Tahiti-Hawaii

Revolt wins Tahiti-Hawaii air link

‘lndependence! Freedom! Liberty!’ were the battle cries heard in Papeete during October and November. This time, however, the number one freedom fighter was no wild-eyed activist or terrorist ready to bomb and kill, but the staid and eminently respectable president of the Chamber of Commerce, Charles Poroi, who belongs to a family which has been staunchly pro- French for generations.

When Faaa international airport opened in 1961, local businessmen and politicians had high hopes that tourism would soon become the principal source of revenue for the territory.

Thanks to generous tax exemptions, a dozen first-class hotels with about 2000 rooms were rapidly built. A tourist board with ample funds produced an endless stream of leaflets and posters, showing lovely hula girls, speeding outrigger sailing canoes and soft, white sand beaches.

The results of these determined (and not always so honest) attempts to make the world believe that French Polynesia is still an unspoilt paradise have been very disappointing. After having climbed slowly to 92 000 by 1976, the annual number of visitors levelled off, and when the 100 000 ceiling was eventually broken through last year, it was solely due to the shoddy stratagem of changing the statistical procedures and counting as bona fide tourists the 6000 or so French people who come out every year to visit sons, brothers and other relatives serving in the administration, the army, or the nuclear task force.

The official explanation for this half-failure was most succinctly formulated during the 1979 Great Tourist Confer ence in Papeete (PIM May 1979 p 25) by the French Minister for Overseas Territories, Paul Dijoud, who firmly maintained that it was ‘all this loose talk about independence in which too many people in French Polynesia indulge that scares away the foreign investors’. Practically all local travel agents and hotel operators put the blame more or less squarely on another culprit; the French airline UTA, which enjoys a monopoly, dictates the fares to all other companies and frowns on all foreign charter traffic.

The first politician to speak up on their behalf (and his own, since he is part-owner of a travel agency) was Gaston Flosse, the dynamic leader of the local Gaullist party and one of the territory’s two deputies, who said boldly that it was time to transfer the decision-making powers from the government bureaucrats in Paris to a Polynesian cabinet of elected ministers headed by a PM. Shortly afterwards, this proposal was given the more elaborate form of a draft for a new constitution of the Cook Islands type, giving the Polynesians full internal self government (PIM May p 27).

In the meantime, things went from bad to worse in French Polynesia with the cancellation of all Pan Am flights, and the abandonment of the Air France round the world flights which had been bringing in droves of Japanese tourists. Even more galling to the local businessmen making a living from tourism were the repeated refusals of the French aviation board to grant any charter flights from the US. This explains why in the end it was Charles Poroi, by profession also a travel agent, who raised the banner of revolt. Unlike his friend Flosse, who was back in Paris trying once more to drum up parliamentary support for his constitutional reform, he chose the direct action method called by the French un fait accompli.

Without a word, he flew off at the beginning of October, not to Paris but to Honolulu, where a local businessman, Spence Weaver, who also happens to own the Hotel Tahiti outside Papeete, quickly put him in touch with the president of the small independent airline Evergreen, operating a weekly service between the American northwest coast and Hawaii. The rest of the story was told by the now extremely talkative Charles Poroi, on his return to Tahiti. He even called a special press conference, where he said as an (eye)opener: ‘We are Polynesians, and this land belongs to us. It is therefore only normal that we control its air space. It we do not act, we shall still be in the same situation in 50 years time.’

Next he announced in a matter of fact tone the rather sensational news that he had actually, without prior French approval, signed an agreement with Evergreen airline to provide a weekly service between Honolulu and Papeete with a 156seater DC-8 aircraft. All business and services at the Papeete end were to be handled by a local company owned by the people of Tahiti whom he invited on the spot to buy shares. Although he did not quote any figures, he promised extremely cheap fares. Even the date of the inaugural flight had been fixed; it was to take place on February 17, 1981.

To top it all, Poroi declared that he had the full support of all leading politicians in the territory.

In itself, it did not of course matter much to the French Government whether the much needed air service between Honolulu and Papeete was re-established or not. Instead, another question assumed the utmost importance, and it could be formulated thus: Would it not set a dangerous precedent and make a breach in the existing autocratic system for Paris to yield to the sort of blackmail used by Charles Poroi?

Incidentally, it was exactly the same dilemma that the Polish Government was facing, ever since the workers had begun clamouring for free trade unions. The newscasters working for the government radio and TV station in Papeete nevertheless went on talking excitedly about the Polish workers’ irrefutable rights to make their own decisions, without apparently seeing any parallels with the local situation.

Charles Poroi ended his press conference by declaring that his struggle was also to be long, and that he expected serious reprisals to follow upon his rebellious act.

His first confrontation with the French masters of the Polynesian skies took place in Paris on October 23. The way the outcome was reported by the official news agency was only slightly more positive than the simultaneously broadcast news bulletin from Warsaw, according to which ‘the Polish Government has accepted the new statute of the free trade unions, after having changed them so as to conform to current

practices’.

This is a literal translation of the French counterpart statement: ‘During a meeting today of the National Aviation Board, all members declared themselves favourably inclined towards the scheme proposed by the Papeete Chamber of Commerce. This consensus will make it possible to place the future air service between Honolulu and Papeete in the general framework of the

thinking process of the board.’

Marie-Therese and Bengt

Danielsson