The crowd — an estimated 2000 according to organisers, 500 according to police — had been called on Wednesday to voice their opposition to a French-planned constitutional amendment process which would include modification of New Caledonia’s electoral roll for local elections.

As the three French ministers were on official calls in various places, in downtown Nouméa police fired teargas to disperse the crowd.

Five policemen were reported to have been injured, including one seriously hit by rocks, the French High Commission stated, adding five protesters had been arrested shortly afterwards.

The protest had been organised by Union Calédonienne’s self-styled “field action coordinating cell” (Cellule de Coordination des actions de terrain, CCAT), which consists of trade union USTKE and UC’s close ally, the Labour Party.

UC is the largest single party within the mostly indigeous Kanak socialist and nationalist front (FLNKS).

Later on Wednesday, the crowd was dispersed and it moved out of downtown Nouméa.

“It’s completely out of the question to ‘unfreeze’ the electoral roll,” UC president Daniel Goa, who was part of the crowd, told local media.

Pro-France politician Nicolas Metzdorf said in a statement: “This kind of call to hatred, directly from UC . . . must stop. Violent protests will not halt the electoral roll being ‘unfrozen’.”

Regular visitor
French Home Affairs and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin, who is now regarded as a regular visitor, arrived on Tuesday and this time was flanked with his newly appointed “delegate” Minister for Overseas, Marie Guévenoux, as well as French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti.

This is Darmanin’s sixth visit to New Caledonia in the past 12 months.

In a polarised context, many attempts by Darmanin to bring all parties around the same table in order to all agree on a forward-looking agreement have so far failed.

His previous visits were focused on attempting to bring about inclusive talks concerning New Caledonia’s political future which could involve an amendment to the French Constitution.

The amendment contains sensitive issues, including a revision of New Caledonia’s list of eligible voters at local elections, with a 10-year minimum residency period for any French citizen to be able to cast their vote.

FLNKS’ 2 major wings — diverging views
While the two main components of FLNKS (UC and PALIKA-Kanak Liberation Party) last weekend held separate meetings and announced diverging approaches vis-à-vis France’s proposed reforms, the pro-independence umbrella FLNKS has now rescheduled its Congress for March 23.

Even though most local parties in New Caledonia have started to exchange views on the sensitive subject, one of the main components of the pro-independence front FLNKS, the largest party Union Calédonienne (UC), has so far refused to take part in the bipartisan round tables.

After convening UC’s steering committee in Houaïlou, UC vice-president Gilbert Tyuienon earlier this week told a press conference the party intended once again to hold a series of actions through its recently revived “field action coordinating cell” (CCAT).

“We have asked [the CCAT] and its young members to take all steps on the field,” he said.

The thinly veiled threat materialised on Wednesday with CCAT militants, including members of the Labour Party and union USTKE, deploying banners opposing to the planned Constitution review being placed in the capital Nouméa, also sometimes with roadside burning of tyres in the suburban town of Mont-Dore.

Tyuienon also claimed that UC considered French-promoted political talks were “a failure” and labelled Darmanin’s travel to New Caledonia as “yet another provocation” and that the proposed text was potentially “destabilising [New Caledonia’s political] balances”.

“There is a formal opposition from UC to meet the ministers . . . we know who is responsible for this situation,” Tyuienon told reporters.

He said UC now demanded that the whole French constitutional amendment project be scrapped altogether — “or else we’re heading for big trouble”.

More nuanced views
PALIKA, after its own meeting last weekend, expressed more nuanced views: “We are involved in every dialogue venue regarding all the document drafts that have been put on the table,” spokesman Jean-Pierre Djaïwe told a press conference on Monday following its extraordinary general assembly in Canala.

“We can only regret that every time we are taking part in discussions, not all of New Caledonia’s political groups are represented. Because our objective, from PALIKA’s point of view, is to reach an agreement comprising all political parties,” he said.

Djaïwe, however, said the current draft document “sided too much in favour of the (pro-French) parties”, which could “be detrimental to the conclusion of an agreement between local players”.

He indicated that PALIKA’s current stance would remain valid at least until the “end of March” — when the FLNKS Congress takes place — and “after that, it will decide on its strategy”.

Over the past months, PALIKA and other components of the pro-independence umbrella have consistently advised their members not to take part in UC’s CCAT-organised actions and protests.

However, Darmanin has already indicated that he did not intend to touch New Caledonia’s institutional and political future as he wanted “the neutral and impartial [French] State to only talk with local political parties once they have reached an agreement”.

His schedule did not seem to include New Caledonia’s nickel industry crisis either, following the announcement last week that one of its three major companies, in Koniambo (KNS), will now be placed under “care and maintenance” mode (effectively mothballed by its major Anglo-Swiss financier Glencore).

Glencore earlier this week confirmed it would withdraw after a six-month “transition” period, leaving more than 1200 workers and another 600 sub-contractors without work.

The company, which owns 49 percent of Koniambo’s stock, justified its move saying this operation over the past 10 years had never been either profitable or sustainable and had accumulated losses to the tune of a staggering 14 billion euros.

Climate change agenda
Instead, Darmanin’s official agenda includes visits to sites affected by climate change and coastal erosion as well as announcements regarding the reinforcement of road safety (with the introduction of new latest-generation speed radars thanks to a 200,000 euro grant, to reduce the high number of road accidents and fatalities in New Caledonia.

Justice Minister Dupond-Moretti said his visit was focused on meeting the local judiciary and bar, but also New Caledonia’s custom and traditional justice players.

He will also officially open a new detention centre in Koné and provide more details regarding the construction of a 500 million euro new jailhouse in the suburbs of Nouméa, which is due to replace the overpopulated and ageing Camp-Est prison, where living conditions for inmates have frequently been denounced by human rights organisations.

After his stay in New Caledonia (February 21-22), Darmanin’s Pacific trip is also to include this time a stopover in Australia later this week (February 23-24), where he is expected to meet cabinet ministers to talk about Pacific “regional cooperation” between the two countries, as well as about this year’s Olympic Games in France.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The president of New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party Daniel Goa will not be prosecuted for alleged calls for violence and sedition.

Last month, a coalition of anti-independence parties had lodged a formal complaint with the Public Prosecutor over a speech given by Goa at a party meeting.

Goa had said there was a risk of there being no more provincial elections if the restricted rolls were opened to people who arrived after the signing of the 1998 Noumea Accord.

The anti-independence coalition had also accused Goa of sedition after he said his party might turn to foreign powers.

After questioning Goa, the Prosecutor decided there were insufficient grounds to lay charges.

The anti-independence parties want Paris to abolish the restrictions by changing the French Constitution and granting voting rights to the estimated 40,000 migrants who have settled since the Accord signing.

In March, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the 2024 provincial elections would not go ahead with the restricted rolls.

Earlier this month, another Caledonian Union politician Gilbert Tyuienon warned that dialogue would end should Goa be taken to court for expressing what the party membership felt.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party has been told that France is “panicking” and afraid of losing New Caledonia.

The head of the Caledonian Union Daniel Goa briefed the party in Koumac after a week of meetings of a cross-section of New Caledonian politicians with the French government in Paris earlier this month.

Goa said Paris kept reneging on earlier undertakings by pressing ahead with efforts to undo the 1998 Noumea Accord on the territory’s decolonisation in order to maintain its international influence.

He said there was major incomprehension on part of the French government of what the bilateral talks in Paris were supposed to be about.

Goa said Paris wanted concrete decisions in circumstances favouring the French government.

However, Goa said the decolonisation process and New Caledonia’s accession to sovereignty would be discussed in New Caledonia.

He again warned France against opening up the restricted electoral roll used for provincial elections.

Bid to extend voting rights
Anti-independence parties have urged Paris to extend voting rights for the 2024 elections after the 2021 referendum saw a majority of voters reject full sovereignty.

The pro-independence side, however, largely abstained from the vote in 2021 because of the covid-19 pandemic and still refuses to recognise the result as the legitimate outcome of the decolonisation process.

Under the terms of the Noumea Accord voting in provincial elections is restricted to indigenous Kanaks and those who have been residents in the territory since 1998.

About 40,000 French citizens are excluded from provincial elections but can take part in France’s parliamentary and presidential elections.

Goa warned of what he called irreversible solutions if France imposed a change to the rolls, adding that there would be a risk of there never being any election.

He said the survival of the Kanaks hinged on this issue.

Goa said opening the roll to recent arrivals would create a new imbalance and extinguish the Kanaks’ vision of politics.

‘Colonial state’ opposed
He stressed that the Kanaks would no longer allow the colonial state to impose itself.

He said the French state was pushing the Kanaks to their last entrenchments, but they would be present in their own way to take responsibility to liberate their country.

Goa said the Kanaks’ sovereignty was no longer negotiable, adding that the land is not a land of France and will never be a land of France.

He said it was a shame to imagine the worst, but France was going against the “wind of history” as the United Nations kept calling for the eradication of colonialism.

Goa said France had to choose between moving in the direction of history or ending up in the “rubbish bin of colonial history”.

He put Paris on notice that a refusal to restore the territory’s sovereignty would drive the Kanak people to seek support elsewhere.

Goa said France did not and would not recognise the Kanaks’ rights, which would prompt the pro-independence camp to turn to new allies.

France ‘lonely in Pacific’
He said all major powers were around the Pacific rim but France, as only a small European country, was lonely in the Pacific.

Goa said the French army never defended New Caledonia when it was threatened, but only killed Kanaks, plundered their land, carried out punitive expeditions, brutally treated and displaced Kanak populations, and killed their elders.

He also castigated President Emmanuel Macron’s China policy, asking whether France could be trusted.

Goa said France still wanted to give the illusion of existing in a concert of nations but the President, out of clumsiness, had betrayed his European and American allies by pledging allegiance to China.

He said in the Pacific context, France would on one hand “sell” New Caledonia to China and on the other hand, France kept saying not to deal with China in whatever way, brandishing the “Chinese threat” as the worst thing that could happen.

Goa said with the French presidency and the country adrift, there was a risk for New Caledonia to be dragged into a void.

Backes slams Goa’s speech
Daniel Goa’s speech was criticised by a leading anti-independence politician, Sonia Backes, who regarded Goa’s comments about the electoral rolls as a call to violence.

Backes, president of the Southern Province and a junior member of the French government, told La Première television that Goa’s threats of action in case of changes to the rolls were unacceptable.

She also took issue with Goa’s warning that the Kanaks would ally themselves with other powers, should their ambition to attain independence be thwarted by France.

Backes said the anti-independence coalition had referred the speech to the public prosecutor for alleged calls for violence and sedition.

She wondered if Goa considered that those opposed to independence had no place on this world and could not be asked to discuss the future.

Backes said the other side needed to explain itself.

Institutions not functioning
She said her side had an interest in finding a consensus because New Caledonia’s institutions no longer functioned.

She added that it was no longer possible to have 45,000 people excluded from the rolls and do nothing for them while waiting for a possible consensus on how to open the rolls.

After the rejection of full sovereignty in three referendums and the expiry of the Noumea Accord, a new statute for New Caledonia has to be created.

While the pro-independence parties want Paris to give a timetable to full independence, the anti-independence parties want Paris to realign the territory with France.

After this month’s talks in Paris, discussions will be continued in Noumea in June when  French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin plans his next visit.

His ministry said in May he would go to the United Nations in New York to discuss the situation in New Caledonia.

The territory has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986, based on the Kanak people’s internationally recognised right to self-determination.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Several pro-independence parties in New Caledonia are urging supporters to boycott the second round of the French presidential elections this Sunday.

The election pits far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National) candidate Marine Le Pen against the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.

Before the first round the pro-independence parties advised supporters to vote for a left-oriented candidate.

The best of those were Jean-Luc Melenchon, who narrowly failed to make the second round.

The La France Insoumise (LFI – France Unbowed) leader topped the charts in a majority of overseas territories, scoring particularly high in the Caribbean, in the first round of the presidential election.

President Macron of the centrist LREM party only came first in the Pacific territories.

Daniel Goa, president of the Union Calédonian — largest of the pro-indendence parties — said the poll was an election only for people living in France.

In a short release signed on Wednesday, numerous parties urged a boycott of both Le Pen and Macron.

A member of the committee supporting Melenchon said in a release “The advice not to vote for the right hand side of politics will be respected without hesitation.

“However, voting Emmanuel Macron signifies agreeing with a dumb referendum that happened on December 12 which the president did not stop in defiance of the pleas of the Kanak people.”

During the first round of elections on April 10, Macron was massively ahead of Le Pen in New Caledonia with 40.51 percent of votes.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party says it will not give up on the gains made in terms of decolonisation from France under the 1998 Noumea Accord.

Party president Daniel Goa made the statement in an address at the party congress in the north of the main island Grande Terre at the weekend, outlining its key points ahead of negotiations with Paris about the territory’s institutional future.

Last December, more than 96 percent voted against independence from France in the third and last referendum provided under the Noumea Accord.

However, the plebiscite was boycotted by the pro-independence side after it had unsuccessfully asked Paris to postpone the vote because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on mainly the indigenous Kanak population.

The pro-independence parties said they would not recognise the result, describing it as illegitimate and one not reflecting the will of the people to be decolonised.

Anti-independence parties as well as the French government welcomed the result, with President Emmanuel Macron saying France was “more beautiful” because New Caledonia decided to remain part of it.

Right after the vote, the French Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Paris planned to hold another referendum in June next year about a new statute for a New Caledonia within France.

‘Only emancipation’
However, Goa reiterated at the weekend the pro-independence camp’s stance was that it would not join discussions about re-integrating New Caledonia into France.

He told delegates that “the Caledonian Union had nothing to negotiate except to listen and discuss the process of emancipation that will irreversibly lead to sovereignty”.

Pro-independence parties, united under the umbrella of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), said after the December referendum that they would have no negotiations with France until after this year’s presidential election.

Last month, at the congress of another pro-independence party, Palika, its spokesperson Charles Washetine suggested holding another independence referendum by 2024 to complete the decolonisation process, but this time with the participation of the Kanak people.

Washetine added that the vote should be run by the United Nations, and not by France any longer.

Goa accused France of having failed to be neutral at the last referendum, which was meant to conclude the Noumea Accord process with the Kanak people’s emancipation.

However, he said it turned out that France tried to hide behind a “neo-colonial putsch”.

Gradual transfer of power
Under the Noumea Accord, there has been a gradual transfer of power, which is enshrined in the French constitution and which Goa insisted was an irreversible achievement.

He stressed that there could be no consideration to open the electoral rolls which restrict voting rights to indigenous people and long-term residents in provincial elections and in referendums.

About 41,000 French residents are excluded from such voting.

Goa said freezing the electoral body with the Noumea Accord put an end to the French settlement policy, which French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer still encouraged in 1972.

He said the signatories of the accord wanted to lay the foundation for a citizenship of New Caledonia, allowing the indigenous people to be joined by long term settlers to forge their common destiny.

Goa said that since the December referendum, the French state intended to bring these 41,000 French people back into the electoral body, which he said would destabilise the still very fragile political balances.

He likened attempts to change the rolls to “re-colonisation”.

For sake of ‘handful of French’
He wondered why France would question the achievement of the Noumea Accord for the sake of “a handful of French people” who left their country to settle in New Caledonia.

Goa said France was ready to sacrifice a political process and its word given in front of the international community for what he described as a “handful of adventurers”.

Anti-independence parties, however, expressed support for the push to have the restrictions abolished.

A local interest group, One Heart One Vote, said it would lobby the French Supreme Court, the European Human Rights Court and the United Nations to quash the existing provisions, describing them as discriminatory.

With the first round of the French presidential election due on April 12, the Republicans’ candidate Valerie Pecresse said the eligibility question must be readdressed as to give a full place to those who had been building New Caledonia for years while having no right to vote.

In his address, Goa also alluded to the war in Ukraine and what he called France’s “omnipresent imperialism” in part because of its continued occupation of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean.

The Comoros partitioned
The Comoros, which is between Mozambique and Madagascar, was partitioned after independence in 1975 because France refused to let Mayotte go as its residents had voted to stay with France.

The United Nations asked France to return Mayotte, but Paris integrated the island to become a French department in 2011 and part of the Eurozone three years later.

France will follow the presidential elections this month with National Assembly elections in June.

Proper discussions on how the December referendum outcome will be implemented will have to wait.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz