Overseas, flammable lands. The executive, bogged down in the Caledonian crisis, is fighting in parallel on another front. Emmanuel Macron receives local elected officials and Mayotte parliamentarians this Friday at 4 p.m. to present them with the double bill on Mayotte, hit by a serious migration and security crisis. The first, of a constitutional nature, plans to abolish land law in the department to dry up illegal immigration from the Comoros. The second, ordinary, contains a series of provisions relating to the economic development of the island, its security or immigration. Mahorese elected officials will then have a month to discuss the texts, before their presentation to the Council of Ministers in July and an examination in Parliament in September.
The constitutional aspect, with strong symbolic value, is already crystallizing tensions within the presidential majority. “This could fracture the group and be the rematch of the immigration law,” says a Renaissance executive. The government is deploying a whole strategy to avoid this hypothesis. He works to remove any ideological dimension from it and sets it up as a pragmatic response to an emergency situation. With a key argument: the abolition of land rights is a demand of the local population, shared by elected officials from all political stripes. Among the 310,000 inhabitants of the island, 48% are Comorian immigrants or other African countries, according to an INSEE study dating from 2019.
“We cannot lock ourselves into a position of principle”
Thus, the Minister Delegate in charge of Overseas Territories, Marie Guévenoux, went to Mayotte at the beginning of May in the company of three deputies: the boss of the Renaissance group Sylvain Maillard, the MoDem deputy Blandine Brocard and the co-president of the Liot group Christophe Naegelen. The first converted to this reform after his visit to the island, despite some initial reservations. “Anyone who goes there without preconceptions and without locking themselves into a political logic sees the need for it,” insists Marie Guévenoux. “We cannot lock ourselves into a position of principle.”
The minister encouraged the Mahorese elected officials present in Paris to exchange views with the majority parliamentarians. Way to make them face their responsibilities. The New Caledonian crisis, born from insufficient consideration of the local situation, feeds the government narrative. “We must pay attention to living together,” says an advisor to the executive. “If the text does not pass in Mayotte, the return of the dams will not be the least of evils.”
“The left wing is not very hot”
There is still work to be done. “The left wing is not very keen on this text,” notes another member of the government. Some historical walkers are reluctant to endorse such a symbolic project, a few months after the tumultuous adoption of the immigration law. The president of the Law Commission Sacha Houlié, who visited the site, considers such a reform unnecessary to stem irregular immigration given the wealth gap between Mayotte and neighboring countries. The MP spoke with Marie Guévenoux at the beginning of April. They left over a disagreement. “Will land law solve the Mayotte problem? On its own, I am convinced that no, confides the Yvelines MP Nadia Hai. We need a global policy that accompanies it. Some of the walkers are totally against and for others like me we will look at what is in the text.”
The executive wants to be confident, anticipating at this stage “residual losses” in the majority. He can also count on the support of the Republicans. The right has been carrying this measure for years. She should take advantage of the examination of the constitutional reform to demand the abolition of land law throughout the country – this grievance has little chance of succeeding – but will have difficulty obstructing the government’s project. Mansour Kamardine, one of the department’s deputies, belongs to the LR group. “What they are going through is so serious that we have to come to terms with it,” assured LR number 3 Annie Genevard in February. Marine Le Pen finally obtained more than 59% of the votes in Mayotte in the second round of the last presidential election. The far-right party will have difficulty in inflicting a snub on the government, without taking the risk of alienating its local voters.