corsican question of which he is almost ignorant. As the pro-independence parties Core in fronte and Corsica Libera call for a boycott of the presidential election, Gilles Simeoni does not yet know if he will go to the polls on Sunday morning on an island where abstention promises to be eloquent.