NOUMEA (Islands Business / Pacific Media Watch / Australia Network News / Radio New Zealand): New Caledonian independence movements have polled well in the recent territorial election, despite losing by a small margin to parties loyal to France.
There are three provincial assemblies in New Caledonia, with 40 seats in the South, 22 in the North and 14 in the outlying Loyalty Islands. A proportion of these representatives – 32 from the South, 15 from the North and 7 from the Loyalty Islands – also make up the 54-member Territorial Congress.
French loyalists won 29 seats out of 54 in Congress and independence movements won 25 (an increase of two since the last elections five years ago)
Freelance journalist Nic Maclellan reported in Islands Business this week that the French loyalist Calédonie Ensemble (CE) party is now the majority party.
However, the "Rainbow Nation" united front consisting of the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), Parti Travailliste (PT), Dynamique Unitaire Sud (DUS) and the local branch of the French Socialist Party had "made a significant advance in New Caledonia’s Southern province" even though indigenous Kanak people are a minority there, Maclellan wrote.
The Rainbow Nation groups won all 14 seats in the assembly of the outlying Loyalty Islands and 18 of 22 seats in the Northern Provincial Assembly.
"However these advances for the Kanak independence movement were not sufficient to gain an overall majority in the national parliament," Maclellan wrote.
Independence blow
It is a blow to independence movements who need to control three-fifths of Congress in order to hold a referendum on independence from France.
France violently colonised New Caledonia in 1853 and has held onto the territory ever since. Kanak people were deprived of their land and forced to live in reservations under an indigenous law, or régime de l’indigénat, which prevented them from leaving the reserves.
France made the country a "special collectivity" of France under the 1998 Noumea Accord, which says New Caledonia must move gradually towards independence by 2018.
About 25 percent of the world's nickel - used in making batteries - is found in New Caledonia. The nickel mines are owned by Eramet, a French transnational mining company; Vale Canada Limited, owned by a Brazilian mining company; Canadian mining company Falconbridge Ltd; and Japanese companies Japan's Sumitomo Metal Mining and Mitsui.
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