While President Macron is expected overseas in New Caledonia, the situation on the Indian Ocean island, 101e French department, also remains very worrying, with the reappearance of cholera.
We thought it had disappeared from French territory for good, but now cholera is back, in Mayotte. The calamities have definitely not finished befalling the 101st French department. One more tragedy, yet another, in this territory, for which the daily chain of disasters is similar to the book of Revelation. Unfortunately, the water crisis has only been the Genesis of a descent into hell in recent months, a source of real difficulties in terms of public health, with the consequences that we are observing. One dead, a three-year-old child and several dozen sick people. Who would have imagined that a French department would be dried up in such a way, restricting the population in its most basic consumption, the source of life and hygiene? What were the faults that caused this situation? Unfortunately unfinished projects, water sanitation that is difficult to convince, a single desalination plant for nearly half a million inhabitants and a dependence on France as well as Reunion for the transport of ‘bottled water ; Mayotte is thirsty.
An island submerged by Comorian migrants
It is clear that the “island of flowers”, this jewel of vanilla and ylang-ylang, is no longer the paradise so hoped for, that its population is at the mercy of the events which punctuate its sad daily life, where hope dwindles for the return of happy days. A dream prosperity for this department which is both the youngest and the poorest in the territory.
Faced with a migratory flood from the neighboring Comoros, impacting the integrity of French soil and undermining security, Mayotte is dying, threatened with a civil war between populations, under the eyes of a defeated State and a Union European Union with absent subscribers. An island more populated than Corsica, for which the departmental council and the municipalities are working hard to compensate for the delay in development and to compensate for missing investments, weakened by budgetary constraints, which are difficult to expand. There is no doubt that local authorities struggle on a daily basis to ensure the survival of their land, ignored on the one hand and invaded on the other.
Out of sight, close to the heart… or rather far from the heart, one wonders if distance is nothing other than a factor of ignorance. In the country where the sun never sets, present in every ocean, the Overseas which is our wealth seems to metamorphose into beyond the grave. Champion of decentralization and administrative mille-feuille, is France forcing our overseas territories to the same requirements as in France? This rigor so blue-white-red, inherited from Napoleon and of which the republican promise is a central objective. That of a real continuity of the French State, of equality of opportunities and access to public services for all citizens by virtue of respect for the first article of our Constitution, of “a one and indivisible Republic” . Beyond the eternal questions of taxation, common law and distribution of powers, did the departmentalization of the territory in 2010, as desired by Nicolas Sarkozy, respond to the objectives set by the State?
The startle or the chaos
Liberty, equality, fraternity, to which we could add dignity, principles of the French Republic which seem to be called into question. Where is freedom when being French on your own soil is no longer a guarantee of free movement, due to permanent danger at all hours? Where is equality when schools, saturated, no longer allow teaching as they should? Where is fraternity when the State is no longer able to guarantee the solidarity of our system? Finally, where is the dignity in the face of the exhausted medical system, which is struggling to provide decent care to the population?
A start is essential for Mayotte, but more broadly for all of our overseas territories. No longer having its own ministry, but a simple delegated ministry, why such a rejection of three million French people? French decentralized centralism, the height of a paradox, is reaching its limits… Subsequent to budgets, checks and financing, the need for a real project and above all a vision, is unconditional. Let us cherish our overseas territories.