PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

Political Reviews
Melanesia In Review: Issues and Events, 2004

New Caledonia

David A. Chappell

The provincial elections in New Caledonia in May 2004 upset the political status quo in this French overseas territory, much as did the defeat of Gaston Flosse, another ally of French President Jacques Chirac, in French Polynesia that same month. In New Caledonia, Jacques Lafleur, whose loyalist Rassemblement pour la Calédonie dans la République ( RPCR ) had dominated the Congress (or Territorial Assembly) for a quarter century, suddenly found himself a minority leader and resigned from his seat. The new government, a coalition of former opposition parties and dissidents, continued to pass "laws of the country" and to develop its economy as the 1998 Noumea Accord empowered it to do, but labor strikes, resistance to a census that ignored ethnicity, and debates over local citizenship and identity symbols kept the"postcolonial" era lively.

In April, the then-ruling RPCR celebrated its twenty-seventh anniversary in the small settler town of La Foa and launched its electoral campaign with pleas for Lafleur not to resign yet from political life, as he had repeatedly vowed to do. Kanak President of the Congress and Senator to Paris Simon Loueckhote begged, "Jacques, please don't leave the RPCR, because there are women and men here who trust you," while Territorial Government President Pierre Frogier attacked RPCR dissidents who had organized a rival movement called Avenir Ensemble ( AE, or "Future Together"). The seventy-one-year-old Lafleur, a wealthy businessman, agreed to lead the party one more time in the upcoming elections because local supporters and President Chirac had asked him to. "Independence has now become just aword, a dream," he observed, adding that when the time came between 2014 and 2019 for a possible vote on independence, as provided for in the Noumea Accord, "No one will want to go to the referendum" ( PIR, 21 April 2004).

According to the consensual agreement reached in May 1998 by Paris, the RPCR and the pro-independence Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste ( FLNKS ), France would continue to delegate self-governing powers to the territory over the second five-year mandate of the Noumea Accord, such as control over the police, internal air and maritime security, secondary education, civil and commercial law, land policy, and budgetary and financial responsibility. As a concession to the concept of establishing a local citizenship for deciding the future of the country, rather than just allowing any French citizen who arrives to cast a vote, only those born in New Caledonia or resident for at least ten years would be able to vote in the provincial elections. [End Page 436] This rule, which was still being examined by the European Court of Justice, would eliminate about 10 percent of the 130:000 potential voters. A recent French law on gender parity required that half the candidates on each party list, in alternating order, had to be women, and a party list needed the support of at least 5 percent of the registered voters in one of the three provinces (North, South, Islands) to obtain a seat in its assembly. Then, by a complex proportional method, 54 of the 76 total members of the three provincial assemblies could obtain a seat in the territorial Congress, which in turn would elect its own executive government ( NC, 31 March 2004).

In the 1999 provincial elections, twenty-three party lists had competed, and the RPCR had emerged with 24 seats in the Congress. In coalition with a dissident Kanak party, the Fédération des Comités de Coordination Indépendantistes ( FCCI ), it had acquired a 28 -seat voting majority and 7 of the 11 seats in the government executive, leading to complaints about a lack of collegiality (consultation) in decision making despite the proposal in the Noumea Accord to work toward a "common destiny." Pro-independence parties won 19 congressional seats in 1999 and only four ministries, while two smaller loyalist parties won 7 congressional seats and no ministries. Loyalists dominated the populous, wealthy Southern Province, while Kanak nationalists controlled the Northern and Islands Provinces, perpetuating the de facto partition of the country. In the May 2004 elections, thirty-one lists competed, revealing growing divisions in the broad coalitions of pro-French loyalists and pro-independence indigenous nationalists that had confronted each other since the late 1970s. In the loyalist camp, the biggest change was the emergence of the AE, a coalition of Didier Leroux's Alliance (which had won three congressional seats in 1999 and was affiliated with the Union Démocratique Français [ UDF ] in France) and other dissident loyalists, led by Harold Martin, who had contested Lafleur's patrician leadership within the RPCR but remained members of Chirac's Union pour une Majorité Présidentielle ( UMP ) in France. The AE campaigned on a platform of inclusiveness and consensus, accusing the RPCR of failing to unite the country and prepare for the transfer of more self-governing powers. The candidate at the top of its list, Marie-Noëlle Thémereau, told Le Monde,"A common destiny is built by rallying people around symbolic things. Symbols count in a society, but the RPCR is afraid of them" (Le Monde, 6 May 2004). This vision of centrist nation building attracted the electoral support of Maréen High Chief Nidoish Naisseline's Libération Kanak Socialiste party ( LKS ).

Meanwhile, the FLNKS continued to be without a president after three years because of internal division. Its last president, Rock Wamytan, campaigned with a list of his own called " FLNKS for Independence." His former party, the Union Calédonienne ( UC ), led by Charles Pidjot, was once the leader of the FLNKS under Jean-Marie Tjibaou. But since a secession by seven UC congressional councilors in 2000, it has increasingly pursued its own path as an independence party, [End Page 437] accusing the FLNKS of not pushing hard enough to enforce the Noumea Accord. The remnants of the old FLNKS are led by Palika (Parti de Libération Kanak) and include the small Union Progressiste Mélanésienne ( UPM ) and the mostly Wallisian Rassemblement Démocratique Océanien ( RDO ). Together, they campaigned as the "National Union for Independence ( UNI ) with the FLNKS," which received electoral support from local progressive movements such as labor unions and environmentalists. The UNI-FLNKS vowed to help "our country emerge" in the second five-year mandate of the Noumea Accord, by promoting local citizenship, favoring locals in hiring, controlling immigration, creating local identity symbols, promoting dialogue and collegiality, planning fair and balanced economic development, improving health care and housing, protecting the environment, adapting and expanding education, and promoting the country's role in the region. In order to move toward full sovereignty, the UNI-FLNKS sought to rally all ethnic groups against the power abuses of the old elite (the RPCR ) and transform that grassroots activism into "a national sentiment." It sought to provide a more coherent strategy that could overcome internal party divisions caused by partisan interests and personal ambitions ( KOL, 16-23 April 2004).

The elections on 9 May ended the dominance of Lafleur's party, as the AE took away 9 seats from the RPCR in the South, winning 19 total seats out of 40 in the provincial assembly and 16 seats in the Congress, compared to 3 for the Alliance in 1999. The RPCR dropped to 16 seats in the provincial assembly and 16 in the Congress (a loss of 8), while its former coalition partner, the FCCI, lost 3 congressional seats and dropped to one. The loyalist Front National ( FN ) retained its 5 seats in the South and its 4 congressional seats, while the pro-independence parties did well in the North (18 of 22 seats) and Islands (12 of 14 seats) as usual, but failed to win a single seat in the South and dropped from 19 to 17 in the Congress. Both Wamytan and Aloisio Sako of the RDO blamed the complete failure of pro-independence parties in the South, despite support from 10 percent of the electorate there, on the lack of unity within the FLNKS. Even Guy George of the FN expressed concern over the absence of a pro-independence voice in the South. In the North, UNI continued to rule under Paul Neaoutyine, gaining 3 seats for atotal of 11, while Pascal Naouna's UC gained one seat for a total of 7 but was excluded from most leadership positions. The FCCI was eliminated from representation, but the RPCR won 3 seats and the AE one, thus keeping the loyalist total of 4. In the Islands, where the Kanak political situation is very complex, 8 lists competed for 14 seats in the assembly. Women won half the seats, while the UC, UNI, LKS, and FCCI formed a working majority of 10 seats ( NC, 10 May, 3 June 2004).

The AE called the outcome a "political earthquake," and Lafleur finally "retired," resigning from his seats in the South and in Congress butremaining a deputy to the Paris National Assembly. Martin, the former RPCR leader whom Lafleur had [End Page 438] once tried to prevent from being reelected mayor of Paita, won election as president of the Congress on 21 May, with votes not only from the AE but from the FN, LKS, and UC ( NC, 2 June 2004). Another ex- RPCR leader, the Algerian pied noir (French settler) Mayor of La Foa, Philippe Gomès, became president of the Southern Province, promising an audit after the outgoing regime had hastily dispersed funds to client organizations and removed documents and equipment. In the new spirit of collegiality, the AE and FN welcomed to the assembly Christiane Gambey of the pro-independence LKS, who had actually run on the AE list. She is a Kanak leader in the tourism business who wants to improve coordination among the three provinces and thus raise the yearly visitor count beyond its ten-year average of 100:000 ( NC, 15 May 2004 ; PIR, 8 Sept 2004). In June, the Congress met to decide on how many ministries would be needed in the government and chose eleven, the maximum allowed by the Noumea Accord's organic laws and one more than in the previous executive. The four parties that held the required minimum of six seats in the Congress then presented lists of candidates for ministers, which could include people not elected to the Congress. Based on their proportions of seats, UNI (8 seats) would get two cabinet posts and UC (7 seats) one, while the AE (21 seats, with help from the FN and LKS ) and RPCR (17 seats, with the FCCI's help) would likely get four posts each, unless one of the loyalist parties was able to lure a vote away from its rival ( NC, 5 June 2004). Either way, the loyalists would dominate 8-3, as they had in the previous regime, but perhaps more collegially?

The first attempt to elect a government failed on 10 June, when a new RPCR councilor, Suzie Vigouroux, marked her ballot "Frogier" (for the former RPCR president of the government) instead of putting down the name of her party list. That invalid ballot deprived the RPCR of a crucial vote and hence a cabinet position, so Frogier announced that his party would collectively resign from the executive, thus creating a procedural crisis. The RPCR also claimed that Vigouroux had been pressured by the AE not to vote, whereupon the AE filed a countersuit for defamation, and the whole election process was delayed. Thémereau had briefly won election as president, because of the AE's temporary advantage of five posts, and Déwé Gorodey of UNI as vice president, the same position she had held in the previous government. The fact that both were women was quite a precedent ( NC, 11 June 2004). After some legal wrangling, the RPCR regained its seventeenth congressional vote and thereby its fourth cabinet position. On 24 June, a new government was elected, with four posts each for the AE and RPCR, as originally predicted. But now the president and vice president had to be elected by an absolute majority of at least six, and the UNI and UC abstained, leaving the two loyalist rivals in a deadlock after three attempted votes. The cabinet then met with the French high commissioner, who could call for fresh elections if the impasse were not resolved ( NC, 25 June 2004 ; PIR, 24 June 2004). Martin, and Pierre Maresca of the RPCR, even flew to [End Page 439] Paris to assure Chirac that it was not his party (the UMP, which was affiliated with the RPCR ) that had lost the May elections but just the RPCR, since many members of the AE were still members of the UMP, not the UDF, affiliated with Leroux's Alliance ( NC, 26 June 2004).

Finally, on 29 June, a negotiated compromise enabled Thémereau and Gorodeyto be reelected asthe government's highest executive officers. The former received all 8 votes of the AE and RPCR and the latter 9 votes—3 from the UNI and UC, 2 from the RPCR, and all 4 from the AE ( NC, 30 June 2004). The responsibilities of the individual ministers were assigned according to their backgrounds, and, Thémereau said, "in a completely collegial way, in perfect harmony, with no problem." Gorodey, for example, retained her portfolio for culture, with the addition of women's affairs and citizenship, Frogier got his favorite field, foreign affairs and trade, businessman Leroux received direction over the economy and communications, and Charles Washetine, who was not elected to Congress but has long been Palika's spokesman and is an education specialist, received teaching and research ( NC, 3 July 2004). This quasi-technocratic outlook became more concrete during the year. After a month in office, Thémereau said that consensus and collegiality prevailed on her team, especially among the AE, UNI, and UC, as they got to know each other and worked together toward greater cooperation, transparency, and social justice. She said that the economic outlook was good in New Caledonia, but social problems were worsening because of lack of training for locals and insufficient attention to social welfare. The pro-independence parties dissuaded the government from keeping a customary affairs ministry, to separate Kanak custom from politics and empower the Customary Senate to deal with such matters ( NC, 17 July 2004).

The new government, unlike the previous RPCR regime, focused on better financing of urgent needs such as fiscal reform of CAFAT, the public insurance funding for health, maternity, work accidents, unemployment, and aging. Health costs were rising, anew hospital was badly needed, affordable housing was in desperately short supply, family allowances needed to be expanded tohelp the most needy, infrastructure and education had to be modernized, and thesocial pact negotiated with labor unions and employers had to be implemented. Together, the AE,UC, UNI, FN, and LKS passed new "laws of the country," despite RPCR opposition, to raise taxes on large enterprises and lower them on small ones and to raise the minimum wage. By redirecting more revenues away from future economic development to cover current social deficits, the territorial budget reached one hundred billion francs CFP (or about US $1.1 billion) in December ( NC, 17 July, 6 Oct, 15 Dec, 16 Dec, 21 Dec 2004 ; PIR, 24 Nov 2004). The European Union agreed to provide New Caledonia with another US $26 million for professional training (pir, 13 Sept 2004), and the French National Assembly allocated 1.7 billion euros for social expenses in overseas territories, including 680 million euros for [End Page 440] New Caledonia. But Frogier complained that the motley new ruling coalition in the territory was creating instability by "building an artificial unity on the exclusion of and distancing from France." He called the RPCR's marginalization a UDF plot ( NC, 15 Nov 2004).

In mid-June, the voters of New Caledonia were again asked to cast their ballots, this time for overseas deputy to the European Union Parliament in Strasbourg. A current deputy from Reunion, Margie Sudre, Vietnamese-born and head of the UMP list, visited New Caledonia in late May to remind voters that the European Union provided development funding to the territory for education, the environment, and mining. There was also discussion of replacing the French Pacific franc with the euro, and in international affairs, she said, "Europe has assured peace and stability for fifty years." The recent defeats of UMP lists in the elections in New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Guadeloupe were "unjustified," she argued. They resulted from people's impatience to get quick results and also a cut below the belt by the left: "I have the feeling that French politics is living through the hour of the Kleenex generation. They take a party, then throw it away when their wishes are not immediately fulfilled" ( NC, 28 May 2004). Five New Caledonians ran for the three overseas deputy posts, including Atelemo Moleana of the RDO as a Socialist, ecologist Didier Baron as a Green, and Guy George of the FN, but with only 7 percent of the total electorate of overseas France, New Caledonia had little clout. Despite the fact that the European Fund for Development was contributing US $670 million to the territory in 2004, local turnout inthe European elections had been declining every five years since its high point of 37 percent in 1989 ( NC, 7 June 2004). French Overseas Minister Brigitte Girardin pointed out that since Britain had withdrawn from the South Pacific Community (again), France was the only representative of the region in Europe. "France is an Oceanian nation," she claimed. "Thanks to France, Europe is thus present here" ( NC, 9 June 2004). But only 25 percent of Caledonian voters participated in the European election, compared to 77 percent in the provincial elections the month before, and populous and well-organizedReunion, led by Sudre's UMP list, took all three overseas seats ( NC, 15 June 2004). Jean-Pierre Pierard of the European Commission Delegation lamented that Europe was still "under-utilized" by New Caledonia, which lacked the "European reflex" ( NC, 16 June 2004).

If the argument that France was the conduit for European aid to the Pacific did not carry much weight among voters, the question of its role as arbiter between the RPCR and FLNKS in the follow-up process to the Noumea Accord remained. In late July, Neaoutyine traveled to Paris to discuss five key matters with Girardin: ensuring the full implementation of the accord by holding another meeting of the committee of signers, which had last met in June 2003 ; revising the French constitution to permanently restrict the local electorate on long-term issues to ten-year residents; including ethnicity in the proposed [End Page 441] population census in order to better measure socioeconomic rebalancing (rééquilibrage) as provided for in the accord (which had formally recognized Kanak identity); renewing the annual economic development contract between the Northern Province and Paris before the end of the year; and transferring the additional self-governing powers as promised by the accord. Martin of the AE had also asked for a meeting of the accord signers committee ( NC, 22 July, 23 July 2004). Lafleur, however, would not say whether the RPCR would participate and disliked allowing the AE to do so, claiming that it contained nosigners of the accord and that many of its members had actually voted against the accord. He also warned that some in the new regime risked a political crisis by not respecting France enough: "Some are still tempted to return to the independence idea. I know it's out of the question, it's impossible and that the first victims of those who wish for independence would be the Melanesians" ( NC, 15 Sept 2004). In September, President Thémereau met with Girardin in Paris and discussed many issues, including keeping the French development money flowing and holding a signers meeting in early 2005 ( NC, 15 Sept 2004). A compromise would allow the ruling AE toparticipate, because the FLNKS and RPCR delegations could include other parties ( PIR, 12 Jan 2005).

The RPCR, however, continued to complain about misinformation spread by the AE and attempts to exclude short-term residents from local citizenship. For example, Maresca and other RPCR leaders argued that, based on the audit in the South and other indicators, administrative revenues were much healthier than the AE claimed. Moreover, they considered it unfair to limit territorial political and economic benefits (eg, hiring preference) to people who had been resident for at least ten years, calling it a politics of exclusion, "a denial of equality . . . this drift toward independence by means of a chilly and villainous closing up of New Caledonia on itself."The RPCR leaders admitted that they had previously spent more time before on governing than communicating, while the AE was better at the latter, but now that they were in opposition, they would learn quickly and improve ( NC, 18 Sept 2004). Because he felt the AE coalition was not following the path toward a "common destiny," Lafleur changed his position on voting rights and citizenship in November. Earlier, he had supported a "sliding" citizenship of ten years residence before each election, and after the 2003 meeting of the accord signers he said that he understood the pro-independence parties' preference for a "frozen" electorate of voters resident for ten years before the 1998 Noumea Accord. But now Lafleur suddenly wanted to extend such rights to people who had been resident for at least three years, in order to avoid creating two categories of French citizens (and RPCR voters?) in New Caledonia ( NC, 27 Nov 2004). In early January 2005, the European Court of Human Rights finally decided that limiting the provincial electorate to ten-year residents did not violate the right to vote, ending a six-year legal campaign by the loyalist immigrant [End Page 442] Mouvement pour la France ( NC, 13 Jan 2005).

The real complaint of the RPCR was a reverse lack of collegiality, as the AE could conduct business with the FN, UC, UNI, and LKS even if the RPCR objected. Lafleur told Le Figaro that he saw the AE doing the bidding ofthe pro-independence UC when it came to the electorate issue, which in turn affected employment and citizenship ( KOL, 20 Nov 2004), and he warned that the situation was just like 1984, when political polarization had destabilized New Caledonia (Les Infos, 3 Dec 2004). Meanwhile, the AE organized itself as a formal party, not simply a voting coalition, and elected Martin as its president. Leroux's Alliance and two smaller loyalist parties agreed to dissolve and merge their membership with the AE. Even Gambey of the LKS, who had run on the AE electoral list and thereby attained the lone pro-independence voice in the Southern provincial assembly, attended the founding congress of the AE ( NC, 31 Aug 2004, 2 Oct 2004). Within the FLNKS, Palika had displaced the UC as the controlling party and systematically excluded the UC from the Northern Province's administrative councils, including those devoted to the Koniambo nickel project, while in the Congress the UC often cooperated with the once-marginalized loyalists of the AE and FN. Naouna of the UC countered Lafleur's complaint that his party was influencing the AE too much by saying that after the first post-Noumea Accord elections, the RPCR had formed a coalition with the FCCI, a party of supposedly pro-independence Kanak dissidents from the UC and Palika ( NC, 23 Oct 2004 ; Les Infos, 3 Dec 2004, KOL, 23 Nov 2004). At its congress in November, Palika reaffirmed its goal of revolutionary socialist independence for Kanaky, which it felt the full implementation of the Accord of Noumea would achieve, through building a nickel-processing plant in the North to balance that in the South and thus provide needed jobs for Kanak youth; freezing the electorate and citizenship and favoring locals in hiring; and using the FLNKS rubric in ongoing follow-up negotiations with Paris. Palika acknowledged that the latter had slowed a bit because of the shock the AE electoral victory had caused to the RPCR and the French UMP, but the FLNKS would persevere and prevail ( KOL, 17 Nov 2004). The AE said that the lack of preparation by the RPCR regime might delay the transfer of more autonomy powers until 2009, the very end of the second accord mandate (Les Infos, 3 Dec 2004).

Another test of the new government was the issue of whether to inquire about ethnic and (for Kanak inhabitants) tribal identities in a population census of the territory. Such data had been collected in every New Caledonian census since World War II, but just before a scheduled survey in July 2003, Chirac vetoed the idea during his visit. At the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center, he had met with young people, one of whom, athlete Isabelle Artus, told him, "I have lived in Caledonia since I was two years old. I don't feel Melanesian or Zoreille (French metropolitan immigrant). I feel Caledonian." Chirac was upset and called the notion of checking off an ethnic [End Page 443] identity on an official document "scandalous" because it violated French antidiscrimination laws. A year later, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies prepared totry again, with new questionnaires that no longer included boxes for ethnic or tribal identities. The pretext given in 2003 for canceling the census was that theNewCaledonian government had not been consulted. In 2004, the government of the territory was consulted on the change in the census forms, but having changed leadership, it now supported including ethnicity and tribal identity in the inquiry. Despite dissent from the pro-Chirac RPCR, it said it needed to know the ethnic composition of the population in order to measure how successfully the goal of socioeconomic rebalancing was being achieved, and knowing the tribal identity of the Melanesians could determine urban migration trends and funding for rural communes—exactly the position of the pro-independence parties ( NC, 10 July, 23 July 2004).

The FLNKS asked for a delay in the census of several months to resolve the impasse, arguing that the multiethnic society of New Caledonia needed the data that Chirac had prohibited ( NC, 25 Aug 2004). The UC even threatened to boycott the census, which was scheduled for August and September, if ethnicity and tribal identities were not included, calling Chirac's veto "a colonial act" because it negated the Noumea Accord's recognition of Kanak identity and thecall for rebalancing. The pro-independence labor federation Union Syndicaliste des Travailleurs Kanak et Exploités ( USTKE ), led by Gerard Jodar, seconded the boycott idea, but Sylvain Pabouty of Palika supported asolution whereby the local government would conduct a second survey in 2005 that would ask about ethnicity and other social issues, and the results of both would later be combined ( ABC, 9 Aug 2004). The French high commissioner agreed to the compromise, but the UC refused to vote with the AE for it, and Naisseline of the LKS called the second survey "too expensive and precipitous." The AE had to turn to the FN and, ironically, the RPCR for the needed votes to finance the second survey, which would cost an estimated US $1.5 million ( NC, 10 Sept 2004). By December, statisticians admitted that as much as 10 percent of the population had boycotted the census, not only the UC or USTKE but also an association of metropolitan migrants who felt they were being treated as second-class citizens in New Caledonia and therefore opposed the Noumea Accord ( PIR, 12 Dec 2004).

At the regional level, Thémereau attended the annual Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Apia, Sāmoa, in August, along with half a dozen other government representatives, including Neaoutyine. She expressed support for the possibility that French Polynesia, then under Oscar Temaru's more independence-oriented government, might acquire observer status at the Forum as the FLNKS of New Caledonia had. She also advocated the prevention of terrorism or criminal activities, the promotion of sustainable development, and improved relations between the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries and the European Union ( NC, 9 Aug [End Page 444] 2004). Yet she was cautious about the idea of a free-trade zone in Oceania, saying that the three French territories had a higher domestic product than all fourteen Anglophone states (excluding Australia and New Zealand), and she found it awkward that the FLNKS and Temaru had such close ties, since she wants New Caledonia to remain French ( T-P, 8 Sept 2004).

Four hundred regional scientists met in Noumea in September to discuss issues and projects, an event that Chirac had encouraged to "anchor France in the Great Ocean of the Anglo-Saxons, via the Caledonian platform" ( NC, 1 Sept 2004). He had also said "France would like to contribute to the stability and development of the Pacific" by funding scientific and health projects as well as the media; Paris gave US $4 million to such activities in the region ( T-P, 12 Sept 2004). Meanwhile, a French naval frigate patrolled Oceania's maritime economic zones for three months in late 2004, in order "to develop collaboration with small South Pacific countries" ( T-P, 20 July 2004), and the French military conducted an emergency civilian evacuation exercise in New Caledonia, in case a crisis like that in the Ivory Coast arose in the French Pacific ( NC, 26 Nov 2004). Australian and New Zealand forces had joined the French in military exercises in New Caledonia in June, as part of the 1993 FRANZ agreement, and Thémereau welcomed Australian overtures to increase its already large trade with and investments in the territory. Australian exports to New Caledonia total US $200 million annually, and it is a major Australian tourist destination. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that Australia supported the Noumea Accord and "France's constructive role in New Caledonia and the region" ( PIR, 21 Dec 2004).

New Caledonian exports still consist mainly of nickel, and the international price for it doubled in 2003, due to the rising market in China and India for stainless steel. The territory hopes to increase its profit margin further by tripling its production of processed nickel, as opposed to raw ore. Yet Kanak landowners and environmentalists are voicing growing concern over the impact of such strip mining and chemically intensive refining processes on the local soil, waters, and reefs. Two years ago, they tried to get New Caledonia's barrier reef (second in size only to Australia's and biologically one of the richest in the world) classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, but the Chirac regime stalled the effort, preferring to entrust environmental protection to the mining companies ( PIR, 15 Jan, 16 Jan 2004 ; KOL, 20 Feb 2004). The long-established Société le Nickel ( SLN ), a subsidiary of Eramet, which is majority French State-owned, installed an additional furnace in its Doniambo plant in Noumea, which will increase its production of processed nickel to 75:000 tons a year. The SLN also installed a new filter that will decrease nickel dust emissions by two-thirds. It expanded its mining site at Tiegaghi, and the harbor facilities nearby, in order to provide Doniambo with a million tons of ore per year ( NC, 8 June, 6 July, 22 July, 13 Aug 2004). Meanwhile, [End Page 445] progress continued on the US $1.6 billion joint venture between the Northern Province and Falconbridge of Canada to expand mining atKoniambo and build a local processing plant. A feasibility study was encouraging, though Falconbridge was still weighing costs of materials (steel, fuel, etc) and the decline of the dollar against the euro. The company was already interviewing young job applicants, and a final decision on the project was due by the end of 2004. Koniambo is expected to create nearly 900 jobs directly, and 2000 indirectly in the region, which suffers from a 30 percent unemployment rate ( NC, 3 Aug, 23 Sept 2004). If Falconbridge does not say yes to the project by the end of 2005, the SLN will take it over ( NC, 9 Oct 2004).

The most controversial nickel plant is the US $1.8-2.0 billion project planned for Goro, in the Southern Province, by INCO of Canada. In 2002, protests over environmental issues and local hiring forced INCO to halt construction and reconsider the arrangement. In June and July 2004, INCO held a series of public meetings in New Caledonia, at the request of the new government. Scott Hand, presidentof theCanadian nickel giant, said repeatedly that local inhabitants support for the project was indispensable, since INCO intended to be working in the territory for over a century ( PIR, 23 June 2004 ; NC, 29 July 2004). Raphael Mapou's Rheebu Nuu, a local indigenous customary committee, still wanted INCO to find a better way to process the ore than using the experimental pressure acid leach method, but Southern Province President Gomès tried to sweeten the deal by proposing that his province give half the royalties to the Northern and Islands Provinces, and that together they acquire another 10 percent share of Goro, in addition to the 10 percent that the province and territory were already going to receive. (This still contrasts very unfavorably with the 51 percent ownership of Koniambo by the North, but the three-province agreement was finalized in January 2005 [ NC, 15 Jan 2005 ]). Gomès also said that the new regime would remain vigilant about environmental impact, local hiring, participation by local businesses, and sociocultural impact on the inhabitants. Hand said that INCO still had its eyes on the Prony site near Goro for future ore supplies, though a court had taken away its near-gratis permit for exploring Prony in late 2003, only to have then-Southern Province President Lafleur restore it ( NC, 31 July 2004 ; KOL, 20 Feb 2004). The new Southern Province government approved the Goro project in August, and in October INCO gave it the green light and soon began to hire people ( NC, 13 Aug, 21 Oct, 30 Nov 2004). Hand called it a model agreement, and the presidents of all three provinces, the government, and the Congress signed it ( NC, 22 Oct 2004). New Caledonia also hosted a meeting of 200 nickel experts from seven major countries who eyed its huge reserves ( PIR, 22 Sept 2004).

World-class nickel mining and processing has made New Caledonia the most industrial country in Oceania, but that situation has also created powerful labor unions, who can paralyze the territory with strikes and play a role in politics too. The fact that the [End Page 446] Noumea Accord proposed favoring local hiring and also rebalancing economic relations between the indigenous Kanak and immigrants has added fuel to strike actions, especially as the current nickel boom attracts a new wave of immigration. In the provincial elections every party took up the slogan of protecting local employment, but no "law of the country" has yet made specific how long someone must be a resident to avoid exclusion if a local citizen has the same qualifications; each employer uses its own hiring guidelines. The association of employers is studying whether they themselves need to provide more training to prospective employees in order to satisfy the growing local demand for jobs, only one-third of which are provided by government. Several strikes in the past two years by USTKE and the Union Syndicaliste des Ouvriers et Employés de la Nouvelle-Calédonie ( USOENC ) have contested the hiring of immigrants with only a year (or, in one case, eight years) of residence instead of a local-born applicant. For working in the territory, state civil servants on contract from France receive extra pay that almost doubles their salaries, which is another source of resentment because it adds to local inflation and shows just how little the French State really considers New Caledonia to be part of France (the reverse does not apply if a New Caledonian goes to France to work). The locally funded CAFAT provides unemployment insurance to job-losers, but it is in the red financially, since 17 percent of workers needed such help in 2003. That year, 10:000 people applied for 500 new jobs every month ( NC, 29 June, 6 July, 5 Oct 2004).

On May Day, USTKE marched in political support of the oppressed indigenous peoples of Palestine and Iraq and in economic support of generalizing family allowances to help the needy, controlling immigration, enacting fiscal (ie, tax) reform, and protecting local employment, especially for Kanak, who comprise only 12 percent of the salaried workforce ( NC, 3 May 2004). In July, USTKE blocked the seaport for a week over adispute between two docker firms—Manutrans (owned by Louis Kotra Uregei, former USTKE president, and mostly Kanak) and Sofrana (owned by Leroux)—over their respective shares of ship unloading. After a court ordered the police to reopen the port by breaking up the picket lines, USTKE (a federation ofa dozen unions) called a general strike that lasted for three days, shutting down everything from gasoline to flour for bakeries to animal feed to the international airport to the French television, radio, and newspaper services. Even the FLNKS tried to mediate to resolve the strike. Leroux accused USTKE of holding the whole country hostage over a minor dispute and suggested it was being manipulated by the RPCR to embarrass the AE regime. But he finally gave in and allowed Manutrans a greater share of harbor work, though one of its own shipping line customers had switched to Sofrana (his firm), causing all the turmoil ( NC, 27 July, 30 July, 2 Aug, 4 Aug, 5 Aug 2004). USTKE soon shut down the news services again, this time over a [End Page 447] hiring dispute in which Rock Haocas, a Kanak engineer from Lifou in the Islands Province (where Uregei comes from), claimed that after coming back from training in France he had been given a job beneath his qualifications and experience at Radio France Overseas ( RFO ). Strikers blockaded the broadcasting station, beating up a cameraman who tried to photograph them, so New Caledonia had no television or newspaper service (except online) for 100 days, until an agreement granted Haocas a better job ( PIR, 7 Sept, 5 Nov 2004 ; NC, 2 Dec 2004).

An emerging "national" identity thus expressed itself in various ways in 2004, notably in the new spirit of collegiality among the once-marginalized non- RPCR parties in the Congress. After a series of public discussions in June and July about cultural symbols, such as a new name for the country, Jean-Paul Caillard suggested that the increasingly used term Kanaky New Caledonia (similar to Papua New Guinea) might win by default, because neither side of the old ethnic divide was willing to abandon its established label ( KOL, 17 July 2004). In August, the Customary Senate passed its presidency from Gabriel Poadae of the Paicî region in the North to Paul Jewine of Mare in the Islands Province, and that same month the families of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Yeiwéné Yeiwéné, Djubelly Wéa, and Daniel Fisdiepas completed a long customary process of reconciliation for the tragic events of May 1989, when Wéa assassinated the first two, and bodyguard Fisdiepas killed Wéa ( NC, 23 Aug, 29 Dec 2004). On 24 September, the Mwâ Kâ, a Kanak totem pole carved with images from all eight Kanak cultural regions that had been created for the150 th anniversary of French annexation in 2003 as a symbol of ethnic reconciliation, was installed permanently infront of the National Museum. Lafleur had appropriated the Mwâ Kâ, when the RPCR mayor of Noumea had banned it from the Place des Cocotiers in the center of the capital, and later asked to have it removed from the grounds of the Southern Province headquarters. This year, Gomès and Leroux hailed it as a reminder that Noumea was not only awhite city and that everyone should remember that New Caledonia is part of Melanesia. It was also the thirtieth anniversary of the first protest, in 1974, by Kanak and Caledonian radicals against settler celebrations of annexation, a fitting date for a new beginning ( NC, 24 Sept 2004 ; KOL, 24 Feb 2004 ; Maclellan 2005).

References

ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Le Figaro. Daily. Paris.

Le Monde. Daily. Paris.

Les Infos. Weekly. Noumea.

KOL, Kanaky Online. E-mail <kanaky@yahoo.groupes.fr>

Maclellan, Nic. 2005. Building the Mwâ Kâ: Conflict and Reconciliation in New Caledonia. Discussion Paper. State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project, The Australian National University.

NC, Les Nouvelles-Calédoniennes. Daily. Noumea.

PIR, Pacific Islands Report. <http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport>

T-P,Tahiti-Presse. French Polynesia Web site<http://www.tahitipresse.pf>