Even at the end of the world, French controversies and international crises are never far away. Emmanuel Macron completed an unprecedented tour in this “Indo-Pacific” erected as a diplomatic priority, which only offered him half a breather after a year in search of breath.
Upon his return on Saturday, the head of state was to chair a defense council devoted to Niger, a key country for France in the Sahel where a military coup overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum, a close ally of Paris.
16,000 km from the Elysée, he remained in direct contact with his Nigerian counterpart sequestered by the putschists, following the situation “hour by hour”.
“The night was short,” he said Thursday on the flight between Noumea and Vanuatu.
Friday, it is in full walk in the national park of Varirata, in Papua New Guinea, that the head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna takes the time to speak to journalists to condemn “with the greatest firmness” what it still hopes to be an “attempt” of a putsch.
Before the summer break, the Elysée was betting on this “historic” trip to New Caledonia but also, a first for a French president, in independent countries in the Pacific, where he proclaimed France’s “reengagement” in Oceania.
As well as in Sri Lanka, an additional stage on the way back during refueling, to meet President Ranil Wickremesinghe at the airport.
A week of travel after a difficult start to the second five-year term, punctuated by the challenge of retirement at 64, the vain search for an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the imperfect agreement with its Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne who ended with a half-fig half-grape reworking.
And finally, the riots of unprecedented violence that shook the country at the end of June after the death of young Nahel, killed by a police officer during a check.
Noumea, Touho, Port-Vila, Varirata, Port-Moresby, Colombo. At each stopover, Emmanuel Macron is welcomed according to local custom, to the sound of drums or songs.
Tribal dances, necklaces of flowers or shells, the images are exotic after these “hundred days” wanted by the Head of State at the end of the pension crisis and which had opened on a rowdy walkabout in Alsace.
There, he mingled for a long time with dancers and spectators at the Melanesian arts festival in Vanuatu, interacting with the population. French politics seems far away.
Well, not always. In Nouméa, a man suggests to him that in 2027, “perhaps” Edouard Philippe will “replace” him. Not necessarily the dream option of the president, who despite notoriously distant relations with his ex-Prime Minister still ensures that this “friend” is indeed one of those who can “take over”.
In reality, the controversies catch up with the Head of State from the outward flight. He discovers that the boss of the police, Frédéric Veaux, has just affirmed that a police officer has “no place in prison” before his possible trial.
In Paris, the critics fuse.
That’s good: after his silence on July 14, the Elysian strategists imagined, to close the “hundred days”, a funny television interview on July 24, recorded in duplex when he got off the plane from Noumea.
Emmanuel Macron says he understands the “emotion” of the police, but recalls that “no one” is “above the law”.
This balancing act allows him to keep controversy at bay.
All eyes are on Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who accompanies him to New Caledonia but remains silent for three days.
Still in Noumea, it is in the cauldron of New Caledonian politics that the president must immerse himself. His intention: to shake up separatists as loyalists so that they turn together to “the future” after three consecutive “no” to independence.
“New Caledonia is French because it has chosen to remain French”, he insists in a speech in front of 10,000 ultra-mostly non-independence people and a tide of blue-white-red flags.
Alas, despite the denials of his advisers who defend a balanced position, his words are interpreted on the spot as very harsh with regard to the separatists, several figures of whom shunned a meeting with him. This is not the time for the expected “gathering”.
In Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, the reception is lavish. Emmanuel Macron can deploy his strategy which consists, he pleads, not in “competing with China or with the United States”, but in proposing “equitable” partnerships.
Criticized in France for his environmental record by the left and many organizations, expected at the start of the school year on his ecological planning, the president, as often abroad, takes on the costume of “champion of forest nations”, in the words of the Papua Prime Minister. James Marape.
07/29/2023 12:59:47 – Colombo (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
