“In New Caledonia, the method engaged Manuel Valls, based on the widest possible consensus, has proven itself” | EUROtoday

LIn reminiscence of New Caledonia is a part of French colonial historical past, whose reminiscence and inheritance results are nonetheless very heavy at present. President Macron, his most sustainable abroad ministers, Sébastien Lecornu and Gérald Darmanin, too younger to recollect the occasions of 1984-1988, thought they may ignore this previous that they thought-about fully over. The debates carried out within the National Assembly on the thaw of the provincial electoral physique have completely illustrated the denial of historical past within the identify of democracy, universalism and refusal to contemplate New Caledonia as a rustic registered on the listing of territories to be decolonized, and never as a French province. Denial nonetheless illustrated by the legislation rapporteur, the Deputy (Ensemble for the Republic) Neo-Caledonian Nicolas Metzdorf, who, whereas claiming the seniority of his household in New Caledonia over six generations, has problem assuming its origins on the crossroads of the “great families” of settlers who dominated the nation till 1946.

This denial of the colonial historical past of the nation was essential to fake to shut the settlement of Noumea, to defeat structure delicately constructed since 1998 and to attenuate the devastating impact of a gap of the provincial electoral physique, determined in Paris towards a Kanak individuals subjected to the stress of the French settlement methods, all on the service of the geostrategic pursuits of Paris.

This return of the colonial repressed is all of the extra wonderful as a protracted path has been traveled in forty years. It took many violence, and people of the State particularly, throughout the interval 1984-1988 for part of the French political class then to know that the independence claims needed to be heard and in depth reform the pact linking New Caledonia to France.

Towards hybrid independence

Edgard Pisani [1918-2016]ephemeral Minister liable for New Caledonia, was a precursor when he proposed, in 1985, an independence-association challenge, together with his expertise of African independence. “We believe – and we believe it very strongly – that independence is inscribed in the future, and we believe that the interest of Caledonia, like that of France, is that it is done in the association, he said against the Senate. As soon as this independence appears to be inevitable, it is better not to delay its effect, because today, independence is possible in association with France: perhaps, tomorrow, it would be against France! »»

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