We Say 2

Current events in French Polynesia and New Caledonia are of significance to the region. Mr Gaston Flosse, the industrious President of French Polynesia, has just succeeded in persuading France to finally agree to the territory being called a country, a sort of country, and treated by it as somewhat of such.

The territorial government has been granted more powers of self-government, including the ability to open overseas missions, although not diplomatic missions, as Mr Flosse will personally regard them, and power, to an extent, to regulate inward migration from Europe by people not of local extraction.

Mr Flosse has his critics, but whatever they may say about his qualities, he reigns supreme as the most powerful politician in French Polynesia and he gets things done.

Over the years he has pushed France for more and more autonomy. He is intent on pushing for this almost to the brink of independence while insisting that the territory will remain part of France and thus the continuing recipient of tens of millions of dollars worth of support that France now resignedly pours into it annually.

He plays this game with skill, although he will be less successful in doing so when comes the day that his very good personal friend, Jacques Chirac, President of France, retires from power.

Locally, the French High Commissioner in Papeete remains the ultimate power in the territory, but in his frequent travels around the Pacific Islands by executive jet, Mr Flosse leaves no doubt that he regards himself as France¹s number one kingpin in the Pacific, and thus a key instrument for the preservation of France¹s important presence in the region.

His ambition for French Polynesia, which he prefers to call Tahiti Nui, is a full membership of the Pacific Islands Forum of 16 mostly fully independent states. So far, that has not been met since unlike the case with New Caledonia, which has observer status at Forum meetings, the territory is not clearly on the road to probable independence. That is the criteria for observer status and Mr Flosse is anti-independence.

It will be no surprise if Mr Flosse opens a Tahiti Nui mission at Suva, where the Forum is located, in pursuit of his Forum ambitions. There are hints now, as he pushes French Polynesia to the brink of ninety-something percent independent Tahiti Nui, that the Forum is starting to lean towards accommodating him.

New Caledonia¹s impending May elections for a new territorial Congress (parliament) will return the anti-independence white settler party to power as leader of a government in which factions of the pro-independence indigenous Kanak political movement will be a restless minority.

The likelihood of a massive expansion of its nickel mining and smelting industry, boosted by local and Canadian investments of nearly US$3000 million, and tourism, fishing, agriculture, aquaculture, and perhaps other mining possibilities, offer New Caledonia the real possibility of eventual economic independence from France.

Between 2014 and 2018, a referendum on the issue is due to be held. But the Kanaks, who once were relatively united, have splintered politically. One faction is becoming steadily more restless about what it says is its politically subservient position that anti-independence politicians are intent on keeping the Kanaks in.

This does not bode well for continuing peace in New Caledonia where, in the 1980s, Kanaks and white settlers engaged in what was practically a civil war, with a number of deaths on both sides.

The hope is that the new mining ventures will spread wealth from the white settler dominated South, where it is concentrated, to the Kanak dominated Central and Northern regions, with a great socially and politically stabilising impact. The political mood could however deteriorate and again upset the apple cart.