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French police search city hall in corruption probe

French police on Wednesday conducted searches at the city hall of the northern port city of Le Havre in a probe targeting its mayor Edouard Philippe, a former premier and potential contender to succeed President Emmanuel Macron, sources said.

Published: 3 April 2024 17:31 CEST

French police search city hall in corruption probe

Former prime minister, mayor of Le Havre, Edouard Philippe, at Le Havre city hall, northwestern France, on July 25, 2023. (Photo by LOU BENOIST / AFP)

A probe targeting Philippe and two other Le Havre officials was opened in December 2023 on suspicion of influence peddling, favouritism, embezzlement of public funds and workplace bullying, a judicial source told AFP, asking not to be named.

Philippe, who served as premier in 2017-2020, is a close ally of Macron. He runs a centrist movement, Horizons, that is allied to the president’s ruling party.

He is currently seen as the pro-Macron figure who is most likely to stand for the presidency in 2027, as the incumbent leader cannot stand for a third consecutive term.

Philippe has also made little effort to hide his ambitions and some analysts are already predicting that currently the most likely scenario for 2027 is a duel between Philippe and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

The probe was opened after a complaint that was lodged in 2023 and relates to the setting up of a digital hub in the city known at the Cite Numerique du Havre that aims to encourage innovation.

“We are at the disposal of the magistrates and we will respond to all the questions to show in good faith that we have respected all the rules,” Philippe told the BFM Normandie TV channel, confirming that the searches had taken place.

According to the Le Monde daily, which first reported on the probe, the plaintiff is a former senior official with the local authority whose contract was not renewed by Philippe in April 2023.

Christelle Mazza, a lawyer for the plaintiff, welcomed the searches.

“This is very encouraging for the status of whistleblower and for all public officials who, in the exercise of their functions, including at the highest level, witness facts likely to constitute offenses,” she said.

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OPINION: Riots in New Caledonia call into question the survival of 'global' France

President Emmanuel Macron took off from France on Tuesday night, flew 16,000 kilometres to the south east and landed in France.

He was following the example of President François Mitterrand who made a similar flight in 1985 to prevent civil war amid the palms, lagoons, beaches and nickel mines of a fragment of the French Republic 1,200 kilometres east of Brisbane.

Since last Tuesday, six people, including two gendarmes, have died in riots, verging on an insurrection, in New Caledonia, which has been French since the 1850s and part of France since 1960.

Over 400 shops and businesses have been burned. Live ammunition has been fired.

Listen to John and the team at The Local discussing the riots in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below

The riots in paradise have many causes. The local economy, built on nickel-mining, tourism and €1.5 billion a year in subsidies from Paris, fell off a palm-tree four years ago.

The indigenous Kanak community, 40 percent of the 270,000 population, fears that their hopes of winning independence from Paris one day will be crushed by a change in the French constitution which will be finalised next month. At present, local voting rights are limited to people who lived in the islands in 1998. The change would enfranchise all French adults who already lived in New Caledonia in 2014.

The crisis raises a deeper question. Can France’s proud claim to be a “global” country – the world’s only global country – survive the anti-colonial and identity-driven politics of the 21st century?

There are 12 detached parts of France scattered all over the globe, in the Caribbean, in the Indian Ocean, in the Pacific, in South America and off Canada.

READ ALSO ‘Confetti of an empire’ – France’s overseas territories explained

Other countries, including Britain, the USA and the Netherlands, have overseas territories. France is alone in treating some of its former colonies as part of France.

The 2.7 million inhabitants of France Outre-Mer (overseas France) vote in French national elections. They are subject to some (not all) parts of the French constitution. They belong to the European Union. Most of them use the Euro.

Thus…

France is a country on which the sun never sets; France’s longest land-border is with Brazil; Australia’s nearest neighbour is France, in two directions; France has the second largest maritime, exclusive, economic zone in the world but only 4 percent of it is in Europe.

The French have an ambivalent attitude to this global reach. It is a vague source of pride. It is multiplier of military and strategic strength. It is economically useful, up to a point.

But it is also a drag on public finances. People from Martinique or Guyane or Reunion are French but they are often regarded as migrants and foreigners if they go to L’Hexagone.

In almost all cases, overseas parts of France are poorer than European France. They have higher unemployment, poorer education and less complete health care, lower wages and higher prices.

On the other hand, they are almost all better off than their nearest regional neighbours. They all depend on subsidies from Paris.

Although the 12 overseas départements and territories are “fully France”, they all have different constitutional and legal arrangements which reflect local histories and cultures.

Overseas France takes an equally schizophrenic view towards “Big France”. There is constant talk of independence in all the territories and departments, except possibly St Pierre et Miquelon, two tiny islands off the coast of Newfoundland with a population of 5,700. No independence movement has majority support.

There has been serious social unrest in recent years in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane in the Caribbean and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. After riots in Guadeloupe two years ago (over Covid restrictions and other things) the French government spoke of offering more “autonomy” to the island but not independence. Nothing much has happened since.

Of all the global fragments of France, New Caledonia is the most far-flung, the most politically complex and the most troubled.

New Caledonia – Le Caillou (the pebble) – is the only part of faraway France where the indigenous population has become a minority, albeit a large minority, in its own homeland.

The original Melanesian or Kanak inhabitants of the islands (40 percent of the total) are mostly in favour of independence but split into various political and tribal factions.

The Kanaks were not given French citizenship until 1946 and were denied a vote until 1957. They remain, on the whole, less successful educationally and economically than the other New Caledonians.

Roughly 40 percent of the population consists of incomers from other Pacific islands or Asian countries, attracted by jobs in the nickel and tourism industries.

Another 20 percent are ethnic French or mixed race. Some are descended from 19th century convicts or settlers (the Caldoches). Others are more recent arrivals (Metros or Zoreilles). Most of the non-Kanaks who have French citizenship want to remain part of France.

As a delayed part of the political agreement which ended the crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, there have been three referenda on independence in recent years. In 2018 and 2020, the population split largely on ethnic lines and voted narrowly (by 56 percent and 53 percent) to remain French.

The Kanak parties boycotted a third poll in 2021. Those who did vote rejected independence by 96.5 percent. to 3.5 percent.

The pro-French parties say that the game is over. Local democracy should return to normal. If New Caledonia is part of France, all French residents of New Caledonia should have a vote.

A compromise on a ten years residency rule was accepted by moderate Kanak leaders but rejected by more militant independence movements. The riots, mostly led by young Kanaks, began when the National Assembly in Paris approved the changes last week.

Like the banlieue riots in mainland France last summer, the violence consists partly of an orgy of self-harm. The young Kanaks have wrecked the shops, businesses, schools and cars which their own families depend on.

Anti-independence politicians put the blame on radical Kanak factions who want to de-stabilise a territory that they cannot control.

Some island commentators put part of the blame on Emmanuel Macron. A couple of years ago, he broke the unspoken rule that Paris should stay neutral in New Caledonia by appointing a leading anti-independence politician, Sonia Backès, as a junior minister in his national government.

The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, also ignored warnings of a revolt if he pushed ahead with a change in voting rights limits without wider agreement on more cultural and political autonomy for New Caledonia.

Macron’s purpose in flying around the world from France to France is to appoint a three-person mission to reconsider the status of the islands. If all sides agree to cooperate on a broad new negotiation (short of independence), the final vote on the voting change next month will be postponed.

Whether such political manoeuvres mean anything to the armed Kanak teenagers on the barricades is uncertain. They have grown up being told that they are French but – for good or ill – don’t see their future as part of a country on the far side of the world.

Whatever the outcome, events in New Caledonia convey no easy lessons for developments in other parts of Global France. No two overseas fragments are the same. The system is muddled, baffling but too complex to vanish any time soon.

But managing the present jumble of post-colonial arrangements is becoming more troubled under pressure from climate change, economic hardships and the distorting mirror of social media.

Even bigger investments will be needed from Paris in cash and political energy in the years ahead. Both are, and will remain, in short supply.

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