While the National Liberation Front Kanak Socialist (FLNKS), meeting on Saturday in congresses, is due to formalize Tuesday its rejection of the agreement signed in July with the State and the non-independence on the future of the archipelago, the Minister of Overseas announced on Sunday that it would go there the following week.
“I do not resign myself,” writes Manuel Valls on social networks in the aftermath of the extraordinary congress.
If the position of the independence movement on the agreement signed on July 12 in Bougival (Yvelines) will not be communicated until Tuesday, the declarations of its president Christian Tein calling for a “clear and unambiguous” rejection of the text and the decisions already taken by the components of the FLNKS do not leave any doubt. “Everything suggests that it would have been decided to rejection of the agreement” on a new status of the territory, regrets the minister who will go to New Caledonia during “the week of August 18”.
“The Bougival agreement has not fallen from the sky. It is a historical compromise, the fruit of working month (…) with all the delegations including that of the FLNKS. Everyone has affixed their signature,” he insists.
The delegation of the FLNKS had congratulated itself on the signing of the text, but recalled two days later in a press release that “all the elements transcribed in the project of agreement ser (AIE) nt brought to the approval of (their) structures with a view to collectively debating it on the follow -ups to give it”. However, the text had immediately aroused a shield lifting on the side of independence activists, in particular on the question of the right to self -determination and recognition of the Kanak people.
– “Gather” and “Listen” –
From the appearance of the first official criticisms emanating from the independence camp in mid-July, Manuel Valls proposed the creation of an “editorial committee”, in order to finalize the constitutional texts arising from the agreement.
The latter “must be enlightened, in -depth, specified, completed”. “This is the object of the editorial committee that I proposed. It is in this context that the spirit of the agreement may be clarified, in particular on the identity, the place and the founding role of the Kanak people in history and the future of the territory,” argues the Minister of Overseas, assuring that he will meet all stakeholders in Nouméa. “To bring together. To listen to. To bring together all those who refuse sterile confrontation. And who want to move forward, together, on the only way possible: that of consensus.”
The Bougival agreement continues to be defended locally by the entire non-independence camp, the Oceanian Awakening, a “ni-ni” party (neither independence, nor loyalist), as well as by the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika) and the Progressive Union in Melanesia (UPM), two moderate independence movements which left the FLNKS in August 2024. De Bougival may not be the choice chosen by the FLNKS. During the opening of the movement of the movement on Saturday, its president, Christian Tein advocated “continuation of the dialogue”, but “only on the methods of accession to full sovereignty”, “in bilateral format” with the State and this “until September 24”, as decided by the previous Congress of the Movement, held in January. “We must capitalize on our assets and value them as well as possible in order to access full sovereignty at the latest before the presidential elections of 2027,” concluded Mr. Tein.
“To refuse the agreement means making the choice of rotting and confrontation. And it will be failure for everyone. Without compromise, no lasting reconstruction, no real economic recovery,” said Manuel Valls.
New Caledonia, where the violence of 2024 killed 14 dead and several billion damage, crosses an unprecedented crisis, which has resulted in particular in a fall of 10 to 15% of its GDP last year and more than 10,000 jobs destroyed, according to figures from the overseas emission institute, the central bank of French communities in the Pacific.
Posted on August 10 at 6:11 p.m., AFP