Caledonian

Another

Mp Resigns

From a Noumea correspondent

A second Caledonian politician has resigned from the Territorial As sembly, expressing his despair at the lack of Caledonian control of their own territory. Mr Fredy Gosse resigned his seat at the end of May, shortly after the resignation of Georges Chatenay, explaining that he shared the same feeling of weariness and futility. Mr Gosse, a young busi ness agent, educated in France, was an autonomist breakaway from the Mouvement Liberal Caledonien and had spent almost two years in the assembly.

Giving his motives, Gosse claimed that for him autonomic meant de centralisation, to give more power locally, but not independence as most Europeans were made to fear. Gosse said that after all his efforts and sacrifice of family life for the Cale donian cause, his only result was to earn the label of “revolutionary” and “communist”.

He noted that locally everyone insisted that “things must change” but they refused to take the necessary action to bring about the change. He noted that he had also earned the label of being “ambitious”: he admitted he was ambitious for his country, but regretted that the powers of the Ter ritorial Assembly were rapidly shrink ing so that the assembly “no longer plays a driving role in this territory’s economy”. For himself, he had little interest in attending interminable debates on the insignificant subjects submitted to the assembly—subjects such as fixing the price of taro and yams.

And so the common French habit of in-fighting among ideological leaders, of name-calling to discredit those who make a disinterested appeal to enlightenment in face of heavily vested outside interests, has claimed another victim.

Fredy Gosse is succeeded in the House by Evenor de Greslan, of the Liberal Party. And as one autonomist newspaper pointed out, there goes “another Caledonian intellectual who the French administration has dis heartened to the point of making him resign . .

While the jostling for power con tinues, the latest party split has oc curred in the Union Multiraciale. This has not been the first rupture inside this predominantly Melanesian group,

and amid expulsions and breakaways, Mr Yann Celene Uregei continued as party leader.

A parliamentary delegation from Papua New Guinea was scheduled to visit Noumea mid-July as part of a South Pacific tour which will include Fiji, New Hebrides, Tonga, the Solo mons and Western Samoa. This will be the first such visit to New Cale donia. A PNG parliamentary con stitutional committee failed to receive permission from the French to visit the territory four years ago during a tour to study political structures in Pacific islands.

The July mission from PNG was preceded four weeks earlier by a further demand for internal self government voted by the New Cale donian Territorial Assembly by 17 to 15.

As far as Paris attitudes are con cerned, no change can be noted. The new French Minister for Overseas Territories, Mr Olivier Stirn, has been quoted by Tahiti politician Gaston Flosse as saying that he would go ahead with the study of new political statutes for French Polynesia. In Noumea, a visit is expected by the minister before the end of the year, probably after the French senate elections in September, when each ter ritory must elect a senator to Pans and autonomic is bound to be the vital issue.

French Air Crash

A French pilot and two engineering executives were killed in New Cale donia late June when the Cherokee Six plane in which they were crossing the island crashed in mountainous forest, evidently lost in cloud and mist. w Those killed were the pilot, Marc Levis, Rene Gastaud, company direc tor and Yvon Mottin, engineer, both of the CITRA civil engineering group.

Mr Gosse ... ambitious for his country.