Page 23 - IB December 2021

New Caledonia New Caledonia

and New Caledonian leaders will be delayed until after April’s a Forum member state (although the presence of President
Presidential elections and the election of a new government Louis Mapou - the first Kanak independence leader to head
after June’s legislative elections in France. (Given there New Caledonia’s government in nearly 40 years - will change
have been 15 French Overseas Ministers in the last 35 years, the dynamic of the next Forum leaders retreat, scheduled in
there is also no guarantee that Lecornu will be reappointed February).
to his post). As the CSI-NP bluntly announced: “The Lecornu Many Pacific governments will likely await the final report
calendar is now turned upside down. The CSI-NP is no longer of the Pacific Islands Forum Ministerial Committee to New
committed to it. The 18 months announced cannot begin with Caledonia, led by former Fiji Foreign Minister, Ambassador
a French government at the end of its mandate.” Ratu Inoke Kubuabola and accompanied by veteran Samoan
Former President of New Caledonia Thierry Santa is a loyal- diplomat High Commissioner to Fiji Ali’ioaiga Feturi Elisaia,
ist to the French Republic, but before the referendum he told Forum Secretary General Henry Puna and Forum Secretariat
Islands Business: “I’m convinced there won’t be three-way staff.
talks until the new government is in place after the national In a preliminary, carefully worded statement from the
elections. The current government can’t solve the problems observer mission after the poll, the Forum representatives
of New Caledonia in the next few months.” noted: “A significant proportion of registered voters, mainly
The coalition of independence parties now clearly agrees: Kanak and pro-independence supporters chose to refrain from
“We are waiting for the renewal of the French government voting, in support of their non-participation stance made
to initiate real discussions on the country’s accession to full known before the referendum, which should be taken into the
sovereignty. The road to dialogue has been broken by the contextual consideration and analysis of the result. The spirit
stubbornness of a French government, unable to reconcile in which the referendum was conducted weighs heavily on
its geostrategic interests in the Pacific and its obligation to the Noumea Accord and New Caledonia’s self-determination
decolonise our country.” process. Civic participation is an integral component of any
democracy and critical to the interpretation and implications
Regional response of Sunday’s poll.”
After a few days of headlines, New Caledonia is largely As Washington seeks to build alliances to contain China
invisible in the regional and international media. Despite this, in the region, the announcement last September of the
the outcome of the referendum is still causing reverberations Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership
internationally. has also transformed regional geopolitics and France’s stand-
The FLNKS has strong support from fellow members of the ing in the region. The abrupt cancellation of the $90 billion
Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The day after the vote, contract between Australia and the French corporation Naval
the MSG Secretariat in Port Vila issued a message to “firmly Group has disrupted the “India-Australia-France axis” first
support the call by FLNKS for the United Nations to declare proposed by President Macron in May 2018. Politicians across
the results of the third referendum null and void due to the the spectrum in New Caledonia agree that the AUKUS an-
‘non-participation’ of the people of Kanaky. Voter turnout was nouncement in September contributed to France’s decision in
below 50% of registered voters hence cannot be taken as the early November to proceed with the vote, against the clearly
legitimate wish of the silent majority!” expressed wishes of the independence movement, and in the
The President of New Caledonia’s Congress Roch Wamy- midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
tan, joined by Mickael Forrest and Charles Wea, travelled The future debate around France’s role in the region will
to New York and Paris in the aftermath of the vote, to brief also be affected by possible changes in Asia-Pacific leadership,
diplomats, journalists and human rights organisations on the with a series of significant elections throughout 2022. Austra-
significance of the result. Fiji and Papua New Guinea are both lia and France both go to elections in the next six months, fol-
members of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation, so lowed by Fiji later in the year. Polls in India and South Korea
MSG’s policy will have some influence. will be followed by the November 2022 midterm elections in
The outcome for the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum is the United States: if President Biden’s Democratic Party loses
more complicated. On decolonisation (as with climate and control of the Congress, his Indo-Pacific agenda, AUKUS com-
nuclear policy), Australia often stands apart from its island mitments and climate policy will be harder to implement.
neighbours, but brings its weight to bear in developing the Fo- Regardless of this geopolitical dynamism, the massive
rum consensus. For more than a decade, Australia has signed boycott of the referendum shows that any political solution
a series of strategic partnership agreements with France, in New Caledonia must involve the Kanak people and their
which have not been abandoned despite the current diplo- representatives. Even as Bougainville negotiates its pathway
matic dispute over submarines, which saw President Macron to independence with Port Moresby, and West Papuans con-
condemn Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a ‘liar’. tinue to mobilise against Indonesian human rights abuses, the
Beyond this, France and the European Union are major issue of self-determination and decolonisation remains on the
donors to the Pacific Community and other regional organisa- regional agenda.
tions. Many Pacific governments will likely be measured in
their response, wary of interfering in the domestic politics of nicmaclellan@optusnet.com.au

Islands Business, December 2021 23