Spring Frolics And

Graffiti In Noumea

From a Noumea correspondent

New Caledonia this year celebrated 123 years of French rule against a colourful background of red-painted wall slogans and tee-shirts depicting the island’s latest $1 million businessman’s collapse. These were curious reflections of the current hostility over French moves to tighten hold on the vulnerable nickel territory, gripped by severe economic recession with increasing unemploy ment and companies going into receivership.

September 24, the holiday celebrating New Caledonia’s attach ment to France in 1853, became the highlight of almost a month-long series of spring festivities on the island. From the Carnaval in Noumea’s streets to the 12-day Tour cycliste bicycle race around the island, the Caledonians had plenty to distract them from their political and economic problems.

The Carnaval, held for the first time last year, was this time held near the Noumea waterfront, by the old wharves, with a procession of decorated floats and beauty queens reflecting the territory’s varied ethnic origins from the provinces of France to French territories in the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific.

The twenty-nine cyclists in this gear’s 10th Tour cycliste also brought ogether representatives of remote corners of France, with sportsmen rom metropolitan France and Tahiti, is well as from Australia and New Zealand.

But no amount of officially ponsored entertainment could hide he fact that the Noumea court is (lacing a growing number of local ompanies in receivership, while mployers continue to announce staff ismissals and the Territorial assembly, in vain, urges Governor iriau to protect jobs for the locals.

Then, suddenly, on September 16, □me Noumea walls were splashed nth red paint: “Vive LTndependance .anak” and “French go home’’.

Already, some 2000 persons are as unemployed, out of a )tal workforce around 35,000. lowever, the real number of jobless

can be assumed to be greater, since many do not reapply for work or are absorbed back into Melanesian tribal

life;

Caledonian business leaders openly express the view that France is deliberately stifling the territory’s economy in an effort to prove that the island could not have a viable economy without French aid.

France could therefore only be expected to relinquish this pressure when Pans is in complete control, with the autonomists and their moves for internal self-government totally suppressed. All the while, new arrivals are coming from France, and Caledonians losing their jobs can only protest in vain over jobs going to wives of gendarmes and other metropolitan public servants or to French military personnel retired in Ne ™ Caledonia , Meanwhile, back in Paris, the French Government has officially ad-

mitted the position of overseas territories such as New Caledonia, Under the new French Prime Minister, Raymond Barre, the overseas territories have been placed under Mr Michel Poniatowski, Minister for the Interior, to whom Mr Olivier Stirn acts as junior minister, This shows that New Caledonia is more closely integrated to the general French administrative system, Earlier, Mr Stirn had announced new laws would be passed in France to bind New Caledonia more completely to France so that any change would require a vote of the whole French people, rather than just the islanders After all the years of hearing “France is here to stay”, a Caledo nian oppostion newspaper (L’Unite Caledonienne) wondered, after all if “the Caledonians want to stay”. But of course after all this conditioning, they would miss the entertainment if they left.

The latest round of Anglo-French government talks on the New Hebrides problem were scheduled to be held in London on October 6-7, after being delayed a month by the French cabinet reshuffle. A new vote was also scheduled in October for the five Santo seats declared invalid after the November, 1975, elections for the first Representative Assembly.

Meanwhile, the United Nations members who received a delegation from the New Hebrides on August 19 must have been left wondering who