Appointed interim director of Memorial ACTe last June by the president of the Guadeloupe region, Ary Chalus, Manuella Moutou took up her position last September. This regional executive with a creative industries profile will have a lot to do, as shown by a report from the regional Court of Auditors finalized in June and published in November.
The report returns to the governance crisis which paralyzed the establishment, pitting the previous director, Laurella Rinçon, against her board of directors. Suspended from her duties in April 2021, the heritage curator was reinstated in September 2021 after a decision by the administrative court annulling the suspension pronounced by the Board of Directors. “This situation of open conflict known to all [..] is very detrimental to the functioning of the establishment”note the magistrates
The definitive departure of Laurella Rinçon last August does not solve all the problems of MACTe, whose state of finances is worrying. Legal expenses, external services and irregular social demands weigh on the establishment’s revenue. Management weighs “major legal and financial risks”underline the magistrates, who note a very opaque revenue management system, conducive to fraud.
Since the transformation of the semi-public company that managed the MACTe into a public establishment for cultural cooperation (EPCC) in 2019, the Memorial has still not acquired the bodies necessary for its operation. No scientific council, an irregular board of directors (on which no staff representative sits, due to lack of elections), no organization chart (the EPCC favors fixed-term contracts), no social and economic council, no more Project scientific and cultural.
The report also notes worrying interference from the region in the management and operation of MACTe. During the Route du Rhum nautical race, the Guadeloupe region organized events directly within the establishment. The excess budgetary result of the EPCC is explained by this control, the region taking charge of a certain number of MACTe costs (security, water, electricity).
These major dysfunctions distance the Memorial inaugurated in 2015 from its initial objective: to be a major research center, nationally and internationally, on the question of slavery and triangular trade. With the appointment of interim Manuella Moutou, whose mandate is renewable every six months, the region hopes to bring order to the EPCC.
