Tahiti

Letter

Paris consolidates political gains

From James Boyack

The man in charge of French overseas territories paid a 10-day official visit to his Polynesian domain at the end of the year and wrote the final verses in a unique chapter of colonial history.

He also allowed to surface more evidence that France may plan un derground nuclear tests in the Mar quesas Islands.

Officially, the visit of Mr Xavier Deniau, State Secretary for Overseas Departments and Territories, was an inspection-cum-promotional tour of the 44 new “communes” or munici palities created in French Polynesia by the Paris Parliament on December 24, 1971. In the context of the year’s political swing to the right, however, Mr Deniau’s tour was France’s way of congratulating the local citizenry for its clairvoyant affirmation that Polynesia is truly French. With the Kudos, Secretary Deniau also brought a basket of assurance (readdoot) for the bright future the republic intends for its French Polynesian brethren.

It’s worth a retrospective look at Tahiti’s political year to understand the ministers’ visit. During the year, political tides changed direction in mid-stream.

A democratically-elected Territorial Assembly favoured full self-govern ment short of independence, and the horizon was darkened during the first months of the year by a hand ful of would-be revolutionary anarchists, who imagined that violence could free Tahiti of French authority.

If nothing else, these naive revolu tionaries managed to stimulate a general case of social jitters. Twice they successfully broke into an army munitions depot and carted away potentially dangerous explosives, Al

though their ineptitude earned them a brief revolutionary career, once captured, their continued antics kept the authorities on the run. They es caped from jail several times, be fore and after they had led a prison riot which left Tahiti’s ultra-modern penal facility in a shambles.

Simultaneously, the autonomist as sembly was attacking Paris centralism and nuclear tests on every occasion, and a pseudo-guerrilla band was de manding action instead of talk. Al though the autonomist politicians at first suffered great pains to dissociate themselves from the munitions thieves, they eventually drew a logical con clusion: The thieves were the first concrete signs of a deep political malaise threatening social harmony.

The elements of change seemed to be coalescing. A splinter left was whipping the moderately progressive assembly towards more radical politics. The French appeared in trouble.

The opposite was true. The muni tions thieves managed only to make many people uptight. And the autono mists, with their hard talk, only magnified the impotence and irrele vance of their expiring five-year man date.

A backlash had begun. The political sensibility of the territory was secretly recoiling. This re-en trenchment behind the barricades of Paris-guaranteed stability became evident, although not fully clear, in early July when the communal elections were held.

The communal reform was far reaching, and genuinely desirable.

Those in Paris who constructed the communal reform and those poli ticians here who accepted it under

stood its relevance for the territory.

There was no doubt that there was a desire for increased political auto nomy from France. It was also evident that the autonomist assembly was incapable of negotiating new powers for the territory (whether or not the fault was theirs).

In any case, they were elected from islands scattered over an area the size of Europe, yet they conceived of autonomy as legislative power cen tralised in their hands at Papeete.

They thought to exchange one cen tralism for another.

The desire for autonomy which elected them, however, was founded in the smaller, insular world. Com munalisation, as Secretary Deniau told the local assembly during a special session in his honour, “offered the richest future for the democratic management of local affairs and for a vigorous development, from the base up, of the economic and social interests of the people”. Communali sation also, as he said, “alone has allowed an answer to the need for a true internal decentralisation for which your predecessors (the autono mists) vainly sought a method”.

Inherent in the communal reform was the simple fact of the multiple geographic and cultural identities which is French Polynesia. Life is qualitatively different on a Tuamotu atoll than in a valley on Raiatea. The Marquesans think and talk differently than the Austral Islanders. The in terests of jet-port capital Tahiti differ from those of Mangareva.

The reform intended that each segment of Polynesia determine the course of its own affairs, without excessive interference from the pork barrelling Papeete political cartel.

Although complete French Poly nesian motives for suddenly rejecting autonomie interne in September re main partially obscured to me as an outsider, I believe the communal re form mid-year was a distinct turning point. It is a fact that more than half of the well-known autonomists seeking communal power were de feated, while five of the six terri torially-known pro-French politicians gained election. The most outspoken autonomist of all, Pouvanaa A Oopa, was rejected in his place of birth, Huahine.

Communal power thus became a grass-roots base on which the Paris oriented parties built their indisput able victory in September’s Terri torial Assembly election.

Secretary Deniau, appropriately then, made his recent visit to Tahiti to celebrate these “communes” and to give guarantees that the muni cipalities would function as promised.

The one obstacle to the reform’s fruition was the lack of self-generated funds. Among the many commitments he made while here, for the first time he pledged Paris coffers to com munal fiscality.

In my opinion, the most important result of his visit was the understand ing of communalisation. Although the electorate obviously sensed the im pact of the communes through the first six months of their incipience, the minister’s visit, as blanket radio, tele vision and press coverage made clear, was a municipal management seminar and a demonstration of the people’s extended franchise. One of the minis ter’s advisers told me, “Deniau is not just giving away money at random.

This trip is calculated and intentional.

He is giving the new mayors their first lesson in how to manage a budget and to choose priorities. He is forcing them to witness government in action and to play their role in the new administrative system.”

I was impressed by the effectiveness of this game-plan on the Austral island of Tubuai. The scene I witnes sed there was repeated in front of 40 of the 44 new mayors.

Deniau also visited Raiatea, Bora Bora and Rangiroa, where he met the city councils of the Leeward and Tuamotu Islands. In Tahiti, the secretary encountered all the Tahitian mayors, as well as the representatives of the Marquesan communes.

The results of the Tubuai jaunt may provide the best gauge of the success of Deniau’s self-declared non political visit. The Austral Islands, the most agriculturally productive and therefore self-sufficient of the French Polynesian grouping, have always voted firmly autonomist (both Terri

torial Assemblymen elected in Sep tember espoused autonomy, although, since, Madame Tara Lenoir has changed sides). The people are not easy to please. It suffices to recall that the Bounty mutineers were forced by local hostility to flee Tubuai in 1789.

Yet, as was the case everywhere he went, the minister was greeted with authentic warmth in Tubuai by the entire assembled population. Bare backed horsemen, naked except for a pareo loin cloth, danced their steeds alongside the motley ministerial motorcade which was assembled with almost every four-wheel vehicle on the island. Each bronze cavalier car ried a large tri-couleur and wore a flower crown. Most of the population of about 1,000 was on hand. All the islands children seemed present, each with a paper French flag.

Then the speeches. Deniau explained the “administrative revolution” which was communalisation; then it was Tubuai Mayor Flores’ turn to speak.

The mayor had won election on a rabidly autonomist platform. He out lined the main problems of the Aust rals and he concluded his speech with words that sum up for me the new relationship between the central power and the far flung communities of French Polynesia. He said, “So that Tubuai lives, so that the Australs live, long live France, and long live French Polynesia!”

The “work session” came next. All officials present retired to the adjacent community meeting house. The mini ster sat facing the others. He was behind a table in the front of the room with pencil and paper in hand.

On his right was Gaullist Assembly President Gaston Flosse, to the left, Governor Pierre Angeli.

Next to the governor, was the entire five-member Government Council. About 30 communal repre sentatives sat on rough benches.

They fidgeted, their European suits uncomfortably harnessing their mus cular oceanic bodies.

One at a time, the mayors rose to announce their priorities, ie, to grab off some loot. Tara Lenoir got au thority to purchase an inter-island schooner to link the hopelessly-iso lated Australs. But Madame Tara gave in to the minister’s insistence that she accept only enough money to buy materials for a Rimatara City Hall, and the structure itself be built for free. “We must work together, that’s why we’re all here.” the mini ster explained.

Time and again during his Poly nesian sojourn, Secretary Deniau stres sed the solidarity between the com munes and the state through the in

termediary of the Territorial Assembly and the Government Council. This solidarity was evidenced during the Tubuai work session.

The mayor of Rurutu asked that the inter-island schooner be equipped with an X-ray machine. Deniau mum bled something to Governor Angeli, who consulted the Government Coun cil, which in turn officially asked Assembly President Flosse if terri torial funds were available for the machine. Thus on the island of Tubuai, the state (minister and governor) had proposed an expenditure to the local executive (Government Council), which followed the constitutional pro cedure of requesting funds from Terri torial Assembly (whose majority Flosse controls). The wheels of government had turned for all to see. The mayors had been given an improvised demonstration of how the three levels of local government respond to communal needs.

The minister distributed about $A40,000 for pressing communal projects in the Australs. All told, he left behind about $300,000. This was supplementary to the communal budget for 1973 estimated at $7.36 million, about 20 per cent of the territory’s spending power, a sum which will be transferred directly to the Inter-Communal Fund for redistribution to the communes. The assembly will have no control, as in the past, over this communal spending.

The archipelago to receive the largest ministerial donation was the Marquesas. It received about $140,000 for the following apparent reason.

Journalists, gathering at the governor’s mansion for a banquet with the minister and Marquesas mayors, were rounded up in the salon to catch the final part of the minister’s work session with those mayors. They were told an import ant declaration would be made. That declaration made implicit to me that France is now almost sure it will conduct underground nuclear tests in the Marquesas.

The declaration was made by Guy Rauzy, the centrist assemblyman from the Marquesas. He spoke for all the Marquesan mayors gathered under the governor’s dining room chandeliers. Rauzy said that no matter what political evolution occurs in other archipelagos, the Marquesas will never choose greater political autonomy than that offered by the communal reform. If it were necessary, he said, the Catholic Marquesas would demand the free dom to remain French.

The mayor of Nuku Hiva (the

island closest to Eiao, the speculatec test site) had already asked the mini ster to urge the Pacific Experiment Centre (CEP) to build a 3,000 metn airstrip (it handles jets) for his Mar quesan capital, and Counsello Rauzy, mentioning that $2.8 millioi would be required for the project seconded the motion for “the socia benefits” it would bring the Mar quesas.

He said the mayors unanimousl; desired a CEP presence; they wantei CEP bulldozers and money. And h said, “We want the CEP; if securit conditions can be assured us” ( quote I missed but which was re ported in the Gaullist-orientC' Papeete newspaper Les Nouvelles I button-holed Mr Rauzy after th meeting and asked him if he kne 1 what the CEP intended for hi islands. He said he did not. H mentioned, however, that two week previously, a top French general an staff made a tour of Nuku Hiva an Eiao. He also said that the CEP ha already begun a census in the Mai quesas to determine the size of th on-the-spot work force.

Secretary Deniau did not ignore th territory’s most critical problems—a usual, money. A Gaullist assembl mission immediately after election ha sped to Paris for help for a projeote budget deficit of 1A3.15 millio for 1973. The State Secretary no 1 pulled exactly that figure out of h fiscal hat, partly as a handout an partly as an increase in the annu: CEP customs duty forfeit.

In the assembly, Gaullist supe star Gaston Flosse did not mince h words of thanks. He said French ai for the moment had permitted Frenc Polynesia the wherewithal “to su mount the present crisis and to ei vision the future with less anguish”.

But he set all this Franco-Poh nesia euphoria in sharp perspectn when he characterised the new pr< Paris legislative mandate as that ( “the last chance”. He meant th: Gaullists & Co have five years i which to bury the autonomist mov. ment under a mass of concrete ecu nomic and social achievement.

Secretary Deniau’s visit, perhaps tl most significant by a French offici in local history, indicates that Fran< today is ready to finance Preside!

Flosse’s challenge.

But for how long can this go on'.

And for that matter (in view ( the historic Socialist-Communist coal tion challenge to Gaullism in the u coming March Parliamentary ele tions), what would happen to Frenc Polynesia if the present Frenc government lost the purse strings.