What if Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, became the new Notre-Dame-des-Landes? This Monday, October 31, the main tent is dismantled, but the wooden watchtowers remain as a symbol for “anchor the struggle“on the ground: opponents of water reserves for agricultural use in Deux-Sèvres have taken root in Sainte-Soline after two days of mobilization.
>> Sainte-Soline megabassin: the prefecture extends its decrees prohibiting demonstrations and gatherings
The atmosphere is now much calmer, far from that of the demonstration of several thousand people on Saturday, and violent clashes with the police, some of the activists remained on the spot, near the site whose access was prohibited by 1,500 gendarmes, unheard of in the department, according to the authorities.
At Europe Écologie – Les Verts, some are even considering the creation of a ZAD, a “zone to defend”, as was the case on the site of Notre-Dame-des Landes airport in the past. For his part, Gérald Darmanin affirmed his “will that no ZAD settles“, announcing the maintenance of more than 1,000 gendarmes on site. And for good reason: the scenario at Notre-Dame-des-Landes is a scenario that wants to avoid the executive at all costs.
A new ZAD is Emmanuel Macron’s obsession: “This would mean installing the conflict in the long term, the decay“, they say at the top of the state. Especially since the head of state succeeded in evacuating this historic ZAD of Loire-Atlantique, at the cost of abandoning the airport project in early 2018. And then, to put it simply, the credibility of the government is also at stake. Moreover, it is an adviser to the executive who recognizes this without taking the tweezers: “Scenes of disorder have accompanied Macron since he came to power“, before listing the “yellow vests”, the demonstrations against the pensions which marked the first five-year term…
It is therefore to put an end to this scenario which seems to be repeating itself that Gérald Darmanin maintains more than 1000 gendarmes in Sainte-Soline, and this, until further notice. This is also why the Minister of the Interior takes public opinion to witness, denouncing, for example, the very specific cases of the 61 policemen injured, twenty of them seriously. This is also, finally, why Beauvau unveiled a list of weapons used by the demonstrators: molotov cocktails, pétanque balls, mortars… A way of demonstrating that the demonstration is anything but peaceful.
Still, there is a term that is debating: the Minister of the Interior denounced “ecoterrorism” of certain demonstrators after hooded activists, in overalls and equipped with a grinder, shovels and pickaxes, severed one of the pipes supposed to supply the future reserve, according to them, speaking of “civil disobedience” compared “to the climate emergency, to the sharing of water“.
But Gérald Darmanin was aware: he was looking for a word to strike public opinion and, of course, to create controversy. “This is the Darmanin method“explains an adviser for whom the Minister of the Interior has chosen to call the French shocked by the images to witness rather than going to the bottom of the subject. Even if it means alienating the left. this minister from LR: it is an assumed strategy, we explain within the executive.The electoral segment to conquer is more on the side of order and the right than on the side of Nupes“, we slip.
A long-term vision at the risk despite everything, in the short term, of keeping ecologists away from the executive once and for all. Clearly, never to arrive at the slightest consensus on the slightest text of law, while the text on renewable energies is arriving in Parliament in the very next few days.