Tension Mounts On Poll Eve

New Caledonia

Gendarmes maintain an uneasy calm as election date approaches.

AS Pacific Islands Monthly went to press the political situation in New Caledonia was ominously quiet, With popular involvement in the leadup to the April 24 elections stifled by the presence of an estimated 12,000 armed and highly trained paramilitary personnel, posted at likely trouble spots and capable of deployment at a moment’s notice, only the politicians were to be seen as demonstrations were banned outright.

The Front National pour la Liberation Kanak Socialiste (FLNKS) has had to confine itself to the expected denunciations of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s plans for cementing metropolitan French control of New Caledonia, supporting President Francois Mitterrand’s claims that Mr Chirac’s policies are “unjust and divisive” and “fail to recognise Kanak culture, the need for land reform and [for the establishment of] an ethnic, political and social balance” between New Caledonia’s Melanesian and European communities.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Chirac (who is campaigning on a platform of

maintaining France’s presence in the Pacific, and of neutralising the pro-independence movement through the realignment of provincial boundaries proposed by Minister for Overseas Territories Mr Bernard Pons) criticised Mr Mitterrand’s statements as “strictly political and not based on any reality”.

The FLNKS has thrown its support firmly behind President Mitterrand and his censure of the Chirac Government s decision to hold metropolitan and territorial elections on the same date. Party president Mr Jean-Marie Tjibaou endorsed Mr Mitterrand as “the representative for all people who support human rights and a modern and progressive image of France” an image the incumbent Government was attempting to promote with promises of aid to Fiji, the establishment of a joint study on earthquakes by French, New Zealand and US scientists and a “major international study on icebergs in Antarctica”.

In the Pacific, however, critics of French policy have condemned such actions as attempts to buy influence, and diplomatic

personnel have been harassed by more militant Melanesians: French Ambassa dor to Papua New Guinea Mr Jean-Paul Schrick was “ordered” from the Univer sity of PNG campus by students shouting anti-French slogans, while PNG Foreign Minister Mr Akoka Doi said he objected to the students’ methods but “fully sup ported” their sentiments.

News of such events was slow to reach New Caledonia, where reportage is largely restricted to establishment metropolitan French coverage of international issues, and the major concern for members of the Kanak movement was an apparent dwin dling of support among Melanesians and liberal caldoches for their cause. Despite anti-independence groups’ claims that Kanak radicals were plotting violence and the overthrow of civil order, observers in Noumea said the FLNKS’ call for “active” boycotts of the election had received little popular backing in part at least because any such activity would attract a rapid and efficient response from a police. Army and CRS force that now comprises almost 10 per cent of the Territory’s population. □