2024-04-11 12:33:30
Clashes between demonstrators and gendarmes during the visit of Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti and Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, in Nouméa on February 21, 2024. DELPHINE MAYEUR / AFP
Two massive processions, that of the separatists, on one side, and that of the non-separatists, on the other: with 20,000 demonstrators expected in Nouméa, two streets apart, this Saturday, April 13 could go down in history . In New Caledonia, tensions are still rising on the political scene.
The nickel crisis is worsening, with the blocking of the government’s “pact” and the feared shutdown, Thursday, of the northern mines, caught in a standoff between the shareholders of Socité Le Nickel (SNL), the group mining Eramet and the province led by the separatist Paul Néaoutyine. And the approach of provincial elections, to be held by the end of 2024, puts political actors against the wall – loyalists no longer sit in the New Caledonia Congress, whose majority they have suddenly declared independent. “illegitimate”while the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), fearing being put in a minority in the next election, rejects the draft constitutional law, aimed at expanding an electoral body frozen since 2009, currently being examined in Parliament .
Nouméa will have more mobile forces than Marseille this weekend, with the Ministry of the Interior sending significant reinforcements – two squadrons, or 140 gendarmes. In a climate of escalation, mixed with concerns about the future and impatience, clashes have taken place in several parts of the territory in recent days. Particularly in the commune of Mont-Dore, on the outskirts of the Kanak tribe of Saint-Louis, historic center of the anti-colonial revolt where, according to our information, the police fired five hundred grenades on April 8.
“On the path of divisions”
On April 4, the “field action committee” of the FLNKS placed a tamioc (a Kanak hatchet) on a ballot box, during a press conference, to protest against “the Macron method” in current political discussions. A reminder of the symbolic gesture of Eloi Machoro in 1984, at the dawn of the “events” which would tear the Caledonians apart: this independence activist, then, had broken an urn to protest against the draft status of autonomy drawn up in Paris and to call for a boycott of the territorial elections.
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“We continue to move forward on the path of divisions”, regrets the Caledonian deputy (Renaissance) Philippe Dunoyer. Member of the moderate right Caledonia ensemble party, the latter criticizes the harsh position adopted by the rest of the local right under the leadership of the loyalists, including the former Secretary of State Sonia Backès and the other Caledonian deputy of the presidential majority, Nicolas Metzdorf. “No one gives instructions to confront the other, note Dunoyer. One can always doubt the ability to control thousands of people. »
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