France expressed on Wednesday its willingness to negotiate an “autonomy” for Corsicaa proposal welcomed with caution by local politicians after two weeks of tension on the island and that generated controversy 25 days before the presidential election.
“We are willing to go as far as autonomy” for Corsica, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told the Corse-Matin newspaper. “The question is to know what this autonomy is. We have to discuss it. And this will take time, ”he specified.
The French island of Corsica has been living for two weeks demonstrations and riots over the brutal attack on an imprisoned Corsican independence fighter. What is behind this explosive situation that forced Paris to send its Minister of the Interior?
On March 2, a prisoner in the prison of Arles (south), presented as a “jihadist”, tried to suffocate Yvan Colonna, the most famous of the Corsican activists and convicted of the murder of the prefect Claude Erignac in 1998.
Since then, this 61-year-old former pastor, who always denied his involvement in the murder and called for his approach to Corsican prisons, he is in a coma. His condition “remains very serious,” his lawyer said Tuesday.
Shouting “Murderer French State”, thousands of people demonstrated on this Mediterranean island, ruled by Corsican nationalists.
Tension increased on Sunday when a massive protest in Bastia degenerated into “riots” and attacked public buildings, according to the prosecutor’s office. A hundred people were injured, including 77 officers.
France-Corsica, a special relationship?
Corsica, which has about 350,000 inhabitants and a size similar to Puerto Ricois incorporated into France in the second half of the eighteenth century, after passing through several European kingdoms and a brief period of independence.
The lace in France of the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean, where Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769, has evolved over time: from being part of a region with Marseille to achieving a special status.
In a country less decentralized than its neighbors Spain or Germany, Since 1990, Corsica has had a particular statute, similar to that of the French territories in the Caribbean – Guadeloupe and Martinique – and of Mayotte.
Since January 2018, Corsica has been considered a territorial collectivity, combining departmental and regional functions, and managing new powers such as sports, transport, culture and the environment.
What are the claims?
Corsican officials and protesters ask the State to know the “truth” of the aggression, to bring the activists imprisoned in other regions of France, such as Colonna, closer to the island, and to address the future of Corsica.
“It is urgent to build a real political solution with Corsica,” the regional president, the nationalist Gilles Simeoni, told AFP on Monday after Paris announced the start of a “cycle of discussions.”
The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, will address from Wednesday with local officials the conditions of an “evolution” of the Corsican lace in France, “according to the provisions of the Constitution.”
According to the regional newspaper Corse Matin, this reference to the Constitution makes local officials fear that Paris will veto some of their demands: recognition of the Corsican people, fiscal status, more autonomy, etc.
What does the French government respond?
In addition to the dialogue, the French government made some symbolic but key decisions for an island that for four decades was shaken by the attacks of the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FNLC).
French Prime Minister Jean Castex withdrew a special status for Colonna and two other members of the “Erignac commando”, Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi, paving the way for their transfer to Corsican prisons.
“Once the flame is lit, it will be difficult to extinguish it,” warns François Kraus, from the Ifop political analysis company, for whom the situation could worsen if the government “does not give in at the institutional level as well.”
The tension in Corsica comes weeks before the first round of the presidential election in France, on April 10, although it has not managed to open a gap in the agenda of an electoral campaign marked by the war in Ukraine. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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