In Noumea, Emmanuel Macron offers Caledonians to take "the path of forgiveness"

Emmanuel Macron wished for a “new status” for New Caledonia, during a public speech delivered on Wednesday, July 26, on the Place de la Paix in Noumea. “I ask you to start working to bring about a full and complete citizenship based on a social contract, made up of duties and rights (…) of belonging to the Caillou”, detailed the Head of State, explaining want to build this “new status” in the coming months and “in consensus”.

“New Caledonia is French because it has chosen to remain French”, Emmanuel Macron told the crowd, saying not to “underestimate the disappointed aspirations of those who defended a completely different project”, in reference to the three referendums which ended in a “no” to independence. The Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front is contesting the last ballot of 2021, which the separatists had boycotted. They had also called on their activists on Wednesday “not to go” to the Place de la Paix, which was full of blue, white and red flags.

“New Caledonia in the Republic”

The Head of State called on all parties to have “the greatness to accept” the results of the three referendums, saying he wanted to be “the president of a new project (…), that of New Caledonia in the Republic “. “No turning back, no stuttering, no treading water,” he hammered to the cheers of a mostly loyalist crowd.

During the morning, he had brought together in Nouméa the political actors of New Caledonia in order to put the parties face to face with their collective “huge responsibility” to reach this famous consensus for the promised constitutional reform. A difficult quest: the main independence party, the Caledonian Union (UC), deplored in a press release “a political strategy of the colonial state which remains very far from the unique trajectory carried by the independence movement aimed at accession to full sovereignty and independence of the Kanak country”. Some of the separatists, in particular political representatives of the UC, including the president of the Congress, Roch Wamytan, did not take part in the meeting.

“There is no question for us of definitively burying the right to self-determination”

Emmanuel Macron wished a “speedy recovery” to the absentees, before admitting on the Place de la Paix to have been “personally hurt” by these defections. The Head of State warned against the temptation to “take refuge in a separatism” which poses, “today or tomorrow”, the “risk of violence”, even though peace is a “treasure to preserve.

This peace, “it is he himself who calls it into question”, protested Roch Wamytan, president of the Congress, the territorial assembly. This independentist figure denounced a “deception”, and “a form of cynicism”. “After two referendums and a stolen referendum, there is no question for us of definitively burying the right to self-determination”, he warned, while Emmanuel Macron referred to this “acquis” while closing the door to his quick expression.

On the non-independence side, Virginie Ruffenach, vice-president of the Rassemblement-Les Républicains, welcomed a speech “which puts a strong France back in New Caledonia and in the Pacific”. “France is there and it will be even more present,” she rejoiced.

Emmanuel Macron came to New Caledonia for the first time in 2018, just before the start of the referendum process established by the Nouméa agreement of 1998. “It’s the end of a political process”, but “no one had really (…) collectively prepared “the rest, noted the President of the Republic. “There is a form of suspended state that we find ourselves in”, and therefore “we are collectively faced with an immense responsibility”, he added. He called not to act as if the Noumea process “did not exist”, because it made it possible to “move forward” and “consolidate a treasure”, “peace” in the archipelago.

Negotiations to define a new institutional status for the overseas territory are indeed bogged down, coming up against the thorny issue of the frozen electorate, on which it is nevertheless urgent to agree in order to achieve a constitutional revision in time for the provincial elections of 2024. The deadline and the modalities for reopening a new page of the right to self-determination are also debated.

Instrumentalization charges

Above all, Emmanuel Macron considered that independence would deliver the Pacific archipelago to the growing ambitions of China in the region. “If independence is choosing tomorrow to have a Chinese base here, good luck, it’s not called independence!” he said, suggesting to “look” at countries in the region that “have lost their sovereignty”. The Caledonian Union had rightly criticized the Head of State for “instrumentalizing” New Caledonia to “serve its strategy” in Asia-Pacific “of balance between China and the United States”.

To turn the page, Emmanuel Macron thus proposed two “twin paths”: that “of forgiveness” and that “of the future”. The first, supposed to meet the memorial expectations expressed by the Kanaks, “is not a path of repentance”, but a way of “looking in the face”, together, “this past which does not want to pass”. And all the “suffering”, especially that of the “Kanak people”, he added.

The second path necessarily passes, pleaded the president, through “sustainable, renovated, effective institutions”. He said he hoped that a constitutional revision, provided for in the Nouméa agreement, “could take place in early 2024”. To “build” the territory’s new institutional status, “I don’t want to rush anyone,” said Emmanuel Macron at the same time. On Tuesday, the head of state confirmed that a constitutional reform specific to New Caledonia would take place “on the basis of a consensus”, as provided for by the Noumea agreement of 1998, which is about to expire.

The future statute must bring “stability” and “visibility”, and not electoral “rendezvous” “every year”, he also estimated. A way to close the door to a new rapid expression on self-determination, even if this right remains an “acquis”. To show that this “path for the future” is concrete, the Head of State promised an “economic recovery”, and in particular a “nickel project for the future” to make profitable the factories which exploit this “strategic” ore.