Nh Delegates
p. 14 · Read in the full issue
Differ At Un
From a Vila correspondent had managed to cook up such a situa tion as now exists in the con dominium. Actually it was two delegations that addressed the UN Committee of 24 on Decolonisation in New York. Walter Lini and Georges Kalkoa represented the National Par ty (17 seats in the November 1975
elections for the NH Representative Assembly), with Vincent Boulekone and Jean-Marie Leye from the UCNH party (10 seats).
Walter Lini reasserted his call for local independence by 1977, without violence or the spilling of blood. He feared the delay in calling together the islands’ first representative assembly was a deliberate political manoeuvre to delay independence.
Lini was particularly critical of France whose action could lead to the New Hebrides being divided, with Santo remaining French, like Mayotte in the Comoros Islands off East Africa. He also condemned French colonialism in New Caledonia and Tahiti. If Great Britain and France were not prepared to grant in dependence to the New Hebrides for 1977, he called for a referendum to decide which of the two powers should stay in the islands and prepare for in dependence. He also urged an im mediate UN mission to visit the con dominium.
Vincent Boulekone, on the other hand, claimed no mission was re quired immediately. Whereas Lini had urged activation of the elected Representative Assembly, Boulekone called for dialogue between the different political parties.
Boulekone then made a lengthy at tack on the church influence over political affairs in the New Hebrides, striking particularly at the Presbyterians and the British in general. However, he also criticised France for her tendency to divide territories, as when only part of the Comoros Islands became indepen dent. But he rejected Lini’s call for a referendum and for independence by 1977.
British representative at the UN debate, Mr Richardson, insisted that the two governing powers were com mitted to maintaining the unity of the New Hebrides as one single territory, and to allowing self-determination, while the British were not opposed to independence.
As a curious aftermath to this now traditional Anglo-French political conflict, the French press quoted UCNH representative J-M Leye in early September after his return from New York: “The hereditary chiefs alone have the power to discuss in dependence .. . Otherwise, if in dependence were achieved merely at the demand of political parties there would be very serious disturbances in the New Hebrides”.