Sonia Backès is the Secretary of State for Citizenship. Aged 46, she arrived at Place Beauvau in early July in charge of Solidarity. A very political secretary of state, since she comes from the right, but above all a figurehead of the anti-independenceists, and president of the Southern Region of New Caledonia, the most populous. And it is true that it is surprising at a time when the Minister for Overseas, Jean-François Carenco, is responsible for renewing a form of dialogue between the two camps following the third referendum in which the New Caledonians said they wanted to remain French. . Especially since the separatists who had promised to come to him are not in Paris. In short, it all seems a little unbalanced.
Little Sonia Dos Santos, her father is of Portuguese origin, was 8 years old in 1984 when violence broke out between the Kanaks who wanted independence and the anti-independenceists, to which her father belonged, who had arrived in New Caledonia with his parents who were fleeing the Salazar dictatorship. He arrived without knowing a word of French and now absolutely wants to stay French. The family is therefore in the camp of MP Jacques Lafleur, a right-wing MP. And it is in this context that his political commitment was born. “As a child, I have my best friend who is a Melanesian, a kanac who lives downstairs from my house and with whom I am great friends, remembers Sonia Backès. Events happen and it becomes extremely violent. We can’t go out at night. We can no longer have the friends we want. I decided very early on to get involved, this fight was part of me. Both to remain French and to build a New Caledonia where we managed to live together, which 30 years later is still not won. I decided to get involved quite young.”
She studied in Noumea, then math in Pau, then IT in Grenoble. And returns to work as a computer scientist in local government departments. She quickly became a union delegate, CFE-CGC. And switches to politics, in 2008 at the UMP, first collaborator of the president of the local congress, who is now senator LR Pierre Frogier. And she was elected in 2009 to the government of New Caledonia. She was then 33 years old.
Sonia Backès joins Emmanuel Macron in January of this year! In 2017, she refused to choose in the second round of the presidential election, between Macron and Le Pen – she herself abstained. Very upset against Emmanuel Macron who during the campaign had said in Algeria that colonization was a crime against humanity. Since then, she has been convinced by the three referendums organized by Emmanuel Macron, while the separatists did not want it. She got very close to Sébastien Lecornu, in charge of Overseas France during the first five-year term, who also came from the right. In short, this time, she votes Macron and finds herself in the Borne government, in charge of solidarity where she is particularly keen to work on sectarian excesses.
>> Secularism at school, separatism, “poorly registered” voters, sectarian excesses… What to remember from “8:30 info” by Sonia Backès
She kept her seat as President of the large South Province where she is still the leader of the anti-independence movement. Her husband and two children are still there. In fact, Sonia Backès is doing double days. Every morning, before dealing with Solidarity, she manages her province. Up at 4:30 a.m., in video from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., she doesn’t need a lot of sleep, that’s good. And for her, this commitment does not pose any problems.
“The separatists themselves did not dispute my presence, assures Sonia Backès, because they know very well that I make allowances. Moreover, today there is no longer one camp or another since the New Caledonians have decided three times to remain French. We are no longer choosing a camp, we are choosing a project on hyper-hot topics. A year and a half ago, we were almost in a civil war on the nickel issue, I found the solution on the subject with the toughest separatists. Even if today it’s complicated, we all share, in quotation marks the same country and we all want to find solutions.” She slips in passing that when he was appointed, the Minister for Overseas Territories, Jean-François Carenco was, as prefect at the time of the Nouméa agreements, closer to the separatists, and is no longer, today, suspected of be biased.
Politically, we imagine that she is also “useful” to the government as a right-wing woman. On her Solidarity files, she recognizes that she takes care of her LR contacts. But she swears that she has never been sent on a mission to Parliament on other subjects. In the government, in any case it is clear, his relatives are called Lecornu, Le Maire and Darmanin. This fall, she has in any case created controversy by recruiting an adviser even more to the right: Brieuc-Frogier, a former zemourist. It is the son of Senator LR with whom she started. She swears that, as the daughter of a Portuguese immigrant, she will never vote for the far right, openly regretting that we continue to brand voters tempted by the RN with a hot iron.