Since the cyclone, Mayotte has confronted extreme water shortages, with many of the territory additionally hit by community outages.
“You’ve lived one thing horrible, everybody’s combating, no matter their pores and skin coloration,” Macron was seen telling a crowd. “Don’t pit folks in opposition to one another … Because you’re blissful to be a part of France. Because if it wasn’t France, I can inform you that you just’d be screwed 10,000 occasions worse.”
Macron was responding to a remark by a Mahoran lady accusing him of “coming to see us to say that the whole lot’s alright when the whole lot’s going dangerous.” The clip doesn’t present her at any level discussing Mayotte’s standing as a French area or its demography.
In one other clip launched by BFMTV, Macron is seen being booed and urged to resign.
The Comoros, an East African archipelago, gained independence from France in 1975, however a yr later, Mayotte, one of many archipelago’s islands, voted in favor of remaining in France throughout a referendum organized by Paris. U.N. resolutions don’t acknowledge French sovereignty over the island.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which pledges to cease immigration from the Comoros to Mayotte, has turn into the preferred social gathering on the island lately.
National Rally spokesperson Sébastien Chenu mentioned Macron was unlikely to “consolation” Mayotte’s inhabitants which “at all times feels that they’re being handled in a different way.” Clémentine Autain, an influential left-wing lawmaker, described Macron’s phrases as “neocolonial speech, unworthy of a president.”
