Six months after the outbreak of violence in New Caledonia, Michel Barnier sends the presidents of the National Assembly and Senate to defuse tensions.
The President of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, and the President of the French Senate, Gérard Larcher, will be in New Caledonia on Sunday. New Caledonia for a “concertationA tense “dialogue”, six months after the outbreak of violence triggered by a hotly contested constitutional reform.
They are due to land in Nouméa in the evening, and will begin nearly three days of meetings from Monday to Wednesday with local political forces, employers, unions and other Caledonian players.
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On Monday morning – Nouméa time, Sunday evening in France – they will visit the Customary Senate, before a formal session of the Congress of New Caledonia on Tuesday, during which they will address the elected representatives.
The will to act in all “humility“
In an interview with Monde On Saturday, they called for progress on the New Caledonian nickel crisis, the archipelago’s economic lung, rather than focusing solely on the political issue. “Everything is linked“, there is “a chance of reaching a global settlement“said Yaël Braun-Pivet.
The question of enlarging the electorate for provincial elections should only be “an issue of concern”.part of the overall agreementwhich must be found,” added the President of the French Senate, assuring us that he was willing to act in all “humility“, without “wanting to force“, for “move towards a high degree of autonomy without severing ties with the Republic“.
Renewing the dialogue
Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher have been asked by Prime Minister Michel Barnier to visit New Caledonia to renew dialogue between independentists and loyalists. They have been at loggerheads over the way out of the 1998 Nouméa Accord since the third referendum in 2021, in which pro-Kanaky proponents boycotted the vote but the “no” side won by a wide margin.
However, the parliamentary duo intend to remain autonomous during this trip, at a time when the management of the Caledonian dossier, which has been bristling between Beauvau, the Élysée and Matignon for many months, is attracting a great deal of local criticism. Moreover, they will be in reduced numbers during this visit, with no government representatives and no elected representatives to accompany them.
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“It will be reassuring for Caledonians to see that at the highest level of government, the two presidents of the chambers travel to the other side of the world.“welcomes New Caledonian Senator Georges Naturel (LR group). Michel Barnier also plans to visit the Pebble”.when the time comes“.
The riots, which left thirteen people dead, including two gendarmes, were triggered by the previous government’s desire to push through a highly sensitive constitutional reform aimed at enlarging the electorate, frozen since 2007, for provincial elections. Since then, the new Barnier coalition has abandoned the reform, and these elections have been postponed until November 2025 at the latest.
This is a clear attempt at appeasement, at a time when the expansion of the electoral body is seen as a coup de force by the pro-independence camp, which fears that the indigenous Kanak people will be marginalized.