“We are witnessing the unraveling of the principles which had ensured civil peace” | EUROtoday

Ln March 26, the Senate should start analyzing a constitutional invoice whose objective is to change the composition of the electoral physique for elections to provincial assemblies and the Congress of New Caledonia.

Since the Nouméa Agreement of 1998, in reality, solely folks (and their descendants) who met the circumstances to vote within the referendum of November 1998 approving this settlement can vote to elect these native assemblies. This restriction, exorbitant below widespread regulation, prolonged the Matignon agreements of 1988 and located its legitimacy within the formation of a New Caledonian citizenship, referred to as to construct a typical future on the trail to the emancipation of New Caledonia. It can be due to this decolonization course of that this limitation of the suitable to vote has been validated by all worldwide authorities.

In February 2007, this restricted electoral physique was frozen – “crystallized”, in line with the expression of the UMP rapporteur on the time – by a constitutional revision determined by Jacques Chirac. Why did the President of the Republic, who was within the final months of his second time period, need to have this textual content adopted, when nothing compelled him to take action and his native supporters have been against it? To be forgiven Ouvéa [en 1988, alors premier ministre, Jacques Chirac avait ordonné l’assaut contre la grotte d’Ouvéa où des indépendantistes kanaks avaient pris en otage une vingtaine de gendarmes] and finish his five-year time period “on the right side of history”? It's not not possible. So that France can lastly rely, after so many failures, a profitable decolonization to its credit score? This can be potential. If the underlying motivations for this resolution stay mysterious, how can we not invite deputies and senators to consider it rigorously, when they’ll be invited to change this provision?

In February 2007, earlier than the Congress, the rapporteur defined that this freezing of the voters was the results of “compliance with the social contract of November 8, 1998”, that’s to say the vote by which the Caledonians had authorised the Nouméa settlement. Of course, a contract can at all times be modified. In this case, this might be justified, legally and politically, as a result of twenty-five years later, the registration standards for the provincial elections exclude from the vote a number of thousand natives of New Caledonia, together with Kanaks, in addition to folks completely put in. But if a contract could be modified by settlement of those that signed it, a modification within the absence of settlement is known as a breach of contract.

You have 63.46% of this text left to learn. The relaxation is reserved for subscribers.