myn his visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Tuesday, November 19, on the sidelines of the G20, French President Emmanuel Macron was heard treating Haitian officials “completely stupid”. Needless to emphasize, this does not honor his role and, in the process, tarnishes the image of the country he is supposed to represent. France deserves better than these simple statements to which the admittedly boring Macron has recently accustomed us. In search of sterile controversies, one could reply that the Haitian people have no lessons to learn from those who, due to their inconsiderate decision to dissolve the National Assembly, failed to bring the extreme right to power in France.
Instead, let’s look beyond these almost vulgar comments from the mouth of a President of the Republic. In his response to his interlocutor, he said: “I defended him, they fired him”speaking of the recently fired Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille. We understand that this is not about defending the basket of crabs that is the Haitian Presidential Transition Council (CPT).
Macron’s words border on the arrogance and class contempt of which he is constantly accused in France itself, especially when addressing socially disadvantaged people. We remember, in this regard, his famous phrase to a job seeker: “I cross the street, I find you some [du travail]. » We have the impression that what irritates Mr. Macron the most is that the CPT dared to fire someone he defended.
Read between the lines
He also says: “It was the Haitians who killed Haiti. » And there you have to read between the lines. When we know that the president, to use his flowery language, is not “completely stupid,” we tell ourselves that he did not say these words by chance. His interlocutor’s mistake was to ask him about France’s share of responsibility in the disastrous situation of the former French colony of Saint-Domingue. Presidential blood has only gone one turn.
Macron is aware that April 17 will be the bicentennial of the “Haiti’s double debt”. What is it about? The slaves of Saint-Domingue freed themselves with weapons in hand and proclaimed their independence to the world on 1Ahem January 1804. After twenty-one years of negotiations to try to recover the former colony, Paris agrees to renounce it, but with its conditions: recognition of the independence of the young State in exchange for guarantees of commercial exchanges favorable to the kingdom and, above all, 150 millions of gold francs destined to compensate the slave colonists. This took the form of an order signed on April 17, 1825 by Charles X.
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