By Nic Maclellan
As French diplomats worked the corridors at last week’s 53rd Pacific Islands Forum in Nuku’alofa, President of French Polynesia Moetai Brotherson has criticised decisions taken by President Emmanuel Macron that have led to the current explosion of conflict In New Caledonia.
“Unfortunately, all the events since 13 May were easy to foresee,” Brotherson said. “I’ve been telling France for three years now about the stepping stones that led to those events.”
“First of all, the decision by the French State to maintain the third referendum on self-determination in December 2021, that was the first mistake. Then the nomination of [Loyalist leader] Madame Backès as Secretary of State for Citizenship – that was a huge mistake, because it was the first time that the French State was clearly no longer respecting the neutral position that was their position since the [1998 Noumea] Accord.”
Brotherson noted that President Macron’s latest attempt to ram through electoral reforms for New Caledonia – without a local consensus – added to this breakdown of trust between independence supporters and the French State: “The third and major mistake was this push around modification of the voting constituency in New Caledonia, and that was a major mistake, especially in the light of dissolving the French National Assembly right after creating all this havoc!”
“We have to wait until a new government comes into place and if the French State will still bring back this proposal to the table, which would spark new events,” he said.
“I hope they understand that this is something this time that should be dealt with lightly.”
Ocean protection
Speaking to Islands Business at the end of the week-long Forum in Nuku’alofa, President Brotherson talked about the importance of the annual summit for his nation.
He stressed the work on common agendas around the 2050 Strategy for a Blue Pacific Continent, also using the meeting to build bilateral ties with Forum members and international delegations.
With an Exclusive Economic Zone of nearly 5 million square kilometres, French Polynesia is deeply engaged in discussions around ocean protection, fisheries policy and scientific research in the deep sea.
President Brotherson highlighted deep-sea mining as a crucial issue for his delegation: “The main challenge that we are still facing is probably the issue of deep-sea mining, especially here in Tonga, which is one of the few countries in the Forum that is not opposing the exploitation of deep-sea mining. This is an unresolved issue – we basically agree to disagree.”
Supporting a moratorium on mineral resource exploitation, he said “we have to remind everyone that the deep ocean is the cradle of life and we shouldn’t play God in a part of the world that we know less of than we know the surface of the moon – especially now that we know those nodules also produce what’s called ‘black oxygen’. So I really think we should do more exploration but not exploitation.”
Hosting the Forum in Rarotonga last year, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown attempted to square the circle of very divergent views on the issue.
“In Rarotonga, we proposed a talanoa session around deep-sea minerals, deep sea mining and the different viewpoints that our countries have,” Brown told Islands Business.
“Through the talanoa, we’re hoping that the discussion will help reach a collective position. It may not be a unified position, but it would certainly be a collective decision when we recognise and respect the varying positions that are taken by different countries.”
The Cook Islands is also offering to host a regional Centre of Excellence on Deep Ocean Science. But for President Brotherson, “when you talk about science you have to define which kind of science we’re talking about. If it’s science to have better knowledge of the life going on under the sea, if it’s science to better humanity, then sure! But if it’s science just to refine the mining techniques, that’s another story.”
Last week President Macron’s Special Envoy on the Ocean Olivier Poivre d’Arvor was in Tonga, urging Pacific Small Island Developing States to engage in the third United Nations Ocean Conference, to be held in Nice in 2025.
A meeting of the Polynesian Leaders Group last week agreed to engage in lead up activities, to develop common messages for the global summit.
Along with other Forum members preparing for the global oceans summit, Brotherson pledged that “we will work together with our friends and neighbours and cousins from the Pacific to do something meaningful. It’s not about bringing folklore. It’s about bringing to the table the key issues that we are facing – deep sea mining being one of them, so it’s going to be a little tricky to be united about this issue, but we’ll find a way.”
New Caledonia crisis
Since May this year, ongoing protests and clashes in New Caledonia have reverberated as far as Māʿohi Nui.
“Directly, we are starting to see the side effects of the crisis in New Caledonia,” Brotherson said.
“I had a study done two weeks ago and we already had 200 people from New Caledonia who are now in French Polynesia. Two thirds of them are Tahitians who have been living there for many years and who have decided to come back home. But the rest of them are people from New Caledonia, especially small business owners, who due to the economic situation are thinking about moving.”
“Every one of them that I’ve met with, I told them that it’s not my intent to lure you to come in French Polynesia – your country is New Caledonia and your country needs you to rebuild.”
This week, President Macron is slowly moving towards a decision on appointing a new French Prime Minister in Paris, eight weeks after the National Assembly elections! With no political bloc having a governing majority in the French lower house, many government and business leaders in France’s Pacific dependencies are anxious that ongoing political division in Paris will delay action on key dossiers, including annual budget allocations.
President Brotherson noted: “We were lucky because we worked swiftly with the High Commissioner in Tahiti and we were able to renew the major conventions that we have between us and the French State, before this whole thing about the National Assembly. But still we have major projects that we need to discuss with the French State and we don’t have anyone to talk to at this time.”
Three months of rioting and conflict in New Caledonia have devastated the local economy, with rising unemployment, closure of many businesses and damage to key sectors like the nickel industry.
President Brotherson echoed concerns raised by politicians in New Caledonia – across the political spectrum – who worry that the French State has dropped the ball on economic reconstruction.
“We’ve seen this bill that was passed at the New Caledonia Congress, pushed by Mr. Gomès [leader of the anti-independence Calédonie ensemble party] asking for 500 billion Pacific francs,” Brotherson said.
“If the new government [in Paris] is formed in three or four weeks, it will leave a very, very short time, because this has to be out into this year’s budget, which is usually voted in mid or end of October. However with all the arbitration needed in the parliament, 500 billion Pacific francs is a lot of money to get through the program – every year we in Tahiti are fighting for much smaller amounts! The longer they take to form this new government in Paris, the worse it’s going to be for New Caledonia.”
President Brotherson told Islands Business that the current crisis in New Caledonia had also damaged France’s diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region, and undercut President Macron’s Indo-Pacific Strategy.
Since the conflict began in May, Brotherson has travelled to Singapore and the PALM10 summit in Tokyo, and he said that world leaders were closely watching France’s response.
“The French State had been gradually rebuilding their image after the end of the nuclear tests and they somehow succeeded,” Brotherson explained.
“French Polynesia and New Caledonia becoming full members of the Forum was part of this image rebuilding of France in the region. But now, all the heads of state and prime ministers that I met were saying ‘Gosh, we are seeing the comeback of colonial France. We had forgotten about it, but we are seeing it again’.”
“The damage to this image is especially to the Indo-Pacific Strategy that President Macron is so fond of,” he added.
“The basic premise of the Strategy would be that France would be perceived as a power for peace and balance in the region, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment. So it’s going to be very hard for France, for President Macron, to sustain this wish that he has to support this Indo-Pacific Strategy.”
Elections result
The crisis in New Caledonia has also impacted recent elections for French Polynesia’s three seats in the French National Assembly, held over two rounds on 30 June and 7 July.
At the last National Assembly elections in 2022, in an unprecedented victory, the independence party Tavini Huiraʻatira snatched all three seats from the governing party Tāpura Huiraʻatira.
As President Macron dissolved the National Assembly and rushed to new elections this year, two Tavini deputies Temetai Le Gayic and Steve Chailloux lost their seats to candidates from an alliance of autonomist parties.
“The equation is quite simple,” Brotherson said.
“In 2022, the government majority camp went to the elections divided. This time they were united and the presented candidates for the whole opposition – and they had good candidates, I must admit, such as the young fellow from the Marquesas Islands [Moerani Frébault of Tāpura Huiraʻatira] who had a lot of energy and convincing power. Them being united made the difference.”
The violence in New Caledonia also impacted perceptions amongst French residents in Tahiti: “We’ve also seen the opposition using the crisis in New Caledonia in a smart political way, telling people ‘Is that what you want for our country?’ It scared a lot of people in a town like Punaʿauia where you have a lot of French people living. We had very good results there in Punaʿauia in 2022 and 2023, but on this election, we saw the numbers drop.”
“It should be a wake-up call for the Tavini Huiraʻatira,” he added.
“Since the beginning of our mandate as a majority in 2023, we have shown some signs of internal division and sometimes sent mixed messages – for example, about the road to sovereignty and self-determination. There is a part of Tavini that are tired of waiting for France to come to the table, and maybe we should proclaim independence. That has scared a lot of undecided voters who were sympathetic to what we represented in 2023, but still are not ready for the big jump. They don’t want things to be rushed.”
Bilateral meetings
Representing French Polynesia at his second leaders’ summit, President Brotherson came to the Kingdom of Tonga “to share the common vision around the 2050 Blue Pacific Strategy”, on oceans, climate and economic development.
In Nuku’alofa, a new Regional Kava Development Strategy was launched by Tonga’s Princess Angelika Lātūfuipeka Tukuʿaho and Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa.
Officials and exporters from kava producing nations talked of the need for co-ordination of exports and cultural protection.Brotherson believes that his nation now has an opportunity to join this regional initiative: “We are looking at the kava economy: it’s huge in Tonga, and in Vanuatu and Fiji. We have just legalised kava, so to speak, in French Polynesia – it used to be illegal. So we are now discovering the market and what can be done around the kava economy. But you don’t want kava to be mis-used – it has to be kept in its original cultural intent.”
He also used the week to hold a series of bilateral meetings with Forum members, UN Secretary General António Guterres and neighbours like Cook Islands and Chile.
Given the vast ocean around the five archipelagos of Māʿohi Nui, rebuilding transport and tourism links after the COVID pandemic remains a central priority.
“We have a direct issue with Cook Islands around aviation,” he said.
“We already have direct flights between Air Tahiti Nui and Air Rarotonga, but we want to have a more robust legal framework around it. We went forward with the French State on this issue and in coming weeks we should be able to sign a convention between Cook Islands and French Polynesia.”
He met with the Chilean delegation, a dialogue partner at the Forum, to discuss common issues around fisheries and tourism: “Rapanui is now in a particular situation where there are no more direct flights between Rapanui and Tahiti. That’s a concern for lots of Rapanui people living in Tahiti and their families living in Rapanui – so we’ll discuss with Chile about that.”
Brotherson was scheduled to travel to Australia after the Forum, but has cancelled the trip to deal with the fallout in Paris – even so, he said, “we have a very good relationship with Australia and I think we have many good projects that we can implement with Australia.”
Once again, he thought that better transport connections with the largest Forum member would improve tourism: “We used to have direct flights to Australia, which were cancelled, and now it’s very hard to re-establish that line, Currently Australians who want to come to French Polynesia have to go through New Zealand or Fiji. But we have a new CEO for Air Tahiti Nui and one of his first tasks is to assess all the routes that we are currently serving, to decide if we maintain them or change some or add new routes. Each route is a very heavy investment, but Australia is a good candidate for this, I think.” .
