Macron met with anger, frustration over cyclone response during visit to Mayotte
Mirereni: French President Emmanuel Macron faced widespread frustration and anger from residents of Mayotte during his visit to the Indian Ocean archipelago, which is still reeling from the damage of the strongest cyclone to hit the region in nearly a century.
On Friday morning, Macron visited a neighbourhood in Tsingoni on Mayotte’s main island, where people remain without access to drinking water or phone service, nearly a week after the cyclone.
As he walked through the area, some shouted: “We want water, we want water.”
Tension was palpable on Thursday evening when Macron was met with boos from dozens of residents in Pamandzi on Petite-Terre island during the last stop of his first day in Mayotte.
As people expressed frustration at the slow pace of aid efforts, Macron grabbed a microphone and said: “I have nothing to do with the cyclone, you can blame me, it wasn’t me!”
Addressing the crowd, he acknowledged the hardship.
“You’ve been through something terrible, everyone’s struggling, regardless of skin colour,” he said, urging unity.
Macron got angry in turn, shouting, “You’re happy to be in France ... If it wasn’t France, you’d be 10,000 times more screwed!”
The French president added: “There’s no place in the Indian Ocean where people get so much help!” A woman could be heard saying “we disagree.”
Macron is known for his appetite for debate and is used to mix into crowds and confront people who are angry at him. He explained that he stayed two days in Mayotte out of “respect and consideration” for the population.
Mayotte, with 320,000 residents and an estimated 100,000 additional migrants, is France’s poorest department. The cyclone devastated entire neighbourhoods as many people ignored warnings, thinking the storm wouldn’t be so extreme.
In Tsingoni, the French president got a warmer welcome on Friday morning by people eager to urge him for help, some posing for selfies with him, others showing him their children.
Meanwhile, French military and local authorities were scrambling to repair busted water pipes across the islands and get water to villages who haven’t had any.
In the village of Mirereni, about 35 kilometres outside Mayotte’s capital in the north, Civil Security officers were trying to remove a large, felled mango tree that busted a water pipe. The pipe provides water to around 10,000 people in three nearby villages. But officials say repairing it might take a bit longer than usual because of the heat, which impacts equipment.
