split
Corsica is there, a step away from Sardinia (when the raging mistral winds in the Strait of Bonifacio allow it), but totally outside the Italian media dynamic. Often also very far away from the heart of the French media, not only geographically relegated to the fringes. But when things are going badly, you can also look out over the sea from Paris. Tension on the island is at the guard level. What happens from Bastia to Ajaccio? The Corsican crisis has violently entered the public debate and the presidential election campaign (Macron is in the lead according to all the polls, but the French electoral law provides for a double ballot with ballot and therefore cannot rule out anything). Corsica is back in earnest after a long time.
The reasons are quite serious: Independence, the pursuit of autonomy has to do with it. Yvan Colonna proindependence advocate imprisoned for the murder of Claude Érignac, the prefect of southern Corsica who was shot dead in Ajaccio in 1998 was the victim of a horrific attack behind bars in Arles: he was arrested by an Islamic prisoner who had become radicalized in Afghanistan put in a coma. Despite having to be monitored 24 hours a day, he was put to death. Consequence: in Corsica, the Ajaccio courthouse was attacked and a fire broke out, some prefectures were hit by Molotov cocktails, over a hundred people (almost all young and very young generations raised in the myth of independence) were injured during demonstrations in the streets There were clashes with the police.
The murder of Erignac had a profound impact on France. In a quarter of a century, Colonna (like other defendants) was never granted the right to be transferred to a prison in Corsica. A section of the proindependence movement now accuses the French state of “murder” for holding him in a prison on the continent without proper protection, allowing a fellow Islamist prisoner to attack him. A few days ago, the Corsican National Liberation Front threatened to resume armed struggle to fight the “victim of youth”, eight years after announcing the end of the violence. In an attempt to appease electoral tastes, Macron’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, in a recent interview with the main island newspaper Corse Matin, uttered the magic word “autonomy” before making a sudden partial march: “We are ready to go as far as autonomy, but it can’t Giving dialogue by force, the return to calm is a sine qua non. We must then know what autonomy is”. We think for the future and not for the immediate: “The process that can lead to a possible change in the law cannot be carried out in the 20 days that separate us from the first shift. In short, maximum caution.
Darmanin conjured up the possible “Polynesian” solution. Or? The statute in force in French Polynesia and New Caledonia leaves all powers in economic, health, social and environmental issues to the overseas territories. Paris, on the other hand, deals directly with everything related to security, public order, defence, foreign policy and the judiciary. Meanwhile, two Corsican inmates who were in the “Erignac commando” have had their names removed from the list of dangerous inmates: they can then be transferred to a prison on the island, closer to where they live. An attempt at pacification that was seen as an important opening in Corsica.
There will be dialogue, assures the nationalist president of the Corsican community, Gilles Simeoni, who prevailed in the last municipal elections on the hardest and most independent wing of JeanGuy Talamoni. But separatist collectives active in social networks are reviving the demands of the demonstrators: the truth about the attempted assassination of Colonna, the release of all political prisoners. Within France’s political framework, there is no shortage of criticism of the central government’s handling of the crisis: there are those who advocate more autonomy by returning the post, and those who believe that too much is being improvised at this stage. The French right has no doubts or nuances: “Corsica must remain French,” commented sovereigns Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour. Of course, the indissolubility of French territorial integrity is not only a fixed point on the right. But here it is strange to emphasize another element in particular at this moment. And do so with the utmost clarity.
The fact that Corsica had gained independence from France half a century before the French Revolution? It is not a valid problem for French law. That after independence a very modern constitution was enacted and women’s suffrage was extended much earlier than elsewhere? It doesn’t matter details. Because there is no escaping, from Paris to Rome, from Madrid to Belgrade, history, from the parties of a certain right that only winks at the autonomous and independence forces of each country when it is favorable for electoral success or more general approval always the same: the only significant sovereignty is one’s own.
“That is the nature of sovereignists wrote Mattia Feltri in the press they only care about their own sovereignty and hate that of others.” Not only that of others does not deserve to be considered. It just doesn’t exist. It is liquidated with a joke. The sovereignist idea is this: national sovereignty implies a right to selfdetermination, and that right belongs to the people who hold sovereignty within a given territory: this is often the catch, for it is sovereignty that overlaps or even coincides with (worst) populism. Who decides what is the geographical, historical, social, cultural boundary of the people whose aspirations are more or less legitimate? The fiercest opponents of Corsican sovereignty are the French sovereignists.
History is always malleable, redefinable when necessary. It must be said that sovereignty embraces issues dear to both certain rightwing movements (borders and antimigration policies) and certain leftwing movements (protest against liberal policies). How can the will of the people and national and international law be held together? It’s never easy.
As the tension in the squares subsides and the flame of protest dies down, dialogue continues on Corsica’s future political makeup. We probably won’t hear about it as much as we always do. Corsica seems invisible despite being the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, in view of the electoral weight of some parties on the “old continent”, we will of course be talking about sovereignty for a long time to come. It is enough to consider the fallacies inherent in the sovereign logic of those parties that only use the words autonomy, federalism, independence when it suits them: Le Pen and Zemmour teach. The only good sovereignty is mine, yours has no reason to exist.