The Guardian: “Macron Needs A Similar Step As Taken By Chirac”

The British newspaper “The Guardian” said that the current French President, Emmanuel Macron, needs to review the colonial history in Algeria by a similar step as taken by former president Jacques Chirac when he admitted his country’s complicity in the arrest and pursuit of Jews during the Nazi occupation.

“If President Macron wants his efforts to heal the wounds of the somber French colonial past, then there is a need for a similar act of expressing remorse at what happened during the Algerian war,” the newspaper’s editorial said.

The newspaper mentioned what former President Jacques Chirac did a quarter of a century ago when he admitted his country’s complicity in the arrest and pursuit of Jews during the Nazi occupation, noting that it was “a moment of national purification”.

The “Guardian” spoke about the announcement by French President Emmanuel Macron to review the French colonial past in Algeria, which he repealed with a preventive decision that excludes apology or compensation in a bid to heal the wounds of the past between the two countries.

The newspaper returned to Macron’s recent speech on Islam in France, when he described France as “a country with a history of colonial past and bruises that have not yet been eliminated.” “Realities instilled in our collective psyche, and the Algerian war is part of it”, he stated.

It further noted that “former presidents have usually moved away from the war associated with national humiliation, brutal violence and colonial racism, but in a country with the largest Muslim population in Europe, Macron has concluded that official blindness to this is no longer acceptable”.

The newspaper added that “Macron deserves to be commended for opening the window to let some air enter”.

The Guardian commented on the Elysee’s refusal in a preemptive manner to present an official apology for France’s colonial history in Algeria, as Macron is afraid of sparking off a national controversy before the presidential elections next year, in which he will definitely face a run-off in front of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right-wing National Gathering.

The newspaper believes that France needs to turn the shocking page of its somber colonial history, to recognize its main responsibility as a colonial power and the brutal war between 1954 and 1962 in Algeria, and not to do this, “ would be a slap to the evasiveness that Macron has long criticized”.