A “new era" for Polynesia

“ Year 1 of a new era for Polynesia” was how the Tahiti newspaper La Depeche described the July inauguration of the new Government Council of Autonomous French Polynesia.

The event, on July 22, followed adoption earlier in the month by the French National Assembly and Senate in Paris of a new statute of autono my giving to the five main groups of islands in French Polynesia the right to local rule by locally elected councillors.

Opening the session of the new government council, its vice-president, M Francis Sanford, described the event as “the gathering of the first fruits of a long and arduous work of cultivation, of a struggle waged without let-up for more than 30 years”.

He said: “May I be permitted on this historic day to pay solemn tribute to the initiator of the autonomist movement, our precursor, Pouvanaa a Oupa, who died at the task, on the eve of victory.”

He pledged on behalf of his colleagues in the Front Uni to ‘follow the example of Pouvanaa a Oupa, in working to serve Polynesia with the same spirit of uprightness, self-sacrifice and devotion which was always his”.