The president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province Sonia Backès has been given a post in France’s reshuffled and enlarged 42-member government.

The prime minister Elisabeth Borne appointed her as the secretary of citizenship within the interior ministry, which has integrated the overseas ministry.

The reshuffle means that the position of overseas minister has been abolished and replaced with a minister delegate, a post given to Jean-Francois Carenco.

The previous minister, Yael Braun-Pivet, resigned last month after just one month in office to successfully run for the presidency of the French National Assembly.

Backès said that while joining the French Interior Ministry she would retain her position as president of the Southern Province.

She is the first politician from New Caledonia to become part of the government of France.

This year, she spearheaded a merger of four anti-independence parties in New Caledonia to support the election campaign for President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party in last month’s election of a new French National Assembly.

Both of New Caledonia’s seats in Paris were won by her coalition’s candidates.

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In an unprecedented result, French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira Party candidates have won a clean sweep of all three seats in the French National Assembly.

The three will sit with the left-wing Nupes group which emerged as the second biggest force in the 577-strong National Assembly.

The success of the alliance around Jean-Luc Melenchon was emulated by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally on the right of the political spectrum, resulting in Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc losing its absolute majority.

In New Caledonia, Macron’s Ensemble party won both seats and also won the single seat in Wallis and Futuna, but none in French Polynesia.

A surprise novice in the Assembly is Tahiti’s Tematai Le Gayic, who as a 21-year-old has become the youngest person ever to be elected to the National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic.

Le Gayic, who interrupted his university studies for the election campaign, won just under 51 percent of the votes in the Papeete constituency to defeat former Tourism Minister Nicole Bouteau of the ruling Tapura Huiraatira party.

In the first round, Bouteau had the best score of any candidate.

Brotherson returned
Another new Tavini candidate, Steve Chailloux, scored 59 percent in his constituency to beat Tepuaraurii Teriitahi.

Moetai Brotherson, who was the only Assembly member left in the run for a second term, won his seat with more than 61 percent of the vote, beating Tuterai Tumahai.

The three, who had been campaigning for French Polynesia’s sovereignty, are now bound for Paris to take up their seats.

Le Gayic told local media that he wants France to recognise the Māohi culture.

“Because of in the French constitution, only one people is recognised, the French people, and only one language is recognised, the French language. As soon as the Māohi people are recognised as a people, the Māohi language can be made official in this territory’, he said.

In a first reaction, President Edouard Fritch said the defeated Tapura candidates were aligned with the majority of President Emmanuel Macron, which raised the question of how French Polynesia can push its concerns in Paris and how it can ask for France’s support.

Fritch said the loss was due to “an amalgamation of everything and anything”.

Observers noted that the Tapura may have been sanctioned for the way it managed the pandemic, which saw an extraordinary first spike in late 2020 and was followed by dissent over vaccination mandates.

Two weeks ago, Fritch and the former Vice-President Tearii Alpha were both fined for flouting covid-19 rules they put in place last year.

Alpha, who was vice-president at the time, invited 300 people, including all cabinet members, to his wedding at the height of restrictions.

New Caledonia
New Caledonia’s anti-independence candidates have retained the territory’s two Assembly seats, defeating the challengers of the pro-independence FLNKS.

Philippe Dunoyer was re-elected for a second five-year term in the constituency centered on Noumea, standing for a four-party coalition tied to French president Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble.

Dunoyer won 66 percent of the vote, beating Wali Wahetra who was the first pro-independence politician to make the run-off in the Noumea area in 15 years.

In the other constituency, comprising the rest of the main island, the mayor of La Foa, Nicolas Metzdorf, won comfortably against Gerard Reignier.

Metzdorf has been a member of New Caledonia’s Congress since 2014 and in 2020, he became mayor, but to comply with French law on the cumulation of offices, he is expected to relinquish the mayoralty.

The election result reflected the sharp split already seen in the independence referendums of the past four years, with Kanak voters overwhelmingly favouring independence.

Reignier scored more than 90 percent of the votes in several electorates, and even attained more than 96 percent in Belep.

The winning candidates have been campaigning for a new statute anchoring New Caledonia within France after last December’s third rejection of independence.

They want the electoral rolls for referendums and provincial elections to be opened to all French citizens residing in New Caledonia — a proposition fiercely contested by indigenous groups.

Yesterday’s vote was open to all French citizens.

Wallis and Futuna
The candidate of the ruling majority in Wallis and Futuna, Mikaele Seo, has narrowly won the territory’s Assembly seat.

Seo beat the opposition-backed Etuato Mulukihaamea by just 16 votes, which is a score so tight that it may get challenged.

Seo, who is the president of the permanent commission of the Assembly of Wallis and Futuna, had already been in the Paris seat since 2019 after the last winner Sylvain Brial fell ill and had to quit his post.

Mulikihaamea is the head of the local Olympic committee and known for his engagement in rugby.

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French Polynesia’s Amuitahiraa Party has registered its three candidates for the French National Assembly elections next month — just hours before the nomination deadline.

The three are Pascale Haiti, Jonathan Tariha’a and Sylviane Terooatea.

Haiti, a former member of the French Polynesian Assembly, is the partner of party founder and leader Gaston Flosse, who is banned from public office until 2027.

If elected, the Amuitahiraa politicians say they will work towards developing the territory’s autonomy statute to make French Polynesia a sovereign state associated with France.

The 90-year-old Flosse was president of French Polynesia five times and was a French government minister under President Jacques Chirac.

Two of the three French Polynesian seats in the French National Assembly are held by the ruling Tapura Huiraatira Party, and the third by a pro-independence party.

Pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party’s Moetai Brotherson is seeking re-election.

Wallis and Futuna nominations
Meanwhile, nominations opened in Wallis and Futuna on Monday for the election of the territory’s only member of the French National Assembly.

Candidates can register until Friday for the elections.

The territory’s seat has been held by Sylvain Brial since 2018 when he won a byelection after successfully challenging the 2017 electoral victory of Napole Polutele.

In Kanaky New Caledonia, nominations are still open this week, with candidates of the pro-independence camp yet to be announced.

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A law professor in Noumea says New Caledonia is now faced with a period of high uncertainty — be it political, economic or institutional.

Mathias Chauchat said referendum voters were made to believe that with yesterday’s no vote, the provisions of the 1998 Noumea Accord had become void.

The Noumea Accord lapsed with yesterday’s third referendum on full sovereignty.

However, Chauchat told Caledonia TV even after three no votes, the structures created by the Noumea Accord remained in place because their irreversibility was enshrined in the French constitution.

He said the no campaign was selling its supporters a dream of being able to change them like an organic law as it was possible in all other French overseas departments and territories.

But Chauchat said that to change accord provisions, there first needed to be a 60 percent majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate to alter the constitution, which in the current political situation was difficult.

He said the provisions cover the entire political construct, including the make-up of the electoral roll, of the assemblies and the collegial government as well as the economic re-balancing within the territory.

Chauchat said the French government may claim that the end of the Accord makes it obsolete, but he said this would end up in France’s Constitutional Court, where the pro-independence parties would continue their fight for respect of the accord.

As a result, he said, New Caledonia was now faced with instability, particularly over plans to open the electoral roll to more recent arrivals from France, who under the Noumea Accord cannot vote in provincial elections.

Referendum result confirmed
The French supervisor of New Caledonia’s third and last independence referendum said the high level of abstention had had no impact on the “sincerity of the vote”.

Presenting the official result, Francis Lamy said the rules don’t make voting mandatory and there was no minimum participation required.

Turnout was 43.9 percent, down from almost 86 percent last year, following a boycott by the pro-independence camp.

A total of 96.5 percent voted against independence.

Lamy also said there had been no significant irregularity and polling was calm.

His assessment was based on reports from more than 250 magistrates and officials deployed to polling stations territory-wide.

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