The surprise election to the Senate, Sunday September 24, of a Kanak separatist, and the setback suffered by the Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backès, largely defeated, are a strong message sent to the State, while discussions are underway the future status for New Caledonia. According to information from Le Monde, Ms. Backès submitted her resignation on Wednesday 27 to Emmanuel Macron who accepted it.
The shock was hard to absorb for the most fervent non-independence activists. On paper, with some 330 loyalist electors against less than 230 independentists, the election was “unlosable” for supporters of maintaining territory in France. But it was Robert Xowie, sole candidate of the Kanak and Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS), who won in the second round ahead of loyalist leader Sonia Backès. A second earthquake, after the election in the first round of the dissident (LR) Georges Naturel, who a few hours earlier had the luxury of an absolute majority victory.
The election took the form of a hold-up for the vice-president of Rassemblement-Les Républicains. Ms. Backès had presented a ticket with the outgoing senator (LR) Pierre Frogier, also a victim of the sweep. Neither Georges Naturel nor Robert Xowie hide it, it is indeed their alliance, concluded in complete discretion, which allows them access to the Luxembourg Palace. Ms. Backès also surely missed the electors of Nouméa, the city led by Sonia Lagarde, member of the Renaissance presidential party.
“We lost our Caledonian Prime Minister”
“On his name, Georges Naturel only gathers 118 votes on the loyalist side, he comes behind Sonia Backès and Pierre Frogier,” regrets Virginie Ruffenach, the leader of the Rally, who denounced “a betrayal”. “We lost our Caledonian prime minister for decades at a time in our history when, in Paris, she was steering things for the loyalist family,” railed Renaissance MP Nicolas Metzdorf on Tuesday on RRB radio.
This is the paradox of New Caledonia, a bipolar land, where politics is built daily on the opposition between supporters and opponents of spending, but where transpartisan bets often prove to be winners. Thus the voices of the Oceanian Awakening, a young Wallisian community party which claims to be “neither nor nor independentist nor non-independentist”, have allowed Roch Wamytan (Caledonian Union-FLNKS) to be re-elected to the presidency for five years. of Congress under the noses of non-independenceists, who are in the majority. Ditto for the government, chaired by another separatist, Louis Mapou. At the turn of the 1980s, the Federation for a New Caledonian Society (FSCN), not recognizing itself in either camp, had played the pivotal role for three years, before the start of the civil war in 1984 condemns the initiative.
Sunday’s result sanctions thinking considered too binary and loyalist “methods” whose virulence opponents denounce. “In this country, we have to respect each other, and the way we have been doing politics for two or three years is not the right way for Caledonia,” says Georges Naturel. If the two new representatives elected to the Senate go beyond the divisions, it is because they know each other very well: Robert Xowie was president of an association of mayors, like Georges Naturel, their respective municipalities of Lifou and Dumbéa being twinned.
In the Senate, Mr. Xowie is expected to join the communist group, the decision will be known on Monday. Mr. Naturel will sit with LR, a party called upon to provide essential support for the future constitutional reform in Caledonia, desired by Emmanuel Macron at the start of 2024. The new elected official requests that a place be given to the two Caledonian senators at the table of ongoing political negotiations with the State. What Virginie Ruffenach refuses, arguing that only the groups formed in Congress are leading the discussions.
“Response to President Macron’s neocolonial speech”
Does the senatorial vote also sanction the head of state? Sunday’s victory “is the response to the neocolonial discourse of President Macron who continues to ignore that our country is engaged in an irreversible process of decolonization. The most unloved president of France did not hesitate to denigrate the FLNKS, surely thinking, on the advice of his Secretary of State, that our country could be built without us,” writes the political office of the FLNKS in a press release published Tuesday.
“What we should rejoice in is that Sunday’s vote is the illustration that the spirit of Nainville [the first meeting bringing together in 1983 separatists and non-separatists] and of the handshake [between the loyalist leader Jacques Lafleur and the separatist Jean-Marie Tjibaou, five years later] is still alive,” estimates historian Louis-José Barbançon. A unity that New Caledonian society indeed demands.
It remains to be seen how the State will hear the message, “while it has always refused to hear that of the majority of Kanaks who did not vote in the third referendum”, asks Mr. Barbançon. The latter draws a parallel with the 1987 referendum, validated by the State despite the independence boycott, and which led a year later to the hostage-taking in Ouvéa. At the end of 2021, only 44% of Caledonians had in fact gone to the polls to vote for a third and final time against independence, while the first two ballots brought together more than 80% of voters. A date which will remain as that of “the humiliation of the Kanak people”, insists, in the name of the UC, Gilbert Tyuiénon.
In Paris, the executive suggests that the schedule of discussions does not change, with a visit from Gérald Darmanin planned towards the end of October and the hope of an agreement concluded at the end of the year on the next status of the territory “in the Republic “. The prefect Rémi Bastille, responsible in Nouméa for leading, in the shadows, the discussions, joins the office of the Minister of the Interior “for a few months” as deputy director – a decision taken before the senatorial election, he said. he assured Wednesday on RRB radio.