FRANCE SENDS MACRON, MAN OF ACTION, WHILE BRITANNIA JUST RUES THE WAVES
▶ European powers’ contrasting reactions to disaster in Caribbean dependencies caused by Hurricane Irma
As symbols of the dynamism of their respective countries’ response to Hurricane Irma striking former colonial outposts, French president Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, struck a contrast on Tuesday.
Mr Macron, facing a day of protest from unions at home, flew into Guadeloupe and pledged that he would personally see the region back on its feet as quickly as possible.
“St Martin will be reborn, I promise,” Mr Macron said at the airport in Pointe-a-Pitre. “I will shake up all the rules and procedures so the job is done as quickly as possible. It will be done quickly, it will be done well, and it will be done better.”
He then took a helicopter into St Martin, which bore the brunt of the storm and where more than 200 people are still listed as missing.
With his shirt sleeves rolled up, Mr Macron walked through streets still strewn with debris to meet residents of the French overseas territory, dandling babies and expressing his horror and concern.
He was subsequently reported to have spent the night sleeping in a cot in a police station on the island, before heading to St Barts, another island with French heritage.
Meanwhile, about 660 kilometres to the south east on Tuesday, Mr Johnson arrived in Barbados as part of a similarly hastily arranged trip to the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and other affected territories. Dressed in a beige sports jacket and slacks and looking the worse for the hot weather, footage of his arrival in the Caribbean showed him addressing a nonplussed company of British servicemen on an airport runway, making confused small talk with them: “Have you just got here or have you been here for days?”
“24 hours, sir,” a soldier answered.
“Where have you been?” “We’ve literally just been in a military camp on the other side of the airfield.” Optics, that modern political buzzword which defines what you are seen to be doing and its importance to the perception of how well you are doing your job, has rarely been more succinctly illustrated.
Britain and France have faced serious criticism about the paucity of their reaction to Irma. Neither country – nor the Dutch, who have sovereignty over the other side of St Martin island – anticipated the disaster or sent enough aid to the afflicted areas quickly enough.
The French leader, eager to draw attention away from tens of thousands of striking workers filling the streets of Paris, produced an eye-catching display backed by a pledge of €50 million (Dh220m) and a deployment of 2,000 security forces – whose boots are already on Caribbean soil.
Mr Johnson arrived to a chorus of criticism about the British relief effort, from local politicians and also a former crown official who served as attorney general of Anguilla for two years until last year.
Writing in
Rupert Jones called the aid offered derisory and said the £32m (Dh156m) allocated by the Westminster government for British overseas territories – of which £28m has already been spent – was “a drop in the Caribbean Sea”.
Mr Johnson did travel to Anguilla yesterday, and announced further government funds and the arrival of more British forces, including the naval flagship, HMS Ocean, but the damage in public relations terms has been done.
I will shake up all the rules and procedures so the job is done as quickly as possible. It will be done quickly, it will be done well EMMANUEL MACRON President of France