Tahiti
pp. 12-13 · Read in the full issue
Letter
Everybody's nuclear sensitivity is rising
From James Boyack
FRANCE may conduct nuclear tests again at Mururoa atoll in the next couple of months. This is the feeling in Papeete even though French authorities are maintaining strict silence about their intentions. The word is that two, or at the most three, very low strength atmospheric tests could be conducted between June 1 and the end of July. French naval vessels known to be connected with the tests have begun to arrive in Papeete harbour, usually a sure sign that something is cooking.
What definitely is cooking is Pacific Basin pressure against the tests, and that pressure-cooker is threaten ing to explode. There are well-informed fears in Papeete that France plans to retaliate in kind to all boycotts and other test-related harassment. Sources in tourist circles believe that France will reply step by escalating step to the boycott of French airplanes and ships. Last year, UTA-French Airline’s planes were not serviced at several Pacific airports. The situation grew so bad in Fiji that UTA decided to overfly the Nadi airport. If similar harassment of French planes occurs this year, tourist sources believe Air New Zealand and Qantas planes will meet the same fate at Papeete. This tit-for-tat situation could escalate to the point where France temporarily suspends the landing rights of these two companies in Tahiti. Although this possibility is only a rumour, it is a rumour which received front-page headline play in the local newspaper Les Nouvelles, a pro-government daily here which usually reflects admini stration opinion.
The Papeete yacht community is also worried about the effect of protest yachts sailing from New Zealand to the test zone. Several such protest vessels have already begun the voyage to Mururoa and yachtsmen moored in Papeete are wondering if the French do not plan unprecedented restrictions to keep protesters out of Tahiti. The islands of French Polynesia have been a traditional haven for yachtsmen since the time of Captain Cook. The French have maintained this hos pitable attitude to yachtsmen, providing them with one of the least expensive, well-equipped anchorages in the Pacific. The fear is that visas will be shortened to force yachtsmen to get in and get out of Papeete in a hurry.
There is even a rumour that visas for yachtsmen will
no longer be delivered on the spot. Sailors may b required to apply for entrance here in a French cor sulate at their last port. This would be a way fc France to determine in advance possible politic: motives for the trip to Tahiti. Yachtsmen already i Papeete with no particular opinion about the tes would become innocent victims of the possible Franct gets-tough crackdown. Government spokesmen ha> refused to comment on these published rumours.
THERE is still considerable speculation in Papeete th; France plans to go underground with her tests ; the soonest possible moment. There is no question th; France is highly sensitive to Pacific protests about hi Mururoa programme. Les Nouvelles broke anothi interesting story, this one about where the undergrour series will be held. It reported that Fangataufa ato! 50 miles east of Mururoa, is being prepared for unde the-surface blasts. Les Nouvelles, quoting informe unofficial sources, said that France has determined th the Marquesas island of Eiao is too porous to penr underground explosions there. It said that a resean team discovered that the island is like a French past: with successive layers of varying densities. On the oth hand, Les Nouvelles said that these same scientists bon 600 metres through Fangataufa’s coral formations ai reached a solid basalt base in which nuclear explosio could occur.
It is a well-known fact that there has been a lot activity on Fangataufa in recent months. One explanatr for this activity was that France planned powerl atmospheric H-bomb tests there. The first Freni thermonuclear device was exploded on Fangataufa 1968. The island can handle the bigger blasts becau it has no permanent housing facilities, like Murum This theory was contradicted by the Nouvelles undi ground report.
Despite this new item that Fangataufa may the underground site, Eiao theorists have not be entirely swayed. There is too much evidence that E i is destined for the underground programme. In any cat I would not be surprised if and when this year’s snn tests take place above Mururoa, they are the II French atmospheric tests.
FRENCH Polynesia’s voters in March carved another edge to the local political prism when they returned I Francis Sanford to a second five-year term in the j National Assembly. Sanford’s victory over Gaullist I leader Gaston Flosse re-established an electoral majority jl which favours autonomie interne for French Polynesia, 1| was a vote for self-government short of independence.
J The balloting checked an apparent year-long swing to H the political right which culminated last September with I the election of a Gaullist majority in the Territorial I Assembly.
I Sanford collected just over 53 per cent of the vote, I but only in the second round of voting. He failed in I his predicted bid for a first-round victory and he was forced to swallow his promise to withdraw from the race if he did not win on the first go (PIM, March, p 7). That promise, which I reported exclusively in PIM, became a campaign issue between rounds. The Gaullist Tahitian Union party saw fit to translate my entire PIM report and publish the French version in each of the three local newspapers during the week prior to the second round. Sanford’s back-tracking ap parently did him no harm. As he pointed out in a press conference following the first vote, his 48.6 per cent score, if not the absolute majority necessary for im mediate victory, was a clear mandate for his autonomie interne programme. Runner-up Flosse in the first round had 12,487 votes to Sanford’s 17,205.
Centrist candidate Charles Taufa, with 5,660 votes, I was the first-round stumbling block in Sanford’s plans.
Taufa, whose contract with the Gaullists created the I new Territorial Assembly majority, chose not to back I his assembly partner in the second round. He told his ■ supporters to “vote their conscience”. Enough of them I did to make Sanford’s second round victory easy, I There was a festive atmosphere at Papeete City Hall the night Sanford won. A couple of thousand autono- I T tS u Sphered there to await results in the company of their leader. There was singing and guitar playing I 6 P r P"Sanford tide swelled. Both Sanford and Flosse I addressed the excited crowd. Flosse’s remarks were I greeted with boos and some shouted insults. As one autonomist leader remarked that night, “It’s a good I thing the bars are closed on election day. This crowd is hot enough as it is.” Flosse ducked out before a major incident occurred.
I Sanford was understandably ebullient as his re-elec |tion became certain. He told me, “The vote today clear y shows the determination of the Polynesian people for self-government. We only want autonomie unterne in the context of the French Republic, as I have said again and again. We do not want independence.
I consider this victory a great triumph for the true [Polynesians, and I hope that now the Metropolitan government will finally understand that it must take into consideration the battle we have waged for the past 20 years, and this, for the good of everyone, as much for France as for French Polynesia.”
Campaigns for French Polynesia’s seat in the Paris National Assembly are traditionally ideological battles.
Pro-autonomist candidates have never been defeated on this political terrain. The vote in March, however, [cannot be considered a landslide for the autonomists.
Rather it pointed out the slight majority favourable to the evolution of the political statute. That majority [seems to remain ambivalent, however. The fact that ? two candidates favourable to the status quo in the first round outpolled Sanford cannot be completely ignored.
But, as Sanford implied, Gaullist enthusiasts must not
make the mistake of believing the autonomist move ment somehow evaporated last year during the impres sive comeback of pro-Paris forces here.
Sanford’s victory was also important nationally. It gave the left-leaning Reformateurs in the National Assembly their 30th member, the number required to form an assembly “group”. In recognition of his con tribution to their political viability, the reform group elected Sanford its Vice-President.—Whew! No more politics to write about for a few years.
T'HE Pitcairn story (PIM, March, Tahiti Letter) has -I ended as suddenly as it began. The two navigators returned to Tahiti exactly one month after they left.
They got about 450 miles southeast of here almost to the atoll Nengo Nengo, before deciding to turn back.
The voyage was too much of a hassle for them. Pat Gotten and Martin Jeffrey became “fiu” (a Polynesian malady of disgust) beating their brains and bodies against wind and sea. The decision to give up came as 25-foot swells and 35 mph winds head-on tossed their 18-foot craft for a 48-hour period. Trying to beat against the wind with a storm jib proved im possible. After losing 20 miles in that two-day period they realised the absurdity of their effort. The craft, with a 2i foot draught, could not point into the wind.
Since the entire journey southeast to Pitcairn Island was to be against the southeast trades, the two saliors, in their own words “miserable, bouncing like a ping pong ball”, hightailed it with the wind back to Tahiti.
They had intended to run their yacht onto the rocks at Pitcairn. The flat keel was constructed for this purpose. Before returning they did get a chance to prove their flat keel theory. They surfed a 15-foot wave onto the reef at the deserted Motutunga atoll, where they rested four days. Once on the reef, they were able to push the vessel into the lagoon. They rode out of the lagoon through an eight-foot pass with the current. They also claimed to have become the first yacht in history to anchor inside the Anaa lagoon. They had a six-inch draught clearance through the shallow Anaa mini-pass.
They reported that they blew the islanders’ minds and were treated royally for their feat.
AND this final note: the welterweight champion of France, Robert Gallois, should have stayed home.
He ventured into the Pacific and got hit by a tornado called Pongi Lie. Lie, the welterweight champion of Tonga, a protege of former British Empire light-heavy weight champion Bob Dunlop, scored a fifth-round TKO in his bout with Gallois in Papee f e recently. He decked the French champ with a crushing, short, right-hand blow the Frenchman said he never saw, although Gallois claimed afterwards that he was fully conscious of the referee’s fingers keeping him informed of the mandatory eight count (he was up at four). Lie, the Tornado Kid, swarmed all over the Frenchman, ap parently hitting him at will. The referee saw fit to stop the fight at 2:35 of the round. Gallois, while in Tahiti before the fight, received word from the French boxing commission that he had been designated official chal lenger for the European welterweight championship.
Gallois was distraught after the fight. He said the ref should not have stopped it. “If 1 was gonna get knocked out, he shoulda let it happen.” • See "Pacific supremacy", a report from PlM's Noumea correspondent, p 27.