Emmanuel Macron and Algeria, a long and frustrated history
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Memory is selective by nature. Take Emmanuel Macron’s relationship with Algeria, who is traveling to Algiers and Oran from August 25 to 27. On this side of the Mediterranean, the most distracted (or the shrewdest) very often retain only remarks made on February 15, 2017, in Algiersby the man who was then a candidate for the presidency of the Republic: colonization is “a crime against humanity”. “It’s a real barbarism. And it is part of this past that we must look in the face, apologizing to those towards whom we have committed these gestures.then assured the former Minister of the Economy, in an interview with the Echorouk TV channel.
The outcry in France is such that the episode represents, even today, a trauma for the one who later became head of state, report his relatives. The mea culpa not being the strong point of the political leaders, the person concerned never swallowed his remarks, without risking to reiterate such a “philosophical position”as the Elysée says in an understatement.
On the other side of the pond nostrum (where the distracted and the roué are not lacking either), this cry from the heart was put in the background in favor of another declaration, held in Paris this time, on September 30 2021, in front of eighteen young people whose families have all experienced the war in Algeria. Emmanuel Macron evoked during this meeting a “politico-military system” Algerian which would have been built on a “memorial pension” and an “hatred of France”. And the president adds in a falsely ingenuous way: “Was there an Algerian nation before French colonization? That is the question. »
Bruised public opinion
Well-thought-out projection? Gaffe of a follower of true transgressive speech whose psychological blind spots have already caused damage? The fact is that the crisis bursts, virulent, terribly bitter, following the publication of the article of the World reporting these words.
If public opinion in Algeria could accept the reference to “politico-military system” – target of the Hirak demonstrators –, she is bruised by the interrogation on “existence” of the Algerian nation. The French president thus offers a dream opportunity to the Algerian regime to re-establish ties with its population in a carefully orchestrated patriotic communion. “Mr. Macron hurt the dignity of Algerians, we were not a people of sub-humans (…) before the French come, tonne, in an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel, on November 9, 2021, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who denounced comments “very serious”. A year earlier, this same Mr. Tebboune praised the qualities of his counterpart, who “belongs to a new generation” and “has never been in contact with the anti-Algerian lobbies”. This is to say the gravity of the episode.
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