'divide and rule' plan

Communes for French Polynesia France presses on with 'divide and rule' plan

From a Papeete correspondent Despite strong opposition from the pro-autonomy majority co alition in French Polynesia’s Territorial Assembly, the French Government is pressing ahead with its plan to introduce a series of communes in French Polynesia, each of which would have its own budget and handle its own affairs.

The communes plan was announced by the French Minister for Over seas Territories, Mr. Henri Rey, during his visit to Tahiti in Sept ember.

It was during that visit, and after the announcement about the com munes, that the autonomists first raised the old flag of independent Tahiti to dramatise their demands for internal self-government in the territory ( PIM, Oct., p. 17), The autonomists, led by Mr.

Francis Sanford, the territory’s deputy in the French Parliament, have a majority of 18 of the 30 seats in the Territorial Assembly.

They see the communes plan as a scheme to draw some of the teeth from the Assembly itself and to avoid the self-government issue by the celebrated political device of divide and rule.

The conservative minority parties in the Assembly have also expressed some reservations about the com munes; and, as a result, the Assembly sent a combined deputation to Paris early in December to discuss the question with French parliament arians.

The French Chamber of Deputies was due to begin a debate on the communes question on December 18.

Meanwhile, French Polynesia’s Governor, Mr. Pierre Angeli, was making a tour of the territory’s Austral Islands—Rimatara, Rurutu, Tubuai, Raivavae and Rapa—in an effort to persuade the islanders to accept the communes plan.

After landing on Rimatara by helicopter from the French naval vessel Ranee, the Governor told the islanders that they were quite capable of managing their own affairs. He added: “It is neither normal nor just that there should be first-class citizens who have the right to elect a mayor and have a commune [as in parts of Tahiti and Raiatea] and that there should be second-class citizens who do not know that reform.

“Neither is it normal that you should have to count on the good will, great though it is, of the mem bers of the Territorial Assembly.

You should rely on yourselves.

“This is not a revolution we wish to make; it is only the normal evolution of things.”

The Governor and his message were reported to have been well received in all the Austral Islands, although Raivavae’s welcome was not as warm as elsewhere.