Tahiti

Polynesians learn realities of political power

Letter

From James Boyack

TERRITORIAL Assembly antics kept French Poly nesia’s newly elected legislative body in the head lines during the month of November. The new pro-Paris majority gave several demonstrations of how the glove of power, when it changes hands, fits as tightly for one political tendency as for another. The autonomist minority had less success adapting itself to the require ments of its new role. Techniques of opposition to an irreversible assembly majority (at least for the present), worked out during the past five years by those who now dictate assembly policy, did not serve the autonomists in the first legislative meetings. In fact, inept opposition tactics cost the autonomists one more assembly seat.

Take the copra subsidy debate early in the month.

The Gaullist-oriented majority had decided to free 76 million CFP (roughly SA800,000) from the 1972 equip ment budget to support the price of copra. Their logic was that infrastructural projects in the outer islands could be postponed until next year. It was more im portant to pay the islanders for their copra output to December 31 (copra, in most cases, being their sole source of income).

Perhaps because the majority blamed the previous assembly for part of the existing deficit (the remainder of the deficit will result from an estimated 3,000 ton over-production this year—lB,ooo tons in ’72 compared to 15,000 last year), the autonomists chose to argue against renewed subsidy. Which they did for almost two hours, in contradiction of precedents they them selves set. The opposition demanded that the Gaullists fulfil their campaign pledge to completely restructure the copra oil refinery accords with the government (the way in which this dying export product receives arti ficial respiration here is perhaps the most controversial political hot-potato outside the debate on self government).

When sarcasm and other manner of verbal assault failed to upset the majority resolve to vote the subsidy, the autonomists decided to walk out of the assembly session, thereby postponing it for lack of a quorum.

To accomplish this they needed the counsellor from Bora Bora, “Toro” Teriirere, on their withdrawing team. “Toro”, a sometimes autonomist (he voted with the previous assembly’s autonomist majority), refused to budge. The session continued, without the minority, and a subsidy vote passed.

Madame Tara Lenoir, elected on the Austral Islands autonomist “Pupu Here Ai’a” ticket with Pierre Hunter, left the chamber reluctantly. That she was not being allowed to follow her political conscience on this occa sion may have been the straw which broke her camel’s back.

AT the beginning of the session, her autonomist col leagues were aghast to find that she had been nominated to one of the assembly’s commissions.

During the very first assembly session in October, the

minority en masse decided to refuse interior assembly posts unless these were attributed in proportion to the number of assembly seats they held. John Teariki, Madame Lenoir’s party leader, demanded a suspension of the session to interview Madame Lenoir on her apparent defection from minority policy. This closed door meeting was reportedly very stormy. The lady counsellor, who two weeks before publicly declared that she might vote with the majority on questions directly related to the welfare of the Austral Islanders, was not happy with the disrespectful manner in which she was called to order by her political boss, Teariki.

All the same, when she returned to the assembly hall, she announced that she was withdrawing her candidacy for the commission post. She said, “I admit 1 had accepted this nomination, but now I must decline it.

But . . . there is a but ...” A woman’s but, it turned out, is no small thing.

She butted right into counsellor Hunter moments later with a resolution calling for an investigation of the Austral Island Transport Company. She recalled that Hunter, during the previous legislature, was not only responsible for the company’s creation, he ob tained a 15 million CFP subsidy from the assembly to purchase the company’s sole asset, the inter-island schooner Tuhaa Pae. Madame Lenoir charged that the company had failed to fulfil its moral obligation to the Austral Islands. She demanded an investigation of the company’s books, and a State take-over in case of shinanigans.

When the assemblymen returned from their lunch break (the minority having decided to cease its ineffec tive boycott), Madame Lenoir had made up her mind.

She submitted her letter of resignation to the “Here Ai’a” and announced that she was becoming the sixth member of Charles Taufa’s group of independents.

Which means the assembly majority picked up an other vote for a total of 17. The autonomists hold 12 sure seats. “Toro” persists in abstaining on almost every vote that does not directly concern the islands he represents. I have the feeling his neutral position will change, however. He shares with Madame Lenoir the opinion that he was elected “to work”, as he says.

I talked to him on Bora Bora a couple of weeks ago (in his non-assembly hours, he is the Air Polynesie agent on that island) and he seemed to tell me that

within six months or a year he would be “working” effectively with the majority. I wonder to what extent it is a coincidence, for example, that the circle island road on Bora Bora is pot-holed, that it has not had a resurfacing in five years, and that major repairs on the road began last week.

ALTHOUGH more than two months have passed since the pro-Paris parties unseated the auto nomists in the Territorial Assembly, people are still talking about why. Every single analysis I have heard includes the simple reason of French money. The stuff is abundant and it is the cornerstone of the economy.

Tourism, the only viable industry, is a peanut in com parison to the walnut of direct and indirect French government and military subsidies. The new majority immediately needs 300 million CEP to overcome what Governor Pierre Angeli, in his inaugural message to the assembly, predicted would be the 1973 budget deficit.

The majority wasted no time in its search for these extra funds. A special delegation, headed by Assembly President Gaston Flosse (UT-UDR), flew to Paris a few weeks ago to ferret out the supplementary monies.

It met with many top French officials, not the least of whom was Prime Minister Pierre Messmer.

Upon return to Papeete, Frantz Vanizette, delegation spokesman, was happy to announce the money had been found. About 172 million would be subtracted from territorial budgetary obligations toward civil service employees. Paris will pay these people, most of whom are Polynesians, directly. Another 150 million, very significantly, will come out of the French military pocket. It happens that the CEP, the atomic test group, pays a custom forfeit to the territorial government.

This forfeit, which eliminates tons of paper work, is negotiated every three years based on estimated military imports for the following three.

The current agreement expires at the end of this month. It is a badly kept secret that France would like to conduct underground tests in French Polynesia within the next three years. To do so, a lot of new equipment would have to be imported. This, together with rising world prices of goods and freight, con veniently will oblige the CEP to increase its forfeit by just about the amount the territory needs to cover the expected deficit.

The mechanics of the CEP’s determinant role in the local economy are no mystery. The military gives jobs to Polynesians and pays high salaries to the thousands of Metropolitan military and civilian people who work for it. Everyone spends military money.

It is therefore quite realistic to conclude that the recent election was a vote of confidence for a continued CEP presence here (although it could not be said it was a vote specifically in favour of nuclear tests). Both of the majority parties, in fact, made clear in the cam paign that they favoured a continuation of this pre sence, which, at least until a natural economy is created, is absolutely indispensable to the standard of living the French Polynesians now enjoy.

T REPORTED last month that France may conduct -*■ underground nuclear tests on the Marquesan island of Eiao. French Defence Minister Michel Debre re cently announced that France intended to go under ground with her tests at the soonest possible moment.

Officially, French Polynesia is not concerned by the minister’s pronouncement.

Unofficially, glaring evidence is piling up in Papeete that France would like to conduct those tests some where in these parts.

It is common knowledge now in Tahiti’s capital that hundreds of workers are doing something on Eiao.

According to unconfirmed rumours as numerous as flowers around here, there is a 200 yard tunnel which leads from the ocean toward the core of the island.

Foreign legionaires are digging the horizontal shaft as fast as they can.

France has already conducted underground tests in the Sahara, so the technology of such experiments is no secret to her. How underground tests work, accord ing to someone who apparently knows, involves two tunnels. One, like that which is allegedly abuilding, drives straight under the mountain. Another branches out in narrowing circles like a snail’s shell, curving towards a central cavern where the nuclear device is exploded. The horizontal tunnel contains instruments which measure the strength and quality of the explo sion.

I emphasise that this information is only part of the incredibly loquacious local coconut radio/rumour mill, which contains as many contradictions as affirma tions. For example, one trend of speculation indicates that Eiao will be used as a nuclear submarine base. The two theories are that this will happen immediately, or that the island will be transformed, after tests, into a submarine base.

What appears certain is that a final decision on Eiao’s eventual use has not yet been made. It is a CEP con firmed fact, however, that government geologists are studying the island for some reason or another.

The Eiao test theory seems credible when linked with other speculation that work has begun, or shortly will begin, on the construction of an international air port on the island closest to Eiao, Nuku Hiva, which is 60 miles to the south-east.

It could be that underground tests will be conducted elsewhere in French Polynesia, either on one of the isolated Gambier Islands or on the Mururoa atmospheric test atoll.

The most incredible thing I have heard, from sources that might be in a position to know, is that France next year will explode her biggest H-bomb underground on Mururoa. The thermonuclear device would be in the two to five megaton range (France has already tested slightly more than two megatons in the atmosphere over Mururoa). These theorists recall that the CEP has officially announced that work on underground caverns on Mururoa has been under way at least since the beginning of the year. The official reason for these caverns was that men and material will remain on the island at blast-time, instead of going to sea in the large fleet which gathers at Mururoa during each test period.

My Mururoa underground opinionators told me that most atolls are V-shaped, coming to a conical point tens of thousands of feet below the lagoon. They said that Mururoa has the opposite shape, widening at the base. They said caverns 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep would house the exploding devices.

I personally believe neither the Eiao nor the Mururoa theories completely, yet, in view of Minister Debre’s promise of underground tests, in view of extreme French sensitivity to Pacific basin protests against atmos pheric tests (yes, that’s right, the French are very concerned about these protests), in view of the fact the CEP and French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) are comfortably and expensively installed in French Polynesia, in view of the absence of alternative test sites in the French Republic, and in view of the many-shaped rumours abundant here, I will not be surprised by whatever happens.