Secretary of State Sonia Backes, responsible for Citizenship, was the only candidate in the senatorial elections who was a member of the government. She was not elected, beaten in the second round by the independence candidate Robert Xowie, this Sunday, September 24. Third in the first round in which the dissident candidate Les Républicains Georges Naturel was elected, Sonia Backès (Renaissance) did not manage to attract many electors in the second round, losing to the candidate of the Kanak Liberation Front ( FLNKS), which entered the Senate.
This is a first setback for the presidential party in these senatorial elections, while Ms. Backès was the only government representative to candidate during this election.
The president of the southern province of New Caledonia, who was seeking a first term, suffered a serious setback with the arrival of the separatists in the Senate, a few days after a meeting at the Élysée between loyalists and separatists with the hope of finding an agreement on the status of the archipelago by the end of the year with a view to a constitutional revision at the beginning of 2024.
In the archipelago, the two outgoing senators, Pierre Frogier and Gérard Poadja, were defeated. The Senate is renewed by half on Sunday with an indirect vote in around forty overseas departments and territories.
