And this will rekindle the government’s great fear: that of seeing what environmental activists call a ZAD, a “Zone to Defend”, settle on the spot. For the executive, there is no question of leaving the site permanently occupied, this prospect haunts the nights of Gérald Darmanin. This is the reason why he sent a thousand gendarmes to the scene. And this is also why he dared to qualify the violence committed by the most radical fringe of demonstrators as “eco-terrorism”, a formula which outraged, and which illustrated the feverishness of the government.
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A feeling of concern at the highest level of the state because the government has both a lot to lose and a lot to be forgotten: violence, an occupied site, and even an ultimatum from demonstrators who summon it to suspend the works within 15 days… All this draws the profile of a weak government, incapable of restoring order, enough to make it lose support in public opinion, especially on the right, and leave the field free to Marine Le Pen.
But if the executive speaks loudly, it is also to make people forget a precedent, that of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes. A long-contested airport project, years of procedures, and then finally a double legal and democratic validation during a local referendum. And yet a project buried by Emmanuel Macron in 2018.
Notre-Dame-des-Landes is a capitulation of the State which gives wings to the demonstrators of Sainte-Soline, and it is a counter-model for Gérald Darmanin which encourages him to add tension to the tension. This is a risky strategy, because if all the protagonists have in mind the precedent of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, there is another, more dramatic one, that of Sivens, a dam project abandoned in 2015, under François Hollande, after the death of a demonstrator during clashes with riot forces.
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Restoring order, enforcing the law, is of course the mission of a Minister of the Interior; swinging provocative expressions without sketching out a dialogue, for example with elected environmentalists, or anticipating a way out of the crisis, this is more like the attitude of an arsonist.