We Say - 1
We Say
A mission representing the Pacific Islands Forum’s 16 member countries will appear in French Polynesia next year for the first time to look at the territory’s eligibility for observer status at the Forum meeting it unsuccessfully sought this year.
Observer status is given to countries judged by the Forum to be well advanced to political independence from the ruling power, or something just a few percent short of it.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
New Caledonia has observer status. Some Forum members still have fragmentary colonial strings attached to them.
In October, French Polynesia’s President Gaston Flosse ascended into the heavens aboard one of Air Tahiti Nui’s big new jets to alight officially for the first time in China. There he asked the Chinese government to designate French Polynesia as a place Chinese tourists can visit, for landing rights at Beijing for Air Tahiti Nui and for a lower tax on its pearl exports.
In September and October, Flosse extracted important political and economic gains from the French government.
In Paris, he said French Polynesia wants to be called an “overseas country within the French Republic” in place of “overseas territory”. It desires more legislative power for its parliamentary assembly and employment protection for local people, meaning jobs for French Polynesians first and foreigners, including Frenchmen, second.
Flosse also wants more power for handling its foreign affairs. President Jacques Chirac, of France, has to agree to these requests. However, he has already agreed to constitutional reforms that would end France’s ability to adjust territorial policies. He has also agreed to French Polynesia becoming “associated” with France in implementing certain aspects of its administration.
French Polynesia will soon be allowed by Paris to have more freedom in dealing directly diplomatically with other Pacific Islands countries. It hopes to persuade the French to agree to some kind of “Polynesian” citizenship”.
Of enormous economic importance for a country so reliant on just French aid, tourism and pearl exports, France has just agreed to extend, apparently almost indefinitely, the Economic Restructuring Fund created in 1996 after the end of France’s nuclear tests in Moruroa to wean the territory from the loss of the billions of dollars spent on the tests.
Worth about US$150 million a year, the agreement was due to end in 2005. Now, there is no deadline for ending it. What a relief, because French Polynesia is nowhere near economic independence, possibly never will be and would be unable to maintain its high quality of life without the aid money.
Where, politically, are all these advances, actual and probable, taking French Polynesia? Not anywhere near the threshold beyond which the Forum would view French Polynesia as being genuinely on the road towards becoming independent.
And, of course, President Flosse, and many other of French Polynesia’s politicians and going by the election results, about 70 percent of the territory’s 235,000 people have little or no desire for independence, even if many of them say privately that they do not really very much like the French. No France...no high lifestyle...no unimpeded access to France. It is as simple as that.
But having extracted so much from France — what other territory has status that earns red carpet treatment in China? French Polynesia’s politically wily and status-conscious leader will be unable to resist working for yet more concessions. How far he can push Paris without imperilling French bounty will be a game to watch.
One reason for his success to date is a close personal relationship with the recently re-elected President Chirac. A future change of government in France could drop French Polynesia in the soup since some elements in the French opposition regard the territory as an unnecessary luxury that taxpayers should not have to pay for so heavily.
On the other hand, the bill that French Polynesia costs is evidence of France’s strong desire to preserve its role there for the sake of retaining a significant stake in the Pacific, if and when New Caledonia, its other great Pacific asset, joins the Forum as a full independent member, as ultimately it will.
