Tjibaou on New Caledonia talks in Paris: 'We want to resolve this now'

RNZ News

a day ago

By
Nic Maclellan
, Islands Business
Emmanuel Tjibaou being interviewed by public broadcaster NC la 1ère in August 2024.
Photo:
screen shot NC la 1ère
"We want to resolve this now, and that is why I am committed to dialogue."
That's Emmanuel Tjibaou, president of the independence party Union Calédonienne (UC) and one of New Caledonia's deputies in the French National Assembly.
On Wednesday this week, Tjibaou and other New Caledonian leaders join talks in Paris initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron, in an attempt to forge a consensus between supporters and opponents of independence. The talks aim to progress an agreement on New Caledonia's political future, to replace the 1998 Noumea Accord that has governed the French Pacific territory for the last 25 years.
Speaking to
Islands Business
before flying out to Paris, Tjibaou said: "Of course we'll negotiate, we'll discuss. For someone like me who comes from a Pacific society, from culture and custom, it is something we are used to dealing with on a daily basis. We intend to complete this agreement - though not at any cost."
More than a year ago, on 13 May 2024, New Caledonia erupted in riots and clashes between Kanak protestors and French security forces. After six months of conflict, France's Overseas Minister Manuel Valls has facilitated a series of talks and negotiations since February, to address the post-conflict economic crisis and finalise a new political agreement for New Caledonia.
Tjibaou is a central figure in efforts to bridge the ongoing gap between the independence movement and conservative parties that want to remain within the French Republic. He is son of the late Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the charismatic founder of the independence coalition Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), who was assassinated in 1989.
A former director of the Tjibaou Cultural Centre and then cultural director in New Caledonia's Northern Province, Emmanuel Tjibaou was only elected to public office last year. Tjibaou won a seat in the French National Assembly in July 2024, defeating Alcide Ponga (leader of the anti-independence party Rassemblement and current President of New Caledonia). It was the first time in 38 years that a pro-independence Kanak had been elected as a deputy in the French legislature in Paris.
Then, last November, Tjibaou was also elected as president of Union Calédonienne (UC), the oldest political party in New Caledonia and the largest member of the FLNKS coalition.
Last week, UC "reaffirmed the necessary continuation of dialogue in order to complete the trajectory of the country's decolonisation process, initiated with the [1988] Matignon-Oudinot and [1998] Nouméa Accords."
Tjibaou explained: "It is with this determination that today I am going to the discussion table in Paris. I will not leave the discussion table. If last year we mobilised in the streets, with people who died, this commitment remains the foundation on which we will achieve this path of emancipation."
"The challenge for us is to discuss the modalities related to the decolonisation process that was initiated in 1988, or even back to 1983 and the meeting at Nainville-les-Roches, when the colonised Kanak people agreed to share their right to self-determination with the 'victims of history'" (a term used for the descendants of the prisoners, free settlers and indentured labours brought to New Caledonia in the century after France annexed the islands in 1853).
"We have never gone back on this word - until today, we hold to it," Tjibaou added. "But the right to self-determination remains, and the colonised people didn't express themselves in the third referendum in 2021."
Between 6 - 8 May, France's Overseas Minister Manuel Valls convened a three-day, closed-door meeting of New Caledonian leaders at the Deva hotel, near the rural town of Bourail. Valls' draft negotiating text included unprecedented concessions to the independence movement, which has long called for a pathway to sovereign independence, albeit with a transitional period of "interdependence" involving shared sovereignty between New Caledonia and France.
Under the Noumea Accord, the French State currently retains control of the sovereign powers of defence, police and courts, currency and most aspects of foreign affairs. At Deva, Valls proposed that some of these powers could be transferred to the Government and Congress of New Caledonia, but then delegated back to Paris during a transitional period. The Valls proposal also suggested options for dual nationality, and the creation of international standing following a timeframe to be determined and negotiated.
Union Calédonienne and the FLNKS accepted this proposal as the basis for the negotiations. They were joined by other groups in the Deva talks, which all confirmed they were open to core elements of the proposal: Eveil océanien; Calédonie ensemble; and the Union Nationale pour l'Indépendance (comprising the independence parties Palika and UPM, which have suspended involvement in the FLNKS Political Bureau).
Despite this growing consensus, Valls' concessions to the independence movement angered leaders of the anti-independence groups Les Loyalistes and Rassemblement-Les Républicains, who scuttled the Deva talks. At the time, Loyalist Nicolas Metzdorf said: "We will never accept independence, independence in association, or a trajectory towards independence."
In contrast, Emmanuel Tjibaou told Islands Business that "it is important to recall the stakes that are part of the Noumea Accord, which is a decolonisation agreement. Based on the last negotiations held at Deva, we must discuss the transfer of sovereign powers. Those talks were about establishing a transition phase in which France accompanies us to transfer these powers, as well as determining the shared interests that our two countries would have, and then to transcribe them into interdependence agreements."
Tjibaou said that while there were ongoing differences over timing and the length of any transitional period of shared sovereignty, there were many areas of agreement during the trilateral discussions held since February.
"This is the trajectory in which we are committed," he said, "together with what was agreed at Deva as points of convergence on reforms to be undertaken here in the country - such as the reform of public administration, or the diversification of the nickel sector."
Since the Deva negotiations, Loyalist leaders have been pressing French President Macron to overrule his own minister, and take charge of the talks. After Deva ended without agreement, Nicolas Metzdorf met personally with President Macron in Paris, to press the Loyalists' criticisms of the Valls proposal.
Anti-independence politicians were encouraged when Macron met Forum island leaders at the Pacific-France summit on 10 June, held on the sidelines of the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice. Macron told Pacific leaders he was considering a "new project" for New Caledonia, raising hope amongst Loyalists that he would roll back key concessions outlined in the Valls' proposal.
Sonia Backès, President of New Caledonia's Southern Province, was encouraged by Macron's language, noting last week that "if he had wanted to say 'I want to support Manuel Valls proposal', he wouldn't have talked about a 'new project' for New Caledonia."
Last Wednesday, key Loyalist leaders held a large public meeting at a stadium in Paita, on the outskirts of the capital Noumea. The anti-independence politicians - including President of New Caledonia Alcide Ponga, Sonia Backès, Christopher Gygès and Gil Brial - made feisty speeches attacking both the independence movement and Overseas Minister Valls. Criticising the Valls proposal, Nicolas Metzdorf told the audience that "a bad agreement is worse than no agreement."
Before the crowd, Gil Brial of Les Loyalistes used more earthy language to denounce the Overseas Minister's proposal for shared sovereignty.
"If you're walking on the footpath and you see something on the ground, from a distance it may look like a dog turd," Brial said. "If when you come closer, it has the texture of a turd, and if you come closer still, it has the smell of a turd, you don't need to taste it to be sure that it's shit. With the Valls proposal, it's the same."
Despite this public posturing, sources in Noumea have confirmed to Islands Business that both Metzdorf and Brial have continued to hold informal discussions with independence leaders in the lead up to the next round of discussions.
The lengthy negotiations to finalise an agreement are complicated by electoral politics. Even as they try to forge a consensus on political status and the future of the crucial nickel industry, political parties are preparing for elections for New Caledonia's three provincial assemblies and Congress. These polls are currently scheduled on 30 November, but may be delayed again until next year.
The provincial elections, under a restricted electoral roll of New Caledonian citizens, were due in May 2024, but were postponed as New Caledonia erupted in conflict on 13 May last year. The crisis was triggered as President Macron unilaterally sought to reform the provincial electoral rolls without a consensus agreement amongst all leaders in New Caledonia.
After 14 deaths, with hundreds injured and 2,600 arrests, the economy is devastated and New Caledonians are anxious about unemployment, damaged livelihoods and reduced public services in health, transport and education. Many people are tired of the ongoing political uncertainty, and poorer people are doing it tough, affected by reduced health services, cutbacks to public transport to working class suburbs of Noumea, and the loss of one in six jobs in the private sector last year.
In a letter to politicians on 24 June, President Macron confirmed that a new meeting on New Caledonia's political and economic future will proceed in Paris, starting on Wednesday 2 July: "Beyond the crucial institutional issues, I hope that our discussions can also address economic and societal challenges."
As well as the parties involved in the Deva negotiations, the Paris talks will include a meeting with New Caledonian business, community and customary leaders, to discuss the current economic and social crisis. The FLNKS has confirmed it will join these discussions in Paris, but "warns against any attempts to use these issues to influence the political discussions… political stability is a prerequisite for economic and social stability, and it will only be achieved through the process of access to full sovereignty."
Macron's initiative comes at a difficult time in French politics. Resolving the New Caledonia stand-off is just one of many challenges facing the French President, at a time of turmoil in world affairs, trade wars and breaches of human rights and international law - including the IDF's ongoing massacre in Gaza and the US and Israeli bombardment of Iran.
With only two years until the end of his second term of office, Macron's standing in the polls is disastrous (a recent opinion poll saw 21% support for the President, and just 17% for his embattled Prime Minister François Bayrou). Under Bayrou, the French government doesn't have a governing majority in the National Assembly, and he faces no-confidence motions in coming months that may bring down the government.
The political chaos in Paris highlights the need to finalise an agreement for New Caledonia. However, the invitation to this week's summit in Paris was long on rhetoric but had little detail on the structure and substance of the meeting. In a statement on Monday, the FLNKS noted "the lack of clarity from the French State regarding the meeting, concerning the program, the format, and the agenda."
In Noumea, there has been widespread speculation about whether Macron intends to undercut his minister and abandon Valls' proposal. However last week, the Overseas Minister suggested that he will continue to lead the discussions on New Caledonia's institutional future.
"An agreement remains possible and we are counting a lot on the discussions we will have next week with the President of the Republic, and then with all the political actors of this territory" Valls said. "There will obviously be a sequence of political negotiations that I will lead with all political actors, that is to say the parliamentary groups represented at the Congress of New Caledonia. But there will also be an economic and social session with economic, social, and community actors who will be invited."
On Saturday, the FLNKS held a convention at Cedwan tribe near Pouebo in the Northern Province, to brief members on current developments and prepare for this week's talks in Paris.
At the Convention, delegates stressed that the Valls proposal tabled at Deva remained a "floor" for future discussions, warning against attempts to roll back past concessions: "The FLNKS urges the French State to keep its word and resume discussions from the point where they left off at Deva. The movement reaffirms that this proposal constitutes the basis for the new negotiations in Paris, and that no exchanges will take place below this."
As New Caledonia's two deputies in the French National Assembly, both Nicolas Metzdorf and Emmanuel Tjibaou have used their platform in the legislature to brief French politicians on current developments on the other side of the world.
Both supporters and opponents of independence have also been active on the international stage since the Deva talks. There were New Caledonian delegations - from both Loyalists and the independence movement - at the regional seminar of the UN Special Committee of Decolonisation, held in Dili, Timor-Leste in May.
Last month, Roch Wamytan - a veteran UC politician and former speaker of the Congress of New Caledonia - was joined by Palika's Charles Wea at the UN Fourth Committee, calling for international monitoring of the ongoing talks with the French State. On 9 June in New York, Wamytan told the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation that the proposal from the French State must be at the heart of current talks: "The proposal is a first and constitutes the word of the State…The FLNKS has clearly understood and is ready to discuss this option in depth, and is awaiting instructions from the administering power, following the decision by local advocates of recolonisation and the break-up of the country to break off discussions."
Wamytan, also led the FLNKS to the 23rd Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) Leaders' Summit, held in Suva in June. The FLNKS (rather than the Government of New Caledonia) is a full MSG member, alongside the independent states of Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.
As incoming MSG Chair, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka met Wamytan on 25 June and "reiterated Fiji's steadfast support for the FLNKS and for the people of New Caledonia." After the meeting, Rabuka noted that "Fiji has remained actively engaged in discussions on New Caledonia at the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation, including close collaboration with Papua New Guinea on related resolutions to ensure progress on decolonisation."
For UC President Emmanuel Tjibaou, "it is with the support of our comrades from the region that we can advocate for respect for international law, particularly UN resolution 1514" [the 1961 UN General Assembly decolonisation resolution].
"It is within this trajectory of decolonisation that we are engaged, and it is also in this trajectory that the countries of the region support us," he said. "From the moment we align ourselves with this perspective, it is also a way to apply pressure on the French State. If today the State is asserting its Indo-Pacific Strategy everywhere in the region, we must integrate the issue of decolonisation of our country into this discussion. I am thinking of us, I am thinking of the situation of French Polynesia - this is where we need support. This is where we ultimately reaffirm our identity as islanders."
As the massacre of non-combatants continues in Ukraine, Palestine and Iran, Tjibaou stressed that "the international solidarity movement is essential, because we are in a situation where we are a colonised people according to international law. Today, we see that the French State is giving lessons to Trump, it is giving lessons to Israel on the application of international law, but it does not even apply this law in its own country."
-This article was first published by
Islands Business