Our near neighbor New Caledonia goes to the polls tomorrow to elect its three provincial assemblies, some members of which go on to form the territorial congress, which in turn elects the executive. It will be a further step in the apparently endless contest between pro- and anti-independence forces, which remain delicately balanced.
The last election was in 2019 – you can read my report on it here. Two mostly European anti-independence parties won 43.8% of the vote and 25 seats in the congress between them. A collection of indigenous pro-independence parties collectively won 42.4% and 26 seats. The remaining three seats were won by Oceanic Awakening, a party representing the Wallis & Futuna islander community, anti-independence but not European.
Elections are supposed to be every five years, but this one has been repeatedly postponed as the French government (itself not a model of stability) and the competing interests in New Caledonia wrangled over the territory’s future. Following a referendum at the end of 2021 that was boycotted by the pro-independence side, France moved to update the New Caledonian electoral roll, modifying the provision that has restricted voting to those who were in the territory by 1998.
That provoked outrage and civil unrest among the indigenous or Kanak community. The changes were withdrawn and the elections put off for a year, and a new French government under François Bayrou appointed Manuel Valls to negotiate a new settlement with the parties in New Caledonia. Much to everyone’s surprise he succeeded, and in July last year an agreement was signed in which Europeans and Kanaks both committed to an upgraded status for the territory that would still fall short of full independence, not unlike Australia’s status in the early twentieth century.
The elections were postponed again while the Bougival agreement was implemented. But it was too good to last; the main Kanak party, the FLNKS, had second thoughts and withdrew from the deal, and although the French pushed ahead – now with another new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu – they were unable to win parliamentary approval. With constitutional reform off the table for now, the elections were finally allowed to go ahead.
Lecornu was, however, able to push through a more limited change to voting eligibility, enfranchising an additional group of those born in New Caledonia who have come of age since 1998. That will add a bit over 10,000 people to the roll (about an additional 6%) and is unlikely to do much to shift the political balance, which on all accounts is still evenly divided between the two sides.
In 2021 Oceanic Awakening shifted to the pro-independence camp and put an FLNKS-led executive in power, but after the disorder of 2024 it shifted back and installed Alcide Ponga, of the centre-right anti-independence party, as president (although he is himself a Kanak). But since demographic change generally works in the Kanaks’ favor, and the pro-independence side still benefits from both the restricted roll and the malapportionment of seats, an actual pro-independence majority in the congress this time must be a real possibility.
Not that that would solve the problem either: what’s really needed is for both sides to accept that the future of the territory has to be based on a compromise between competing visions. As we’ve seen in other parts of the world, a simplistic picture of “decolonisation”, which pretends that the voices of the Europeans don’t count, is a recipe for endless violence. So too is a Eurocentric view that refuses to recognise the realities of indigenous rights and historic injustice.
Bougival gave hope that such a compromise can be found. Whoever comes out on top tomorrow, that hope has to be kept alive.
The World is Not Enough 