News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 21st December 2024
Emmanuel Macron cursed during a heated encounter with inhabitants of the cyclone-hit islands of Mayotte on Thursday night, telling a jeering throng in the French territory: “If it wasn’t for France, you’d be 10,000 times deeper in shit.” Cyclone Chido stormed over Mayotte, located between Madagascar and Mozambique, on December 14, damaging key infrastructure and leveling many of the tin-roofed shacks that make up the island’s enormous slums. Almost a week after the biggest storm in 90 years, France’s poorest area continues to face water shortages.Throughout Thursday, irate Mahorais addressed the French president, demanding to know why relief had not yet reached them.
Throughout Thursday, the French president was confronted by angry Mahorais demanding to know why aid had not yet reached them. At one point he told a crowd: “You are happy to be in France. Because if it wasn’t France, I tell you, you would be 10,000 times deeper in shit. There is no other place in the Indian Ocean that has received this much help. That’s a fact.” On Thursday night, Macron said he was extending his visit to a second day “as a mark of respect, of consideration”. He said: “I decided to sleep here because I considered that, given what the population is going through, [leaving the same day could have] installed the idea that we come, we look, we leave.”
The heckling continued on Friday. “Seven days and you’re not able to give water to the population,” one man shouted at Macron as he toured the small community of Tsingoni, on the west coast of Mayotte’s main island, Grande-Terre.
In the past, Macron has often got in trouble with off-the-cuff remarks in public that he says are meant to “tell it like it is” but have come across as insensitive or condescending to many French people, contributing to his sharp drop in popularity over his seven years as president.
Back home, opposition politicians pounced on the comments. The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, posted on X: “A president cannot say that. In which other French territory would the president lecture our fellow citizens by asking them to please stop complaining about their tragedy since they are already lucky enough to be French?”
Sébastien Chenu, of the far-right National Rally, said: “I don’t think the president is exactly finding the right words of comfort for our Mayotte compatriots, who, with this kind of expression, always have the feeling of being treated differently.”
Éric Coquerel, a hard-left politician, called Macron’s statement “completely undignified”. The official death toll in Mayotte is 31, which is fewer than expected given that officials had previously stated that thousands of people may have died. Immediate graves, in accordance with Islamic practice, and the high number of illegal migrants from the surrounding Comoros who avoid authorities for fear of being deported, may ensure that the exact number of casualties is never known.According to south-east African authorities, the hurricane killed 73 people in northern Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.
Mayotte’s official population is 320,000, although officials believe there are 100,000-200,000 more people, the most of whom are from the Comoros and live in the island’s slums. Mayotte became a part of France in 1841 and opted to remain so in 1974, when the Comoros declared independence.Earlier this week, the French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, a right-wing anti-immigrant, stated that Mayotte could not be restored without tackling migration.
Ali Djimoi, a resident of Kaweni, a slum on the outskirts of the island’s capital, Mamoudzou, claimed the hurricane killed eight people who lived nearby, two of whom were hurriedly buried near a mosque. Mayotte had been “completely abandoned” by the French state, he said. “The water running out the pipes – even if it’s working you can’t drink it, it comes out dirty.”
Macron is facing separate accusations of racism over an alleged comment on problems in hospitals, which his office strongly denied he had made. According to an article in Le Monde on Wednesday, the French president said during a discussion last year in front of his then health minister, Aurélien Rousseau, that the “problem with emergency care in this country is that it’s filled with people called Mamadou”. Mamadou is a name popular among men originating from Muslim ethnic groups in west Africa.
“The Élysée strongly denies these reported remarks, which were not subjected to any verification by the presidency before publication,” an official in the presidency said.
One of the senior Le Monde reporters behind the story, Ivanne Trippenbach, wrote on X: “Le Monde stands by all of its information.”
