A quarter of a century after the assassination of the prefect Claude Érignac, “it is time to write a new page in the history of Corsica”, estimated Monday the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, proposing to the authorities of island to resume discussions on its future. On the evening of February 6, 1998, Claude Érignac died under the bullets of a killer who had shot him in the back, in the street, while he was walking to the theater. Monday, Gérald Darmanin, who came to preside over the commemorations in Ajaccio, felt that “it (was) time to write a new page in the history of Corsica”, to “build lasting peace”.
Gérald Darmanin wants to work with the Corsicans
The Mediterranean island has had complicated relations with French governments and has had nationalist movements for decades calling for more autonomy and, for some, independence, as well as clandestine groups. The nationalists have been at the head of the island’s authorities since 2015. The government “reaches out the hand to countless Corsicans of goodwill, lovers of peace and fraternity” to “draw together” an “institutional, economic, cultural road”, he added.
“Let’s work together”, also launched the minister, because “the dead are watching us”. Claude Érignac was the only prefect assassinated in France since the Second World War. After his death, tens of thousands of Corsicans had expressed their horror during the biggest demonstrations ever organized in Ajaccio and Bastia. Three men were sentenced to life imprisonment for this murder: Pierre Alessandri, Alain Ferrandi and Yvan Colonna. Detained in the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), Yvan Colonna was attacked by a fellow prisoner on March 2, 2022 and died on March 21, which caused weeks of violent demonstrations on the island.
Discussions on the future of Corsica
Since then, a cycle of discussions on the future of the island “with a historical vocation” opened this summer but was seized up around the repeated refusals to grant semi-freedom to Alain Ferrandi and Pierre Alessandri, who have been released since 2017. The announcement of the arrival of Gérald Darmanin for these commemorations came at the end of January, a few hours after the granting by the justice of a measure of semi-freedom to Pierre Alessandri.
Alain Ferrandi is waiting for the court’s decision on February 23 on a similar request. The Minister of the Interior proposed Monday to Gilles Simeoni and Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, autonomist presidents of the executive council and the Assembly of Corsica, to resume discussions on the future of Corsica on February 24 in Paris. Before that, Gérald Darmanin must go to the island “two days in mid-February”, his entourage told AFP.
Gérald Darmanin’s desire to calm things down
Asked by AFP at the end of the speech by the Minister of the Interior, Gilles Simeoni, who was also Yvan Colonna’s lawyer, did not wish to react immediately. Jean-Christophe Angelini, head of the autonomist party of the Corsican nation (PNC, opposition), welcomed for his part “a global tone which seems unquestionably new and even unprecedented to us”, hoping that “what has been pronounced will now be followed by actions.
Senator LR from Corse-du-Sud Jean-Jacques Panunzi also welcomed the “firm will” of the minister “to calm things down by clearly saying that a page was turning”. “The government, the state, is reaching out to Corsica. And it is also up to elected officials to accept this reconciliation and to ensure that all together, nationalists, elected officials from civil society, all political parties, we let’s find the ways and means to build a Corsica in peace and tranquility”, he declared at the microphone of Europe 1. At the scene of the crime, which became Place Érignac, where an olive tree now stands and the inscription “1 man, 1 place”, the Minister of the Interior paid tribute to a “bright, straight and honest” man in front of an audience of elected officials and personalities.
To assassinate a Prefect is to strike the whole Nation. On February 6, 1998, the country was bereaved by the cowardly assassination of a great servant of the state.
25 years later, we do not forget the prefect Claude Erignac.
Tribute to this great figure of the Republic. pic.twitter.com/gwJZ6WU7Ln— Elisabeth BORNE (@Elisabeth_Borne) February 6, 2023
At the same time in Paris, President Emmanuel Macron received the Érignac family. For the 20th anniversary of the prefect’s assassination, the head of state had made his first trip to the island since his election, accompanied by Dominique Érignac, the prefect’s widow, and his two children, of whom it was the first return to Corsica since the events. “Murder of a prefect is to strike the whole Nation”, assured Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Twitter, paying “homage to this great figure of the Republic”.