New Caledonia: A lesson in responsibility

LeMonde

a day ago

One year after the riots of May 13, 2024 – which left 14 dead and plunged New Caledonia into economic chaos – few could have imagined the scene that unfolded at dawn on Saturday, July 12, behind closed doors at a hotel in the western Paris suburb of Bougival. Two sides who had traded insults and refused all dialogue finally agreed to set aside their quarrels and jointly explore a new institutional path.
If the process reaches completion, the Pacific archipelago will become a "State of New Caledonia" within the French Republic, endowed with certain sovereign powers, though not all for the time being. This sui generis construction was the result of a negotiation whose process encapsulated the entire complexity of the New Caledonia issue. The magnitude of the commitment made at the last minute after 10 days of extremely tense discussions led by French Minister for Overseas Territories Manuel Valls is truly historic. It offers a lesson in responsibility that many, in these troubled times, could learn from.
Of course, caution is required, as nothing has been finalized yet: The pro- and anti-independence groups who have taken the risk of committing to this path will now have to persuade their respective bases. This will be difficult for both sides, as the three referendums on self-determination held between 2018 and 2021 to conclude the cycle of the Matignon and Nouméa agreements, that began 40 years earlier amid similar violence, have, in reality, resolved nothing.
By producing increasingly narrow majorities against independence, those referendums only heightened tensions between the loyalists, who have continually tried to press their advantage with the government, and the Kanaks, for whom the process initiated in 1988 by then French prime minister Michel Rocard to overcome the tragedy of the Ouvéa cave hostage taking could only lead to independence. On both sides, the most radical members will naturally be tempted to see the glass as half empty.
The disastrous economic and social situation in which the archipelago currently finds itself nonetheless calls for responsibility. Weakened by its divisions and its inability to meet the population's expectations, and under intense pressure from economic circles, New Caledonia's largely discredited political class needs to move forward. The Bougival talks offer them a way out.
The stakeholders who are choosing to engage are taking significant risks, but they also stand to gain a great deal. Once the new institutional process is underway – with the ambition to get there quickly, as soon as next year – further steps toward more or less independence will depend on the balance of political power that emerges through elections in the archipelago. Citizens of New Caledonia, through local elections, will thus play a crucial role in determining the future. As for the final transfers of sovereign powers, they will depend on a qualified majority in the New Caledonian Congress – and not on the French state.
The fact that an economic reform pact accompanies the process is another sign of maturity. The crisis in New Caledonia's nickel sector, which is far less competitive than nickel mined in China or Indonesia, has shattered the illusion of easy revenue that both sides relied on for too long. A new and original model for development must be built, one that requires easing tensions and maintaining, for at least a few years, strong financial support from the French state.
The vision set out in Bougival, initiated by a handful of courageous individuals, does not seem completely out of reach.