Autonomy as a type of legal and political status is a topic that has become common in recent months. This request is identical on paper, but it has specific contents and timetables depending on the territories where it is formulated.
Corsica is on the verge of acquiring the autonomous status demanded by its elected officials for many years. Wednesday March 27, 2024, the Corsican Assembly adopted a deliberation on “the constitutional writing project” opening the final stretch to the process aimed at providing the territory’s institutions with powers and means better adapted to the reality on the ground.
“Normative power” will be vested in the Corsican Community. It will be able to adapt laws and regulations according to the needs of the territory, which is legally impossible today.
The adopted text provides for “the recognition of a status of autonomy for Corsica within the Republic which takes into account its own interests linked to its Mediterranean insularity, to its historical, linguistic, cultural community having developed a singular link to its earth”.
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The document was prepared after several meetings between the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and a delegation of eight elected officials from the territory representing all tones of the political arc. The discussions were opened after a sequence of mobilization in 2022, after the murder of independence activist Yvan Colonna, sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1998 assassination of prefect Claude Erignac. An acceleration occurred in October 2023. Then two decisive meetings were held at the Ministry of the Interior on February 26 and March 11, 2024.
From now on, local elected officials will be received by the President of the Republic who will then consult the political forces of the National Assembly. Then the draft constitutional law will be presented to the council of ministers. Once validated, this text will be presented to deputies and senators. If it is adopted, the Parliament meeting in congress in Versailles will have to ratify it to allow the revision of the Constitution. The last stage will be that of the local referendum.
This process is envied in several territories, such as Alsace, the Basque Country, Brittany, but also Guyana and Martinique. In Guyana, the congress of elected officials unanimously voted in March 2022 for a principle identical to that of Corsica. Namely “the inclusion of Guyana in the Constitution as an autonomous territory” as Gabriel Serville, the president of the local authority, says.
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He reminded President Macron traveling to Cayenne on Monday March 25 and Tuesday March 26, 2024 that the political class has been demanding a tailor-made status for several decades. A reference to the demand for a special status formulated by Justin Catayée, founder of the Guyanese Socialist Party, in 1961.
A claim regularly reiterated. Since 2017, five meetings of the congress of elected officials have made it possible to delimit the scope and content of the “Guyana Project”, inspired by the status of Polynesia. A project for the development of economic and fiscal resources was adopted in December 2023.
However, the executive power responds sideways. The Head of State, while saying he is sensitive to the autonomist argument, believes that Guyanese elected officials must demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the current status. He strongly recommends that they use, within a period of two months, the possibility of asking Parliament for enabling laws, namely the possibility of legislating locally on a specific subject for a given period.
A cumbersome and complex process that elected officials have never used in Cayenne. In a second period of two months, elected officials are invited to draw up a list of areas or subjects for which it is appropriate to modify the Constitution. The freshness with which the Head of State’s remarks were received suggests that the dialogue of the deaf between local power and central power is continuing.
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In Martinique, we have not yet reached this successful stage of a request for autonomy. However, this notion has been included since the 1960s in the doctrines of the Communist Party and the Progressive Party. However, current elected officials cannot agree on the scope and content of a new statute.
In addition, the governance of the CTM adopted, during the last meeting of the congress of elected officials, on November 29, 2023, a resolution requesting the addition of an article 73-1 to the Constitution. “The development thus requested concerns the attribution of autonomous regulatory power for the Communities which wish it, making it possible to adapt the laws to the social, economic and environmental realities of Martinique.” specifies the CTM press release.
Some interpret this new wording of article 73 as a clear step back from the change of status regularly demanded by the same political leaders. Which must understand that the population does not seem convinced of the merits of a regime of autonomy, even limited.
It has become common to hear that our elected officials do not fully use the legislative and regulatory mechanisms in force to resolve the recurring difficulties encountered by their constituents. Claiming additional powers first implies having exhausted the possibilities offered by the law today.
If the demand for autonomy is similar in Corsica, Guyana and Martinique, it assumes different modalities and intensity in dissimilar political contexts. It would be inappropriate to put on the same level an old claim in the three cases, but with distinct accents from one territory to another.
