Polynesia

Storms all round in Polynesia

In every conceivable way, March was a stormy month in Tahiti.

To begin with, a hurricane, following a southward track half way between the Cook Islands and Tahiti, caused much havoc, uprooting trees, destroying crops and flattening dozens of houses. The heavy rains that followed a week later more than 700 mm were even more disastrous, especially in the new residential areas around Papeete, where profit-hungry land developers have razed all vegetation and ruthlessly carved out terraces on the soft soil thus exposed. Some roads and wharves were also washed out but that is something that ‘normally’ happens each year during the rainy season. In addition, the overflowing rivers, quite paradoxically, created a shortage of drinking water, since numerous dams and drains burst or became blocked. The total damage to property will probably exceed 200 million Pacific francs (about SA2 million).

... and then political storms

At the same time it was a politically stormy month, with many claps of thunder but considerably fewer flashes of illuminating lightning. The man who hurled and received most thunderbolts was the Minister for Overseas Territories and Departments Paul Dijoud, who was making a last round of the French possessions in the Pacific to explain the wonderful benefits to be reaped from a massive vote in favour of the incumbent candidate Giscard d’Estaing in the forthcoming presidential elections.

During his visit to Tahiti in July 1979 (PIM Sep. 1979 p 17), Giscard d’Estaing had exhorted local political bosses to be ‘ambitious’ when it came to asking for French economic aid, and

Dijoud was now hammering the same theme again, repeatedly hinting that they had not been ambitious enough. Such official generosity was, of course, well received in all quarters, but the pre-condition for continued French aid which Dijoud simul taneously spelt out no changes whatsoever in the existing colonial constitution caused some grumbling.

Last year, the leader of the local Gaullist party, Gaston Flosse, in a spectacular volte-face (PIM May 1980 p 27), had adopted as his own the generation-old request of his Autonomist opponents John Teariki and Francis Sanford for full internal self-government. Even more surprisingly, he had managed to persuade his party boss, the present presidential candidate Jacques Chirac, to endorse the draft for a new constitution for French Polynesia which he forthwith tabled in the French National Assembly in Paris.

Evidently, the old Autonomists could not for long tolerate that their main enemy was using their banner to rally votes. So at the beginning of March this year, the venerated leader of the Automonist Pupu here aia party, John Teariki, flew off to Paris for secret talks with President discard d’Estaing. He flew home in the same plane as Minister Paul Dijoud. But on disembarking, and during the whole week that followed, he let the latter do all the talking. While praising the cordial and fruitful relations that existed between the territory and its mother-country, Dijoud rarely missed an opportunity to denounce as ‘miserable fools’ (douloureux debiles) those who dreamt of independence.

A shy man’s meeting

However, hardly had Dijoud’s plane vanished beyond the horizon than John Teariki summoned the local press to make a statement. This was in striking -contrast to his usual reserve and shyness, so everybody sensed that he must have something particularly important to say. As most observers of the political

Below: Autonomist John Teariki - everyone guessed he had something important to say. Below right: Giscard d’Estaing and Madame d’Estaing, bedecked during their 1979 French Polynesia visit. How flrm is President Giscard’s offer?

scene had guessed in advance, it concerned his recent talks with Giscard d’Estaing. In a low-key speech, Teariki revealed that President Giscard had now generously promised to implement the reform that his minister for overseas territories and departments up to then had constantly vetoed and ridiculed: i.e., giving more power to the Polynesian people by placing the local government in the hands of an elected prime minister, assisted by other cabinet ministers, each one at the head of his own department. In other words, the Autonomists had recovered the main plank in their election platform which had been surreptitiously stolen from them by Gaston Flosse. In exchange, they committed themselves to vote for Giscard d’Estaing. It is of some interest to note here that during the 1974 presidential elections they had campaigned furiously for Socialist Party secretary Francis Mitterand, who is again Giscard’s main rival, on the grounds that he was the only candidate in favour of a broad decolonisation programme.

A few days after Teariki’s exciting revelations, his arch-rival Gaston Flosse, who was in his second month of a whirlwind campaign in favour of Jacques Chirac (two speeches a day in different districts and islands), in his turn called a press conference. Denouncing Giscard’s promise as a cheap last minute electoral trick, he chided Teariki for being gullible and asserted that oral promises without witnesses are absolutely worthless in politics, even when the person making them happens to be the president of the republic.

Was it double talk?

As an alternative explanation, he insinuated that Teariki had simply misunderstood what Giscard had said, since the latter is a master of ambiguous double-talk. As for himself, Flosse definitely knew what he was talking about he said, for he had a written record of the promises made by Jacques Chirac and the Gaullist deputies in the French parliament. To rub it in even more strongly, Flosse despatched a telegram to Giscard d’Estaing, asking him for confirmation of his alleged extrava gant promises. At time of writing, no reply has yet arrived.

Whatever the truth is, reaffirmation of the original Autonomist goals has resulted in the strongest majority ever known in French Polynesia in favour of a complete revision of the existing constitution which was hailed upon its adoption

in 1977 as the ultimate step in a liberal direction that the French Government was prepared to take. Only a few recent allies of Teariki and Sanford, led by the last remaining Frenchman in the Territorial Assembly, Frantz Vanizette, and one of the present Government Councillors, Marc Tevane, have expressed the view that the suggested reform is too far-reaching and have therefore formed their own ‘Social Democratic’ party to work for the status quo. But they do not represent more than a small percentage of the electorate, and have already decided to vote for Giscard anyway.

At the other end of the political spectrum, of course, we find the parties which all along have maintained that internal self government is not enough, and have openly preached independence. Of these, the local socialist la mana te nunaa party which in the last general elections polled 10% of the votes, will naturally campaign for the socialist candidate Francis Mitterand, while the three remaining, much smaller, parties recommend abstention, on the principle that to take part would be to play the game of the French colonial rulers.

At the end of March, the sun was shining again and the swollen rivers slowly subsiding, but the stormy political weather will probably continue, with intermittent showers and much resounding thunder all the time up to the final round of the presidential elections, on May 10 Marie-Therese and Bengt Danielsson.

Top: Gaston Flosse (right) presents his ideas for a new French Polynesian constitution at a 1980 press conference at the headquarters of his Tahoeraa Huiraatira party in Papeete. Right- Autonomist leader and vice-president of the government council Francis Sanford holds his own press conference. On the wall a portrait of President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who has won the support of Mr Sanford’s party in the current French presidential election.