The French Polynesian economy has been given a positive assessment in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic by the body issuing the French Pacific franc.

The Overseas Emission Institute said it expected French Polynesia should return to its pre-crisis level of GDP in the first quarter of 2023.

It noted that tourism has rebounded, and hotels had restored their profitability.

Over the 2022 financial year, the overall turnover of the hotel industry reached US$540 million over US$289 million in 2021.

However, the report said inflation last year rose to 6.6 percent, with food prices alone going up by 12 percent.

Costs for housing rose 8.8 percent and for transport 8.2 percent, with fuel costs going up almost 28 percent.

Labour market picked up
The report also said the labour market had picked up again with a 5.1 percent increase in the workforce.

It said in the first 10 months of last year, the salary mass grew by seven percent.

It said sectors such as energy, transport and the hotel industry carried out large-scale projects requiring significant loans, which were up by almost 60 percent from 2021 to last year.

The report credits the investment to the government’s economic relaunch programme for the period 2021 to 2023.

The institute added that the territorial elections and the geopolitical risks in the Pacific constitute factors of uncertainty likely to weigh on the behaviour of economic actors.

Unions sceptical
However, the secretary-general of the main union group CSTP-FO doubts the figures are accurate.

Patrick Galenon told Tahiti-infos there were about 80,000 unemployed people.

“We are told that there is only nine percent unemployment and that people do not want to work. But that is not the situation,” he said.

Galenon added: “They want to work, unfortunately they can’t find any [jobs]. The extremists will say that many come from outside and that they find a job”.

He said what was needed was a real local employment law on which work had been done for 10 years.

“In the form of a joke, I said that when I go to Paris, I try to adapt to Paris. I put on a tie or a coat when I’m cold.

“If they come from outside, it’s not for our good looks but to earn money by setting up a business”, he said.

Galenon asked why none of the managers of the big hotels were Polynesian.

“We are also going to talk about land because it is linked: 80 percent of land is presumed to be state property.

“Where are the lands of the Polynesians? Afterwards, we are told, don’t worry, we are returning the land to the Polynesians.

“But we don’t give them anything back, it’s their land!,” he said.

He added that “on the other hand, we give back to people who are not the real owners. This will create even more problems”.

Galenon said home ownership had now slipped out of reach for many because almost US$500,000 was now needed to buy a house.

Election a “social revolution”
In his view, last month’s election victory of the Tavini Huira’atira wasn’t a vote for independence, likening the result instead to a “social revolution”.

In an interview with Tahiti Nui TV, Galenon said he was “convinced that there are many people who were not for independence or for the blue party [Tavini’s party colours] but who voted blue because socially, the country was going very badly.”

Galenon said it was inconceivable to have products that had increased in price by 35 to 40 percent.

Measuring against the figures in France, Galenon said the monthly minimum wage was US$1563 while in France it was US$1940.

“In France it’s 35 hours [a week], here it’s 39 hours and unfortunately life here is 40 percent more expensive. So, we have a real problem,” he said.

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

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Investigators in French Polynesia have reassessed their case against the pro-independence leader Oscar Manutahi Temaru, who has challenged the seizure of his US$100,000 savings.

The money was taken at the behest of the French prosecutor as part of a probe into the community radio station funding of Temaru’s defence in a trial in 2019.

The highest court in France rejected the move and ordered the investigators to again make the case for seizing the funds.

According to Tahiti-infos, a decision is due on March 8.

The probe into the defence funding was launched after the criminal court in Pape’ete had given Temaru a suspended prison sentence and a US$50,000 fine.

He was found to have benefitted from the funding arrangement for Radio Tefana, which the court said amounted to “undue influence”.

Temaru was implicated as the mayor of Faa’a whose administration paid for the community radio station, which in its turn was fined US$1 million.

Defence wanted case thrown out
The defence wanted the case to be thrown out, saying the prosecution failed to cite a single incident of propaganda on behalf of Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira party.

At the time, Temaru said the real reason for his conviction was that in the eyes of France he had “committed treason” by taking French presidents to the International Criminal Court over the nuclear weapons tests.

In court, Temaru asked for the appeal case to be heard after the French presidential election, saying he feared there could be political interference in the judicial process.

He suggested as a date for the appeal court sitting June 29, 2022, which he said was the anniversary date of French Polynesia’s annexation by France, but the court rejected his suggestion and set March 22 as the start date for the week-long trial.

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

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It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80.

The local territorial government was indeed saddened about the loss and sent its condolences to the grieving family and relatives.

The opening of Mā’ohi Nui’s borders two months earlier on July 15 by the French High Commissioner, Dominique Sorain, in consultation with Tahiti’s President Edouard Fritch – who promptly agreed due to economic reasons – has led to today’s covid-19 pandemic crisis.

The latest figures at the time of writing show 124 covid-19 deaths, 40 people in hospital (including 19 patients on ventilators), and 80 new cases, making it a total of more than 17,400.

About 17,500 vaccine doses were available last week on January 7 for more than 8000 people but, unfortunately, one expects more deaths before the injection programme is rolled out.

These are sobering figures when entering January 2021 on the Gregorian calendar – and equally the Tahitian chart speaks of the Pleiades constellation, or Matari’i i Ni’a, foretelling abundance that extends from November to May.

Sadly, for the mourning families the only season of abundance appears to be the losses of the most vulnerable in our society – our elders.

It is also quite revealing that information about covid-19 cases are on a drip-feed from the Ministry of Health, with its minister doctor Jacques Raynal comparing covid-19 from the beginning to a mere flu.

And sometimes he was at pains to explain the differences between “cured” and “convalescing” patients.

It is clear that the local government, along with the highest representative of the French government, were unprepared and remained ill-equipped with this pandemic, a déjà-vu situation.

The spectre of Jacques Chirac and nuclear past
The most populated islands of the Society archipelago (Tahiti and Moorea) have been under curfew from December 14 to January 15, 2021, and that might be extended.

The only hospital centre of French Polynesia is at Ta’aone in Tahiti and that caters for the covid-19 patients. It has done so to the best of the hospital staff’s abilities. The same hospital complex is now at the centre of another dispute between pro-independent member of the Parliament Eliane Tevahitua and Health Minister Raynal, who sent an open invitation to the members of the hospital board (Tevahitua being a member), confirming in a ministerial letter that the name of the hospital would become Jacques Chirac, named after the late former French president.

For good measure, the family of President Chirac gave their approval and are honoured by such a gesture.

It is believed that the trade-off is that the Jacques Chirac Square in the capital Pape’ete (a name given to it by former Tahitian president Gaston Flosse) will be renamed “Tahua Tumarama” which in the indigenous language Mā’ohi means the “stage of rising light” (resembling the aftermath of a nuclear bomb).

The naming of the Chirac square was more than 20 years ago, which was in itself very controversial at the time, due to the fact that a plaque was erected not far from that very square to commemorate the people who had died (and are still dying) from the 30-year French nuclear testing programme started on 2 July 1966.

President Chirac resumed the suspended nuclear testing from September 1995 to May 1996.

Some historical information about the Jacques Chirac hospital complex should be shared. It was a former military base reserved for French military personal and kitted with bungalows.

The hospital opened in 1966 for the Centre of Experimentation of the Pacific (CEP) where the majority of French military were based before or after their missions to Fangataufa, Hao, Mangareva and Moruroa.

As children, we used to enjoy Ta’aone since the maritime military base gave onto a beautiful beach where we sunbathed and surfed, a popular place with the local population.

Those memories seem to send us back to the nuclear testing period some two generations ago and it might be fitting that such a hospital complex should carry the name of one of the French presidents.

What is more telling – or unfortunate – is the fact that the name Jacques Chirac appears to carry the signs of death whether related to the square next to the monument dedicated to those who died from the nuclear testing, or to this new hospital where people are being cared for but where unfortunately 124 people have so far died from covid-19, and many more from diseases related to nuclear fallout.

The reply of independent parliamentarian and Oscar Temaru
Back to the request of joining the local government in naming the hospital, pro-independence parliamentarian Tevahitua’s response to such an invitation did not fail to tell the health minister and the local government of the independent party Tavini Huira’atira’s (and her) “deep disappointment and disapproval” of such a neo-colonialist stand “to the detriment of the indigenous Polynesian people”.

“While the Mā’ohi people are trying to regain their own history and at a time when your government is promoting the use of the Mā’ohi languages in public space, it would have been more judicious to name the hospital Tiurai, an indigenous traditional tahu’a (doctor) who dedicated his life to caring and healing people’s pain for free”.

Ironically, Tiurai died from the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.

In the same vein through my latest communication with Oscar Temaru, the leader of the independence party Tavini Huira’atira, has shown how his approach to local toponymy favoured illustrious and respected Mā’ohi figures who deserved to be honoured by the people, instead of the name of some coloniser.

While at the helm of the country as president (on and off from 2004 to 2009), Temaru changed the name of one of the most important avenues of the capital Pape’ete from Avenue Bruat (the first French governor) to Avenue Pouvana’a a O’opa after the famous indeopendence leader. A judicious political move as this historical avenue is considered to be the heart of the political and administrative arena.

This was a move that evidently did not please the French authorities, although naming rights is a competence held by the local government.

Not without irony
It is not without some irony that Temaru declared that there are some Tahitian politicians who are more French than the French and who reluctantly adhered to the new name.

According to Temaru, it is more “the mentality of our own people that he has been trying to change from the very beginning of his struggle against the French colonial power”.

Unfortunately, today a pro-France local government has turned the clock back and are perpetuating the neo-colonialism agenda.

It would have been more appropriate to maintain the original name of the hospital as Ta’aone, which means the rolling of the sand.

Most of the hospitals in Pape’ete and its neighbouring districts carry a colonial name (Chirac, Prince, Malardé and Cardella) apart, from a psychiatric hospital with an indigenous name of Vaiami and a clinic called Paofai.

It might give us an idea of how we, the indigenous people are been perceived and how, while we name buildings by their geographical location, colonisers are obsessed with seeing names of illustrious figures on temporary edifices in an effort to give them permanence and relevancy.

Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevian originally from the south of “French” Polynesia who has lived in New Zealand for many years and is currently a doctoral studies candidate in Te Ara Poutama at Auckland University of Technology. He writes frequently for Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz