2023-12-21 19:30:00
Emmanuel Macron visiting Nouméa, July 26, 2023. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
There is now clearly no time to reach a political agreement on a new status for New Caledonia within the timetable desired by the government, that is to say at the end of the year. The State hoped for an institutional project before December 31, with a view to a constitutional revision in March, and, if it did not reach a consensus, threatened to table at least a draft organic law on a point that it considers urgent: the expansion of the Caledonian electorate, for the provincial elections of 2024. These result in the formation of the congress, the local Parliament – today with a narrow pro-independence majority and whose mandate expires in May –, like that of the government, chaired by the independentist Louis Mapou.
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The subject is very sensitive, because it has been placed, since the agreements of Matignon, in 1988, and especially of Nouméa, in 1998, at the heart of the subtle balance achieved by separatists and loyalists in New Caledonian institutions. The restricted electoral body of the territory was defined in 2007, under the presidency of Jacques Chirac – despite the opposition of part of the right, at the Versailles Congress of 2008 -, then frozen. A derogation from universal suffrage validated within the framework of the French Constitution, in Title XIII, named “Transitional provisions on New Caledonia” : this title was, according to the constitutional law specialist Guy Carcassonne, “the matrix of the Constitution of a State in the making”.
On a legal level, the question of unfreezing the electoral body “arises in the light of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations covenants relating to civil and political rights”, explains Jean-François Merle, former advisor to François Mitterrand’s prime minister Michel Rocard (1988-1991) on the matter. Deprived of the right to vote, some 20,000 voters – including grandchildren of parents born in New Caledonia – would thus be called upon to participate in the 2024 election. The political challenge arises from the fact that “the congress and provincial assemblies remain central elements of the self-determination process” opened by the last major political agreements.
Organic law, a very legally risky solution
The Council of State examined a request for an opinion from the government on the subject, Thursday, December 7, in a general assembly. The subject had not been published on the agenda and the opinion was given on December 9 in the greatest secrecy – rare precautions. The high administrative court has, according to our information, indicated that a constitutional revision is the way to follow.
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