Macron in New Caledonia to set up 'mission' after protests

French President Emmanuel Macron should arrive in troubled New Caledonia on Tuesday night (21 May) to set up “a mission”, a government spokesperson said, as the situation in the French overseas territory in the South Pacific remains tense following a week of protests, with blockades in certain areas of the capital city Nouméa.

Protests erupted before a bill was passed in the National Assembly to revise New Caledonia’s body of people entitled to vote in provincial elections, which pro-independence advocates said would dilute the vote of the indigenous Kanak people. France declared a state of emergency there on 15 May.

“The president is mobilised on the subject, as he has been since 2017,” Prisca Thevenot told the press after the Council of Ministers met on Tuesday. She did not specify how long Macron would stay in New Caledonia or the nature of the ‘mission’, which will be unveiled in the coming days.  

Macron will be joined by Minister of Interior Gérald Darmanin, Minister of Defense Sébastien Lecornu and Minister Delegate for Overseas Affairs, Marie Guévenoux.

She added that Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will “also have the opportunity to go there, not immediately but in the coming weeks”.  

More than 400 shops and businesses have been ‘destroyed or damaged’ since the start of the riots in reaction to a constitutional reform decried by the pro-independence movement a week ago, Noumea public prosecutor Yves Dupas said on Tuesday.  

According to the government, the return of ‘order and security’ is a prerequisite for any resumption of negotiations.  

Macron’s visit ‘is an opportunity for dialogue that must be seized’, non-independence MP Philippe Dunoyer, a member of Macron’s Renaissance party, told AFP. The second Renaissance MP for New Caledonia, Nicolas Metzdorf, said he opposed any postponement or withdrawal of the constitutional reform that had sparked off the violence. 

More than 2,700 gendarmes, police officers, and military personnel are deployed in New Caledonia, and additional numbers are expected. Four civilians – including at least three indigenous Kanak residents – have been killed in riots along with two police officers. Dozens more have been injured and more than 200 people arrested so far.  

Under the planned reform, all citizens who have been resident in the archipelago for ten years would be included in the New Caledonia electorate, which should result in a loss of electoral weight for the Kanaks.  

According to Macron, the reform should be validated ‘before the end of June’ by a Congress of senators and deputies, but the opponents are calling for the text to be postponed.  

On Sunday (19 May), the presidents of Réunion island, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana – all French overseas regions – called for the ‘immediate withdrawal’ of the reform to prevent “civil war”.  

“We believe the situation has become so serious and complicated (…) that we now need a strong gesture from the president of the Republic”, Gabriel Serville, president of the Collectivité Territoriale de Guyane, said on TFI. 

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]