A worrying result

AP

HE WAS regarded as the man with the magic touch. The government needed help calming its striking teachers? Bring in Nicolas Sarkozy, the high-flying young interior minister. The Corsican question needed attention? Dispatch “Super Sarko”. Yet this week, despite his many visits to the island to drum up a yes vote, Corsicans rejected the offer of limited autonomy from mainland France (albeit by a margin of only 2%), so dealing Mr Sarkozy his first big political setback.

His approach was always going to be risky. President Jacques Chirac studiously kept above the debate, urging Corsicans only recently to vote yes. Mr Sarkozy, by contrast, not only campaigned hard but could scarcely conceal his delight when, two days before the vote, the police arrested Yvan Colonna, France's most wanted man, who had been in hiding in a shepherd's hut on the island.

A Corsican separatist, Mr Colonna was wanted in connection with the assassination in 1998 of Claude Erignac, the former prefect of Corsica (in effect, its governor). At last, it appeared, the state was clamping down on the political violence that for decades has plagued this island, part of France since 1768. But, if the arrest was stage-managed, the plan backfired. “Undeniably,” said Mr Sarkozy after the no vote was announced, “it's a disappointment.”

The high-profile interior minister will doubtless recover. He is juggling other more popular matters, from tightening security to curbing immigration. More seriously for the island, however, is where this defeat leaves the separatists.

The answer is muddled because the referendum was. Voters were being told by separatist parties such as Corsica Nazione that a yes vote would be a welcome step towards autonomy, while at the same time Mr Chirac was saying that by voting yes the islanders would be “affirming their attachment to France”. While the proposal to merge the island's three elected bodies into one would indeed have brought a bit more autonomy—over matters such as the environment and tourism—it was also an effort by the government to thin down Corsica's bloated bureaucracy and boost private investment. The no vote, in short, was not a clear-cut rejection of the nationalist cause.

All the same, the nationalists are bruised. The worry now is that the militant fringe will step up the violence. There is frustration at the failure of negotiations to lead anywhere, and resentment at the arrest of Mr Colonna, which some see as a sign of the return of a policy of repression. Since autonomy talks began in 1999, when there were 338 explosions on the island, violence had declined a bit: to 250 blasts in 2002, and 134 in the first half of 2003.

Already, however, on the night of the vote, four French-owned second homes were bombed. Opinion polls consistently show that only a tiny minority of Corsicans want independence from France. But the referendum proposal's failure could re-ignite the separatist cause.