Kanaks Can't Change Status Quo

Elections due on May 9 for New Caledonia's territorial congress and three provincial legislatures are unlikely to change existing political balances.

The anti-independence Rassemblement pour la Caledonie de la Republique (RPCR) will keep power as head of the territorial government in which independence-minded indigenous Kanak parties will have an uneasy minority role.

The only complication is a deepening of divisions inside the pro-independence Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak Socialiste (FLNKS). Three FLNKS component parties who are prepared to work in government with the RPCR will campaign as one. The fourth, Union Caledonienne (UC), which is more confrontational in its attitude to the RPCR, will campaign under its own banner. The congress has 54 members, 32 of whom are from the Southern Province, 15 from the Northern Province and seven from the Loyalty Islands province.

The next government will probably be led as now by Pierre Frogier, of the RPCR, as president, with nine other executive positions held by other RPCR and FLNKS politicians prepared to cooperate with the RPCR.

The UC is hardening its stand in its belief that power-sharing arrangements set down in the 1998 Noumea Accord for greater autonomy for the territory are being diluted in favour of the RPCR at the cost of meaningful participation in government by the Kanaks.

Pierre Frogier (left)...could be back as leader of the territorial government come May 9 elections.

Racial and political tensions will continue to impede New Caledonia's movement towards a referendum on full independence from, or a continuing political relationship with France, just short of independence that the accord requires to be held between 2014 and 2018.

The RPCR overwhelmingly dominates the Southern province, where white, other Pacific Islanders and Asian residents are concentrated. It is so positioned to control much of the territory's nickel mining and smelting-based economy. The Northern and Loyalty islands provinces are underdeveloped Kanak pro-independence strongholds. In March, it became clear that the pro-independence FLNKS, the umbrella group covering several Kanak factions, would not contest elections under a common banner. Three of its four components will unite, leaving the fourth, Union Calédonienne (UC), to go it alone.

The three others‹PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party), UPM (Melanesian Progress Union) and RFO (the Wallisian-dominated Oceanian Democratic Rally)‹will campaign as one, according to their spokesperson, Victor Tutugoro, who speaks also for the FLNKS.

The split is influenced by long festering differences between UC and PALIKA. The two parties have diverging views on how to implement the Nouméa Accord.

PALIKA favours being part of local government institutions at the price of making concessions to anti-independence politicians. The more radical UC asserts that the accord has been hijacked by the anti-independence RPCR and is now ³drifting.² Meanwhile, surging world nickel prices are massively boosting New Caledonia's mining revenue.

There are bright prospects, although coming with a hint of possible trouble with local landowners for the opening of two huge new nickel projects, one planned by the INCO group of Canada at Goro, and the other at Koniambo, in the north of the main island, as a joint venture between another Canadian company, Falconbridge and the Kanak-owned Societe Miniere du Sud Pacifique. Local traditional Kanak leaders in the areas of the new mine sites say the developments will be welcomed and supported provided local cultural sensitivities and the environment are given protection and that the projects bring real economic benefits to landowners and communities affected by mining.

The value of exports last year rose by 24.3 percent over the 2002 figure to more than seventy billion Pacific Francs (about US$700 million), due to the steep climb of world nickel prices: from the US$3.26 a pound in December 2002 to US$6.42 twelve months later.

France has announced tax exemptions totalling US$1.2 billion for the two new mines. The French High Commissioner in Noumea, Daniel Constantine, said in January that the INCO mine at Goro, at the southern tip of the main island, could qualify for about US$650 million worth of exemptions.

Exemptions totalling US$630 million were also available for a mine and smelter proposed at Koniambo as a joint venture between Canada's Falconbridge and the Northern Province-owned company Société Minière du Sud Pacifique (SMSP), with SMSP as a 51 percent partner.

With the addition of another smelter to the plant operated at Noumea by the long established Société Le Nickel (SLN), New Caledonia's annual nickel output could reach 200,000 tonnes before the end of this decade.