Defence ministers from several Asian and Pacific states are scheduled to meet in New Caledonia for two days during the first week of December, French Armed Forces in New Caledonia (FANC) commander General Yann Latil announced at the weekend.

He added that French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu was also scheduled to attend.

The high-level meeting would also see the attendance of other defence ministers, including Australia’s Richard Marles, who has met Lecornu on several occasions over the past few months.

In October 2022, a previous regional meeting took place in Tonga and it included defence ministers from the host country and also from Australia, New Zealand, France, Chile, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Hosting the meeting in New Caledonia by France is widely regarded as in line with the French Indo-Pacific strategy to reaffirm its presence in the region through its three overseas territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna.

In this context, New Caledonia is perceived as the hub of French presence in the Pacific.

During his recent visit in New Caledonia in late July, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a budget increase for the Pacific base and plans to set up a “Pacific Military Academy Military” in Nouméa to train soldiers from neighbouring Pacific island states under the principle of “partnership”.

The number of soldiers permanently posted in New Caledonia is also scheduled to increase from the current 1350 to more than 2000 by the end of 2023, General Latil told French media.

Last week, French and Japanese armed forces also concluded for the first time a three-week joint terrestrial exercise that took place in New Caledonia.

It involved about 350 French soldiers and and about 50 Japanese troops.

“This is a new step in strengthening our ties with Japan, which shares France’s vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” General Latil said.

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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.

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Political tension is rising in New Caledonia as a third referendum on independence from France is planned in December.

The decolonisation process under the 1998 Noumea Accord is nearing its conclusion and scenarios are being drawn up for how to deal with the result.

In 2018 and 2020, a majority voted against independence, but the winning margin shrank from 56.7 percent to 53.3 percent, leaving the electorate as divided as ever.

The path to the third referendum has been fraught as no consensus for a date could be found, with Paris ruling out the period straddling next year’s French presidential election.

In 2018, the date of the first referendum was approved in an unanimous vote by New Caledonia’s Congress.

Last year, because of the emergence of covid-19, the vote was slightly delayed but Paris chose October as a compromise between the dates proposed by the rival sides.

This year, anti-independence parties wanted the vote to be held as soon as possible while the pro-independence parties wanted it to be held as late as officially possible, which is by October 2022.

Early referendum date
Although the Noumea Accord stipulates a two-year gap between the votes, Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced in Paris earlier this month that the referendum would be held on December 12.

The announcement came after a meeting with New Caledonian leaders invited to Paris last month to canvass the territory’s future.

While anti-independence politicians have in the main welcomed the date, the pro-independence side keeps describing the choice as a “unilateral decision”.

Daniel Goa of the Caledonian Union said the date chosen by France was one to “suit itself’” and “to respond favourably to the ‘no’ supporters, giving them to hope for an easier victory.”

He added that those who “think of purging the question of independence by shortening the referendum deadlines are seriously mistaken”.

Louis Mapou of the pro-independence UNI, which stayed away from the Paris talks, told Radio Oceane his side “is mobilising to continue to demand that the referendum be held in 2022”.

However, a signatory to the Noumea Accord and former New Caledonian president, now member of the French Senate, Pierre Frogier views the referendum process as “useless”.

No compromise
“Neither of the two camps will ever submit to the convictions of the other and whatever the result, our convictions and those of the separatists will not vary”, he warned.

At the Paris meeting, Lecornu discussed France’s outline of what the legal, economic and financial implications of a “yes” or a “no” vote would be.

Both options raise complex issues, be they short or long-term.

Within the next few weeks, the Paris meeting will be followed by an official sitting of the signatories to the Noumea Accord although the exact date and venue are yet to be announced.

Usually convened once a year and chaired by the French prime minister, the meeting will allow the parties to table their agendas and discuss the final phase of the Accord.

The post-Accord challenges have been raised by Lecornu at the Paris meeting, describing them as vital for voters to know when they cast their ballots.

He has also spoken of a post-referendum “convergence period” to June 2023 in case of a no-vote, which would be followed by another referendum on a new arrangement with France.

Threat to Noumea Accord
According to Noumea university academic Mathias Chauchat, this risks the undoing of Noumea Accord provisions anchored in the French constitution.

“There is a contradiction between the lapsing and irreversibility of the Noumea Accord. The two concepts cannot be made to coexist. Either the Accord is void or it is irreversible”, he noted.

Louis Mapou said the parties making up UNI will soon vote on whether to boycott any additional referendum as suggested by Lecornu.

He hinted at the stance taken by the pro-independence side in 1987 when a French-run plebiscite was rendered pointless by the wholesale absence of Kanak voters.

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