Question of credibilityįrance has deployed a boosted security contingent to oversee the referendum. The pro-independence parties say that the acute rise in COVID-19 cases this year, culminating in lockdown restrictions in September and October, and the time needed for traditional mourning rites for the dead among the Kanak community, has severely handicapped their ability to prepare for the vote.
Supported by Pacific Island nations they had called for the vote to be held late next year. The Indigenous community wanted the referendum delayed because of the severe effects of COVID-19 īut the French government’s decision to hold the last referendum this month in order to avoid the French presidential and parliamentary elections next year has angered independence parties. We must create together – separatists and non-separatists – the conditions for a New Caledonia freed from consultations on independence.” French President Emmanuel Macron and French Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu meet senior representatives from New Caledonia in Paris in June. Pro-France supporters narrowly won the first and second referendums, claiming 56.7 percent and 53.3 percent of the votes respectively.Īhead of the third vote, Philippe Gomès, leader of the loyalist Caledonia Together party, declared in an interview with the local newspaper, Les Nouvelles Caledoniennes: “The real debate is: how do we revisit the link to France? New Caledonians are tired of living with the exercise of the right to self-determination. It was granted the right to three referendums on its future political status in the 1998 Noumea Accord, an agreement between French and territorial leaders that aimed to address political and socioeconomic grievances among the Indigenous islanders, known as Kanaks, and give New Caledonia more autonomy. New Caledonia, a former French colony and now an overseas territory with enhanced autonomy, lies in the South Pacific, a near three-hour flight east of Australia. “Even if France has favoured for many decades the immigration of a population mainly from Europe and the Pacific territories under its tutelage to make the Kanak people a minority in their country.” “We have asked our activists and members not to hinder this election so that it can take place and, thus, show that we are not opposed to the democratic system,” Victor Tutugoro, spokesperson for New Caledonia’s Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), a member of the broad separatist coalition known as the Independence Strategic Committee, told Al Jazeera. The independence movement saw incremental gains in the two previous referendums on independence from France, which were held in 20.īut the decision of its major parties to boycott the final referendum has stoked discord ahead of the December 12 vote. Voters go to the polls in New Caledonia on Sunday in the third and final referendum on independence for the French-ruled Pacific territory.