“Nobody wants to go back to the Mayotte from before the cyclone. At the end of our work, it will be another Mayotte. We’re here precisely to put the lie to fate,” declared French Prime Minister François Bayrou, as he arrived in French territory in the Indian Ocean on the morning of Monday, December 30, along with a delegation of five ministers. The government was clearly aiming to set high ambitions for what was the poorest place in France even before the devastation of Cyclone Chido on December 14.
Presented at the end of the visit, Bayrou’s “Mayotte standing” plan has two stages. First, concrete and rapid measures, which have been strongly demanded by the population, are to be implemented, such as restoring electricity before the end of January, opening schools on a case-by-case basis at the start of the new year or resuming commercial flights at the island’s airport from January 1. State-guaranteed loans on exceptional terms will be made available to individuals, while businesses will benefit from a global duty-free zone for five years.
In a broader, but also vaguer perspective, there will be a second phase, which, according to Bayrou, “will draw a different future for Mayotte.” An emergency plan will be presented at a cabinet meeting on January 3, he said, and then submitted to Parliament within two weeks. This will be followed by a refoundation law that will be “designed with the local elected representatives” and finalized within three months. Symbolically, this time, a public agency for refoundation, modeled on the one set up for Notre-Dame de Paris after the fire, will be set up on Friday, January 3, “with a high-profile figure at its head.”
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