For Independence

Church Calls

The Presbyterian Church in the New Hebrides, which claims to repre sent more than half the population, has come out strongly on the side of the small but growing band of New Hebrideans clamouring for self government or independence.

New Hebridean Viewpoints re ported that the church’s General Assembly, meeting at Tanna, issued a statement headed “The Presbyterian Church’s declaration of its conviction concerning independence” and de claring that it “confidently looks to wards the goal of responsible self government of the New Hebrides people as a nation”.

The statement added, “We see the British, French and Condominium administrations as partners with us as together we move towards this goal”.

The assembly asked the South Pacific Commission and the United Nations Organisation to co-operate with the New Hebrides administra tions “in achieving self-government without delay, without violence and with due preparation of our people for the duties, functions, rights and responsibilities of independent gov ernment”.

G. Leymang, writer in the maga zine Nakamal, formerly a bi-monthly magazine and now a weekly, went further.

“The condominium is getting into a deadlock,” he wrote. “Are New Hebrideans going to wait until a John Frum cries ’freedom and inde pendence for the New Hebrides’ and rises the English in revolt against the French or vice-versa? In short, the New Hebrides Condominium is slowly but surely disintegrating and being suffocated by its infantile colonial attitude: the condominium is a two-headed monster”.