Elisabeth Borne, far from the rumors of reshuffling and political turmoil caused by the immigration law, is flying to French Guiana on Sunday to spend New Year’s Eve with the armed forces who are fighting against illegal gold mining. The Prime Minister will also stay there on January 1 and start the year 2024 on a canoe to visit a river checkpoint and an Amerindian village.
This is the first time she has visited this department with 300,000 inhabitants in the northeast of South America, bordering Suriname and Brazil and, like Mayotte, which she visited in mid-December, voted 60% for Marine Le Pen in the second round of the last presidential election.
From French Guiana, Elisabeth Borne will attend Emmanuel Macron’s New Year’s Eve wishes, as the President has promised a “new direction” for 2024, fueling speculation about a possible government reshuffle or even a change of Prime Minister.
The head of the government explained that she had a “sense of accomplishment” after the adoption of the immigration law, which was voted on by the Republicans (LR) and National Rally (RN) deputies, prompting strong criticism from the left and fracturing the majority, with a quarter of Renaissance deputies not voting on the text.
Upon her arrival, Elisabeth Borne will meet with the mayor of Cayenne, Sandra Trochimara, and then the president of the territorial community, Gabriel Serville, who come from the left and would like to discuss migration and status questions before heading to the city of Maripasoula in the Amazon rainforest (southwest).
Around 2,200 soldiers and approximately a thousand gendarmes are stationed in French Guiana, engaged in the fight against illegal fishing and illegal gold miners as well as in the security of the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou (north). The French army has been bereaved twice in this territory this year during missions to combat illegal gold mining.
The head of the government, accompanied by the Secretary of State for Youth and the Universal National Service, Prisca Thevenot, will also visit a site often affected at Dorlin, where the forces of the 9th Marine Infantry Regiment operate. It was there that on March 25, a GIGN major, Arnaud Blanc, 35, was killed while participating with nine colleagues in an operation against these illegal gold miners. In early May, a member of the French Armed Forces of Guiana (FAG) died in a canoe accident during a nighttime operation on the Oyapock River (east).
On Monday, Ms. Borne will board a canoe to visit a river checkpoint. Before taking the plane back to Paris, she will discuss the fight against drug trafficking at Cayenne Airport. French Guiana is known to be a hub for supplying mainland France with drugs, especially cocaine.
A systematic check of passengers heading to mainland France was introduced a year ago to prevent “mules” – those passengers who transport drugs in their luggage or by ingesting them – from smuggling drugs. This has led to a significant decrease in drug seizures upon arrival in mainland France, but some challenge in court an arbitrary drift.
This trafficking partly explains the violence that the department faces, holding the sad record of the highest number of homicides per inhabitant in France, despite being well equipped with security forces. In addition to this geographical context, there is also widespread poverty that benefits criminal networks. In French Guiana, 53% of the population lives below the poverty line according to INSEE.
