In New Caledonia, the impossible celebration of citizenship | EUROtoday

It had been dreamed of by its promoters as the image of a group of future, round which Caledonians would collect to have a good time citizenship. In the middle of Nouméa, the Mwâ Kââ, a sculpted pole 12 meters excessive whose identify means “men’s hut”, abandoned the relaxation of the yr, comes again to life each September 24 at the initiative of the affiliation 150 years later , who erected it in 2003. But its president Sylvestre Newedou known as yearly “all communities” to hitch the web site, “the account is not there”he notes, on this election day.

On Sunday, Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backès, candidate for the senatorial elections in New Caledonia, was overwhelmed in the second spherical by independentist Robert Xowie. Third in the first spherical during which the dissident Les Républicains (LR) candidate Georges Naturel was elected, Sonia Backès (Renaissance) misplaced in the second spherical, going through the candidate of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), who’s his entry into the Senate.

One hundred and seventy years after the begin of colonization, whereas political companions should comply with translate into the future standing of the territory what Caledonian citizenship is, neither the date of September 24, nor the place of the commemoration isn’t unanimous.

However, between 2004 and 2011, the Mwâ Kââ had yr after yr managed to convey collectively, below the management of the member of the authorities in cost of tradition, the creator Kanak Déwé Gorodey, wishing to anchor the citizenship competition there. . At the foot of the sculpture, a plaque summarizes the ambition of the monument by means of an extract from the Nouméa settlement, signed in 1998: “The past was the time of colonization, the present is the time of sharing through rebalancing. The future must be the time of identity in a common destiny. »

Discredited protest

But in 2012, the erection by a collective of traditional huts around the monument, supposed to affirm the Kanak presence in the center of a city still sometimes called “White Nouméa”, introduced the demonstration into disrepute. Since then, Citizenship Day has been relocated, and even misplaced its identify two years in the past. It is at the “Caledonia” competition that the authorities now brings collectively the totally different Caledonian communities to have a good time “living together” round songs, dances, in a range of conventional costumes starting from the Loyalty Islands to Vietnam through Wallis -and-Futuna, however which struggles to transcend folklore.

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