Last Tuesday, presenting the political programme of his new government before parliament, French Prime Minister Michel Barnier included his plans for dealing with the crisis that has gripped France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia since May, which has left 13 people dead in the worst clashes in 40 years, and spoke of his intention to involve himself “personally” in the problem.
Barnier announced that a reform of the electoral register in New Caledonia, a move driven earlier this year by President Emmanuel Macron and his then interior minister Gérald Darmanin and which lit the fuse of protests by many among the archipelago’s indigenous Kanak people, would no longer be subject, as previously announced by Macron, to a vote of all parliamentarians as needed to inscribe it into the constitution.
Macron’s reform of the electoral register would undo one of the most important measures in the process of the decolonisation of the archipelago, and weaken the electoral clout of the pro-independence movement of the Kanak population.
Until now, under the terms that emerged from the so-called Nouméa Accord negotiated principally between the French government and Kanak representatives, those entitled to vote in the provincial elections were restricted to people who were resident adults in 1998, and their children. This was to give a greater political representation to the Kanak people, who have become a minority of the overall population – which today totals 271,000 – since France annexed the archipelago in 1853 and the subsequent arrival of settlers of European (and mostly French) origin.
The reform driven by Macron would allow those adults who have been resident in New Caledonia for ten years or more to vote in provincial elections in the archipelago, which are due to be held by mid-December – and which Barnier also announced were to be postponed.
Approved by the French parliament in May, what is a constitutional reform needed to be approved by a special congress, held by tradition in Versailles, of both the lower and upper houses. Importantly, the composition of the more powerful lower house, the National Assembly, has changed dramatically since the hung parliament that resulted in June from snap parliamentary elections called by Macron.
For those with good knowledge of the New Caledonia events, the idea of cancelling the special congress is no surprise given that the reform would certainly not now obtain a minimum majority of three-fifths of the votes by MPs and senators as required by the constitution.
Barnier’s comments on October 1st caused angry reaction among the “Loyalist” coalition in New Caledonia, made up of mostly French settlers who are anti-independence and in favour of remaining under the rule of Paris.
The Loyalists are led by Sonia Backès, a former French government junior minister and president of the council of New Caledonia’s South province, who has proposed dividing the archipelago in two, with what she called a “Western” (French-ruled) part in the south and a Kanak-run part in the north.
While the Kanaks represent 41% of the population of New Caledonia, they are a majority in the poorer northern province of Grande Terre, the largest island, and the Loyalty Island province. The “Caldoches”, as the settlers are called, are concentrated in the economically dominant southern province of Grande-Terre, where the capital Nouméa is situated.
For the Loyalists, Barnier’s announcement that effectively cancelled the proposed electoral reform was, they said in a statement, a manner of “giving in to those who organised the violence” of the recent unrest, “while showing contempt for the fundamental rights of Caledonians excluded from the electoral register”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Present in the National Assembly as Barnier presented his government’s programme was Nicolas Metzdorf, Member of Parliament (MP) for a constituency in New Caledonia, and who immediately expressed his anger. A Loyalist, he is part of the Ensemble pour la République parliamentary coalition of centre-right parties, of which the largest is Macron’s Renaissance party, and he was the rapporteur for the legislation to reform the electoral register. “I learnt in the programme presentation that the Versailles Congress won’t be called,” he told Mediapart. “Nobody spoke to me about that beforehand, whereas I’d met Michel Barnier’s team a few days earlier, and I saw the president the same day.”
Following Barnier’s address before parliament, Metzdorf was back in touch with the presidential office, the Élysée Palace, while expressing his anger to the press and taking to social media platform X to announce that, “At my level, a no-confidence vote against Michel Barnier’s government is for consideration”. Metzdorf said he repeated the same to Macron that evening. Speaking on public radio station France Info, he said: “I found a president who was surprised by Michel Barnier’s announcement.” He later told Mediapart: “I don’t think he was aware [of Barnier’s move beforehand]. There was a lack of coordination.”
When Barnier suddenly changed tack
The day after he addressed the lower house, Barnier visited the upper house, the Senate, to present it in turn with his government’s policy programme. When he got to the subject of New Caledonia, the French prime minister had changed his tack. While underlining the state’s “commitment to face up to the economic and social urgency”, he made no mention of the Versailles Congress, nor the postponement of the provincial elections he had announced in the National Assembly.
But he did speak at length about the mission led jointly by the Senate’s president, Gérard Larcher, leader of the conservative Les Républicains party senators, and his opposite number in the National Assembly, Macronist speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet.
“Apart from the economic and social issues, what should be broached are the organisation and responsibilities of local authorities, the composition of the electorate and its enlargement for the next provincial elections, as well as other questions of an institutional nature,” said Barnier.
Questioned by Mediapart about the change in tone and substance on the subject of New Caledonia, the prime minister’s office said only that Barnier “had simply completed” what he had to say. While the Élysée declined to comment on the issue, several sources within the presidential office confirmed off the record what Metzdorf had said publicly, namely that Macron had been taken by surprise by his prime minister’s comments and that only the French president has power over the organisation of the Versailles Congress.
Behind the problem of Barnier’s “method”, as some have criticised him for, it is above all that of Macron which poses a problem. The French president does not want to allow his prime minister to take charge of the issue of New Caledonia, however much Macron has lost his way during the recent events. He has so stubbornly stuck to his fateful policies towards the archipelago over recent months that he is now incapable of clearing the deck and of recognising his responsibility in the fiasco.
That responsibility is immense, as most of those who have been closely involved in French policy towards New Caledonia over the past 30 years agree. Very early on, he chose to end the impartiality shown by the French state which was key to the process of decolonisation of the archipelago. He fully aligned himself with the Loyalist camp, to the point of appointing one of its leaders to a government post, while imposing his vision upon the pro-independence camp.
If the draft constitutional legislation for electoral reform is not submitted to a vote of both houses of parliament at a Versailles Congress, as Barnier also confirmed in writing on October 1st to the Kanak pro-independence MP Emmanuel Tjibaou (son of the assassinated Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou), the enlargement of the electoral register remains a priority for the president.
Barnier’s U-turn pleased the Loyalist camp and put the pro-independence camp on their guard. “What’s important for us is that the question of enlarging the electoral register is [made] a political objective,” said Nicolas Metzdorf who, since last Tuesday, has announced he now won’t vote against the government. Meanwhile, Kanak senator Robert Wienie Xowie observed: “The prime minister has simply said that the Versailles Congress won’t be convened. We take note of that, which doesn’t mean that the project [of enlarging the electoral register] won’t be brought back on course.”
During the session of questions to the government in the National Assembly on Wednesday, MP Emmanuel Tjibaou expressed the hope that the announcements made by Barnier “sounds the knell for the method” adopted by his predecessors. “That method raised threats of the destabilisation of the continuation of the process of decolonisation and peace that we have led together for the past thirty years,” he added, to applause from the members of the Democratic and Republican Left parliamentary group to which he belongs.
By way of an answer, Barnier carefully cited Macron on the most sensitive issue. “In agreement with the French president, we will also take the time to restudy the question of the electoral register,” he said, before moving the subject on to the mission headed by Gérard Larcher and Yaël Braun-Pivet, whose members, added the latter, be travelling to New Caledonia in the coming weeks.
It took less than 24 hours for the French prime minister to understand that he had been walking a perilous narrow line on the subject of New Caledonia. Because, in order, as he put it, “to find the path of pacification and an institutional and political solution in New Caledonia”, he will have no other choice than to do away with the disastrous strategy employed by the French president, who refuses to recognise his errors, and who continues, from within the Élysée, to impose his views and emit his calls to order.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse