By announcing that he is reforming the law of the soil in Mayotte by constitutional means, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, is playing on the founding text of the Republic for political rather than legal purposes.

In 451 B.C., Pericles, strategus of Athens, decided to reform the city-state's access to citizenship, by requiring all those who claimed this envied status to be the son of an Athenian father and mother. This restriction was intended to limit the number of citizens in the Ecclesia (the assembly of Athens), as Pericles feared that Athenian democracy would eventually malfunction in the face of the increasing flow of citizens entering the institutions. Surely.

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But what does this have to do with the decision of Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, who decided to reform the law of the soil in France? Mayotte, and this by constitutional means? Well in both cases, with a gap of almost 1600 years, the right of the soil is invoked to deprive individuals of fundamental rights, recognized as such in France and within the Republic since the French Revolution.

Roundabout Route

Whether it is Athens or Mamoudzou, reforming the law of the soil in the hope of coercing a population is based on the same logic: the desire of a community to control its own size. Without saying so, but by imposing it through a roundabout constitutional route, bathed in a populist and demagogic perfume, Gérald Darmanin is thus asserting the right of blood.

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The measure is even more iniquitous and immensely politicized, and politicized, as it concerns only a part of the territory, Mayotte, confronted with migratory flows from the Comoros. Presented as the solution to the problems encountered by this island in the Indian Ocean, it also ignores the possibility of engaging in a dialogue with the Comorian government, the content of which is known, but the tone to be defined, to control these flows.

For make no mistake about it, a reform of this kind opens the door to other similar measures. And appealing to the Constitution to give the decision taken an irreproachable legal aspect testifies, not to a lack of knowledge of the text sanctifying the Republic as the only regime capable of ensuring national cohesion, but to a manipulation of the latter to respond to the sirens of a far-right with the wind in its sails on the migration issue.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Pericles, in the aftermath of his reform, had to contend with the rise of growing opposition, hostile to this measure, which, aided by other motives and reasons, participated in the downfall of the Athenian democracy.

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At our level, it is not that democracy is in immediate danger, but that playing the sorcerer's apprentice with the founding text of the Republic can be extremely risky, especially when it wants to respond, on the one hand, to a punctual (admittedly problematic) demand expressed by an exasperated Mayor population and, on the other hand, when this political game seeks to stifle the National Rally by giving substance to one of its demands without it being at the helm of the Institutions.

History, often a source of reflection, could once again serve as a reminder that Athens, exhausted and lost by multiple alliances, saw its democracy pitifully extinguished in 323 B.C. To meditate on...

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