New Hebrides run
p. 16 · Read in the full issue
around continues
From a Vila correspondent
When will the New Hebrideans grow weary of flying off to Paris, London and New York, trying to urge their country towards independence? Why can’t they resign their islands to the generous colonial administrators who want to look after them?
These are some of the questions the cynic must ask after leaders of the independence-seeking National Party sought help from the United Nations in New York and members of the South Pacific Forum as the condominium’s firstelected Representative Assembly still remained incomplete and ineffective in September.
The continuing problems surrounding the new assembly were highlighted by the July court decision to rule as void five of six seats from the November, 1975, elections in the electorates of rural and urban Santo. New elections for these seats were thus scheduled to be held by November, once a count of the island’s population could be held. Four of the candidates who lost their seats were National Party members Titus Path, Thomas Ruben, Mary Gilu and Philibert de Montgremier, besides MANH party member, Michel Thevenin.
Noumea’s anti-administration
weekly L’Unite Caledonienne was quick to blame the confused elec toral regulations for the New Hebrides situation. The paper saw the colonial strategy as being in tended to prevent the assembly from meeting as a complete body, and especially aimed at breaking the majority of the National Party.
The New Hebrides joint court actually ruled that some hundreds of votes were invalid due to the wording of a regulation to extend the date for registering voters. As soon as the court decision was known, the National Party sent a telegram to delegations at the South Pacific Forum meeting late July in Nauru, asking them to en dorse a declaration of "no con fidence” in the colonial ad ministration.
The National Party also urged Forum members’ support for its mission to the UN Committee for Decolonisation. One of the objec tives of the National Party is to call a referendum before the end of 1976. to have one of the two gover ning powers withdrawn from the New Hebrides, leaving only one to prepare the country for the desired independence. Members of the minority party UCNH also sent representatives to make its case at the UN.