The French National Assembly has voted to allow “native” voters to take part in New Caledonia’s local provincial elections scheduled for next month.

However, the French parliament’s Lower House also refused to include their “spouses”, just like the Senate did two days earlier.

Amid debates in Paris on Wednesday evening (Thursday NZT), the vote to include people who were born in New Caledonia since 1998 came at an absolute majority of 386 in favour and 127 against.

• READ MORE: French Senate endorses change to New Caledonia’s ‘frozen’ electoral roll
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

But the vote on this “organic bill”, only weeks ahead of crucial elections to be held on in the French Pacific territory, is still subject to the verdict of the French Constitutional Council.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who took part in the heated debates, said the main purposes of the partial “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s electoral restrictions was to rectify “growing distortions” in New Caledonia’s electoral roll.

He said the restrictions were imposed as part of the implementation of the autonomy Nouméa Accord signed in 1998 (since referred to as the “frozen” electoral roll).

But since 1998, due to demographic changes, the proportion of “native” people (from all ethnic groups) has grown from seven percent to 17 percent — an estimated 10,500 people.

‘Small step’ but ‘major’
Lecornu reacted to the vote to include “natives”, saying even though it could be regarded as a “small step”, it was a “major step forward” and a “victory for good sense”.

But the French Lower House’s vote failed to endorse another amendment regarding the “spouses” of qualified voters and whether they could also be included in the “special electoral roll” (specifically designed for provincial elections).

The vote on this specific topic was one vote short (164 against and 163 in favour).

The “spouses” category includes about 1700 people who are married to qualified voters — either by legal marriage or by way of a civil union pact (what the French civil status refers to as PACS) for a minimum period of five years.

Pro-independence FLNKS MP Emmanuel Tjibaou, during debates, repeated that New Caledonia’s electoral roll could not be modified “without the agreement of the colonised people” (the indigenous Kanak population) and that a prior “consensus on a comprehensive agreement” was required.

Talks in view of such a comprehensive agreement were mooted by Lecornu, after the crucial elections to be held on 28 June 2026.

The French PM also promised that a comprehensive agreement on New Caledonia’s political future would be finalised “by the end of this year”.

Tjibaou assurance
Tjibaou, during debates, assured that his pro-independence camp remained engaged in view of the announced post-elections discussions, sometime in July.

However, for the pro-France side (parties that wish New Caledonia to remain a part of France), the inclusion of natives but not of the “spouses” was mainly regarded as “disappointing” and “insufficient”.

An emotional pro-France MP for New Caledonia, Nicolas Metzdorf (Les Loyalistes), during debates on Wednesday, said even though he was “very happy for the natives of New Caledonia” — “for us, this is far from being enough”.

“You are the shame of the Republic, you are the shame of New Caledonia”, he lashed out at French MPs.

He warned that since the “spouses” were still denied the right to vote at those local elections, his party would not take part in the announced talks with the French government after the poll and that they would now wait until the next French Presidential elections in 2027.

“We have nothing left to expect from this government”, he told the House.

Local reactions
New Caledonia’s Senator Georges Naturel (Les Républicains, rightwing), who was the mover of the motion in the French Parliament, hailed the lawmakers’ vote (both in the Senate and the National Assembly), saying the inclusion of “natives” was “a gesture of justice and democratic consistency”.

However, he remained cautious on the upcoming verdict from France’s Constitutional Council, saying the legal framework was “narrow”.

One of the leaders of moderate pro-independence group “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance, which split from FLNKS in 2024), Victor Tutugoro, said this was a “wise decision” on the part of French MPs, because it was in keeping with the spirit of the 1998 Nouméa Accord.

Speaking on behalf of the moderate Wallisian-based Éveil Océanien party, Milakulo Tukumuli said he was rather satisfied with the outcome of the vote, because “it is totally in keeping with our position”.

The very issue of modifications to New Caledonia’s conditions of eligibility for voters was perceived as one of the main triggering factors that led to riots in May 2024, causing 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) in material damages, a drop of 13.5 percent in the local GDP, as well as thousands of unemployed due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.

Due to the riots, New Caledonia’s provincial elections have been postponed three times since 2024.

Those elections are crucial in the sense that they will choose new members for New Caledonia’s three provincial assembles (North, South and the Loyalty outer islands) and then, proportionally, will determine the makeup of the territorial Congress and its “collegial” government, as well as its president.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The French Senate has endorsed proposed changes to New Caledonia’s restricted electoral roll to allow “native” people to vote in next month’s local elections.

The proposed changes relax current vote restrictions enforced under the Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998, a situation often referred to as the “frozen” electoral roll.

The relaxing measure concerns an estimated 10,000+ voters, who were born in New Caledonia since 1998 and have since reached the voting age of 18.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The measures, initially perceived as a way to protect against any dilution of the indigenous Kanak voters, only concerned about 8 percent of the population.

But as time went by, it was now barring 17 percent, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told French Senators on Monday evening Paris time.

He said this growing proportion infringed on France’s principles of universal and equal suffrage.

After hours of debates in Paris, the vote on Monday was 304 in favour and 20 against.

Obtained a pledge
Over the past few weeks, Lecornu held more talks with New Caledonian politicians from all sides of the spectrum, and said he had obtained a pledge that after the 28 June 2026 provincial elections, everyone would come back to the table and resume comprehensive political talks concerning New Caledonia’s future status.

He said the talks would start as soon as July 2026 and would have to bring an outcome “before the end of the year”.

Yes to ‘natives’, no to ‘spouses’
But the Senate did not approve of another amendment which aimed at extending the “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s electoral roll to “spouses” of qualified voters.

The inclusion of those who are regarded as spouses was aimed at those who had been married (or entered into a French Civil Union pact) there for at least five years and latest estimates showed this concerned between 1500 to 1800 people.

New Caledonia’s Senator (Les Républicains, right-wing) Georges Naturel, who was the mover of the motion, admitted himself that this additional clause for “spouses” would potentially expose the text to a censure from the French Constitutional Council.

New Caledonia’s other Senator Robert Xowie (pro-independence FLNKS) warned of yet another attempt of “passage en force” which would probably make the provincial elections campaign “even more radical”.

The proposed changes to New Caledonia’s electoral makeup come less than six weeks ahead of crucial elections in the French Pacific territory.

The provincial elections are scheduled to be held on 28 June and, based on proportional representation, they will determine not only New Caledonia’s three provincial assemblies (North, South and the Loyalty Islands), but also the territorial Congress, its local government and its president.

Lecornu: Status quo would sow seeds of fresh violence
Taking the floor on Monday before the Senate, Lecornu stressed that not changing New Caledonia’s electoral rule “cannot be a solid base for the future”.

Lecornu said not doing anything would potentially sow the seeds of fresh violence in New Caledonia.

Earlier attempts to change New Caledonia’s status under the French Constitution, in May 2024, have led to insurrectional riots, which caused 14 deaths and over 2 billion euros (abot NZ$3.9 billion) in damages, as well as thousands of jobs lost due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.

Lecornu said his government’s Bill was meant to offer New Caledonia’s political stakeholders — both pro-France and pro-independence — a “balanced” compromise.

But this reform for “natives” still has many hurdles to pass.

On Wednesday (local time), the French Lower House, the National Assembly, which is divided and less likely to approve the French Organic Bill, is also to vote on the same text.

On April 2, the National Assembly rejected an earlier attempt to change France’s Constitution to implement the outcome of talks held in July 2025 (Bougival talks) and in January 2026 (Matignon-Oudinot talks). The process was proposing to create a “State” of New Caledonia and a correlated “Nationality”, all under the French framework.

Mixed feelings from New Caledonia’s polarised Congress
A few hours earlier on Monday in Nouméa, New Caledonia’s Congress was also convened at the request of the French government.

The meeting was also dedicated to the Organic Bill later debated in the Senate.

The request was to provide French lawmakers with a snapshot of the parties’ views regarding the text.

The sitting lasted hours in Nouméa and, once again, it was the reiteration of each party’s stance on the proposed changes to the electoral roll conditions of eligibility. The final vote reflected a polarised landscape, with each party camping on their respective positions.

On the pro-France side, most were in favour of opening the vote to the “natives”, but many regretted that the same could not be done for their spouses.

“Which country in the world is barring its own children to choose their local representatives? None,” an indignant pro-France Rassemblement group leader Virginie Ruffenach said.

“Not now,” replied UC-FLNKS group leader Pierre-Chanel Tutugoro, who said the electoral roll was “a fundamental pillar of (New Caledonia’s decolonisation process, as enshrined in the (1998) Nouméa Accord”.

Tutugoro said this could not be modified outside of a wider political agreement.

The final vote in the Congress on the inclusion of “natives” reflected those divisions: 25 in favour (including pro-France Rassemblement and pro-independence UNI [Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance]), 14 against (pro-independence Union Calédonienne-FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front]) and 13 abstentions (pro-France Les Loyalistes).

More pre-election local moves on the local front
Meanwhile, over the weekend, the four main components of the pro-France block announced a pact to contest the upcoming provincial elections as a united front.

These are Sonia Backès (Républicains Calédoniens), Nicolas Metzdorf (Génération NC), Alcide Ponga (Rassemblement — Les Républicains) and Gil Brial (Mouvement Populaire Calédonien).

In a joint statement, they have announced they have chosen the “general interest”, based on common candidates.

“Together, we share the essential: our indefectible attachment to France, civil peace, democracy and institutional stability,” they wrote.

“On 28 June, the choice will be simple: between division that paralyses and union that builds”.

At a media conference held on Friday, May 15, FLNKS leader Christian Téin said they remained open to talks with other parties.

He said there was a “will to build our country with all voluntary groups”, including in New Caledonia’s Southern province (where the capital Nouméa is located and traditionally perceived as pro-France).

Security reinforcements to arrive soon: French High Commissioner
Speaking to local Radio Rythme Bleu on Monday, France’s High Commissioner in New Caledonia Jacques Billant said preparations were currently being made in preparation of the French Pacific territory’s provincial elections.

“My priority as High Commissioner is that the elections take place in a serene atmosphere so that every political force can campaign in the best possible conditions and that each and every voter can exercise their civic right”.

He said the French Ministry of Interior (Home Affairs) “will allow reinforcements for New Caledonia. They will arrive gradually starting mid-June”.

“We’re talking about over 300 gendarmes who will arrive to reinforce the 2000 police force and gendarmes already deployed.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Niue’s assembly has re-elected Dalton Tagelagi as its prime minister, continuing his leadership for the next three years.

Tagelagi, 57, has led Niue since 2020 and was nominated alongside Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui during the leadership vote.

The 19th Niue Assembly was officially sworn in on Wednesday local time.

• READ MORE: Other Niue reports

Billy Talagi was sworn in as the new Speaker of Parliament.

Pacific Media News reported Tagelagi won a narrow 11-9 leadership vote, and the result confirms continuity in leadership but exposes a deeply divided Parliament with MPs split almost evenly between the two leadership nominees.

Niue’s 20-member Assembly is elected every three years, made up of 14 village representatives and six common roll MPs elected across the country.

Addressing parliament after his re-election, Tagelagi called for unity in the new term.

‘Challenging times’
“These are challenging times when we go into elections because we have different perspectives and understanding that sometimes this might divide our families and affect our relationships with one another,” he said.

“I ask you to come together in this Assembly, that we make decisions for the good of the people. I humbly ask you all to work together as we move forward with the 19th Legislative Assembly and government.”

PMN’s Inangaro Vaka’afi told RNZ Pacific Waves Tagelagi had been adamant he wanted another term.

“And also try and complete some of the work that they have already started,” she said.

She said there is a mixture of reaction to how Tagelagi had led the country so far.

“I think it’s not necessarily individual MPs, but you remember that they are representing their village constituency or a common role seat.

“So perhaps there has been some sentiment on the ground in terms of situation on the island, or where the economy is at the moment, also just knowing what’s happening, because some of the work that’s been done doesn’t necessarily get filtered down to grassroots.

‘Finest of margins’
“But I know that there are people on island who are quite satisfied and happy with the direction that they’ve been going, and then there are others who are not, especially when you think about — he represents a village constituency for Alofi South, which is the largest voting population on the island, and he managed to secure his seat by the finest of margins, by one vote.

“And if one were to sit back and just analyse that there’s obviously, I guess, requests or some want from within his constituency to pay a bit more attention to the village. And understandably, because you are the leader of the country, you do have to put the interest of a whole nation in front of mind.

“But don’t forget that you also were placed in that position by your village constituency.”

The new 19th Legislative Assembly also saw a record seven women elected, making up 35 percent of the House — the highest in the nation’s history.

The six common roll seats went to Robert BJ Rex, Moira Enetama, Richmond Lisimoni-Togahai, Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui, Sonya Talagi and Kahealani Hekau, alongside village representatives, several of whom were elected unopposed.

Robert BJ Rex, who topped the common roll vote with 560 ballots, told BCN he was honoured by the outcome.

“My life is based in community. Not only my community, but just my presence around any group or any community, I have tried to be there and get involved and support in any way I can.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Solomon Islands has entered a new political era. In a historic morning at Parliament House yesterday, Matthew Cooper Wale was elected as the nation’s new Prime Minister.

His victory marks the culmination of a dramatic week in Honiara and signals a potential shift in both the country’s internal management and its place on the global stage.

Wale, the longtime Leader of the Opposition, defeated former Foreign Minister Peter Shanel Agovaka in a secret ballot, winning 26 votes to 22.

• READ MORE: China’s growing grip on the fragile Solomon Islands media sector
• Solomon Islands PM Jeremiah Manele ousted after just over two years in power
• Other Solomon islands reports

The result was greeted with cheers from supporters gathered outside Parliament, Honiara and around the country, as the 57-year-old leader prepared to take the oath of office before Governor-General Sir David Tiva Kapu.

The road to victory
The path to the premiership was anything but simple. Just eight days ago, the previous government led by Jeremiah Manele collapsed after losing a motion of no-confidence.

For years, Matthew Wale has been the most prominent voice of dissent in the Solomon Islands, often coming close to the top job but never quite reaching it. After falling short in the 2019 and 2024 leadership votes, many viewed Wale as the perpetual runner-up.

However, today’s result proves that his persistence and his message of “breaking the shackles” finally resonated with a majority of his fellow Members of Parliament.

In his first address following the announcement, Prime Minister-elect Wale was humble but realistic.

“We take the government at a difficult time,” Wale told the press. “Change is coming. These changes are necessary, and they may be painful. I ask that you join your government in putting your hand to the plough.”

Profile of a leader
Who is Matthew Wale? Born on 13 June 1968, in Ambu Village, Malaita Province, Matthew Cooper Wale is a seasoned veteran of the Pacific political landscape. Before entering the world of policy and Parliament, he was an accountant — a background that many believe informs his disciplined approach to the national budget.

Wale first entered Parliament in 2008 during a byelection for the Aoke/Langalanga constituency. He quickly made a name for himself as a fiery and articulate speaker. Unlike many politicians who stay in the background, Wale has never been afraid of a verbal scrap on the floor of Parliament.

Over the past 18 years, he has served in various roles, but he is best known for leading the Solomon Islands Democratic Party (SIDP) and acting as the primary check on the power of former Prime Ministers Manasseh Sogavare and Jeremiah Manele.

In late 2024, he was even awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for his long service to the public and political life of the country, a testament to his standing both at home and within the Commonwealth.

A vision of ‘economic liberation’
What does a Matthew Wale government look like? Throughout his career, Wale has championed a few core beliefs that he calls his “pillars of change”, “anti-corruption and “elite capture”.

Wale’s most frequent target is what he calls “elite capture” — the idea that a small group of powerful people in Honiara control most of the country’s wealth. He has promised to dismantle these systems to ensure resources reach the rural provinces.

Education and health: A vocal advocate for the “ordinary family”, Wale has consistently pushed for increased funding for hospitals and free, high-quality education. He believes that a nation cannot flourish if its citizens are not healthy and skilled.

Political stability: To end the cycle of “grasshopping” (where MPs switch parties for personal gain), Wale has signaled he will seek to strengthen laws that keep political parties disciplined and accountable.

The ‘China question’ and global relations: Perhaps the most watched aspect of Wale’s new leadership will be his foreign policy. For years, Wale was a staunch critic of the 2022 security pact signed with China, warning that it could “jeopardise” relationships with traditional partners like Australia and the United States.

Tone has evolved
However, as a pragmatist, Wale’s tone has evolved. While he is expected to rebalance the nation’s relationships — likely warming ties with Canberra and Washington — he has acknowledged that Chinese infrastructure is now a reality in the Solomon Islands.

He is unlikely to tear up existing agreements overnight, but observers expect a more “balanced” approach that prioritises Solomon Islands’ sovereignty above all else.

As the sun sets on the nation today, the atmosphere is one of cautious optimism. The challenges facing Prime Minister Wale are immense: a struggling economy, high cost of living, and a deeply divided Parliament.

But for today, the man who spent nearly two decades in the wings finally has the chance to lead. Matthew Wale’s message to the people is clear: the road ahead will be hard, but the destination — a fairer, more transparent Solomon Islands — is worth the effort.

The “Hapi Isles” are watching, and the world is, too.

Campion Ohasio is a Solomon Islands-based self-taught visual artist, graphic designer, and prominent political cartoonist known for capturing South Pacific social issues. He gained early recognition in the 1990s for his work on Uni Tavur at the University of Papua New Guinea and later as a editor for the Solomons Voice. This commentary is republished with the author’s permission.

As New Caledonia marks the second anniversary of a spate of unrest and riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, the situation on the ground remains tense, on the political, economic and security levels.

Politically, over the past two years, there have been sequences of discussion between local stakeholders and the French State.

Under the now former Minister for Overseas Territories, Manuel Valls, a series of talks in the suburbs of Paris (Bougival) in July 2025, led to a document that seems to provide a roadmap for more powers for the French Pacific territory, including the prospect of a “State” of New Caledonia, with its associated “nationality”.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

This Bougival process was, however, denounced by the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) which said, after its delegates had initially signed the agreement, that their signatures were withdrawn.

Other parties, including the “moderate” pro-independence PALIKA and UPM, committed to the agreement.

But the legislative byproducts of the Bougival document, including a constitutional amendment and an organic law, could not be enacted, especially as a result of a rebuke from the French National Assembly on April 2 this year.

Through a game of alliances between local and mainland French parties, the rejection of the Bougival-inspired bills came from both left (Socialists) and far-left (La France Insoumise) parties and even from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN).

As French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced earlier this month, after holding a fresh series of talks with local politicians, he had decided that crucial local elections should be held on June 28, most of the local parties have now entered into campaign mode.

The poll, which had been postponed three times since May 2024 (the date originally set) is now once again at the centre of debates, especially on the sensitive question of who will be qualified to cast their votes.

Since the Nouméa Accord was signed in 1998, and as part of its implementation, the electoral roll is currently “frozen”. It means it excludes people who were born or have resided in New Caledonia for an uninterrupted 10 years after November 1998.

There have been talks on an “adjustment” of the sensitive electoral roll to at least include people who were born in New Caledonia and have reached voting age since 1998.

Relaxing this criterion — which was originally designed as a temporary measure to guard against a potential risk of “diluting” the indigenous Kanak population vote — would concern about 10,000 new voters, usually referred to as “the natives”.

But this issue is crystallising again tensions and passions in New Caledonia, just like it did in reaction to an earlier attempted constitutional amendment which, in May 2024, was also perceived as the main trigger for the demonstrations, followed by unrest, staged by pro-independence parties.

But two years on, French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou and French PM Lecornu, have launched another attempt to “adjust” the provincial roll, focusing on the inclusion of the “natives”.

The provincial elections in New Caledonia elects new members for the three provincial assemblies. Based on the results, they will also determine proportionally, the makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress, the makeup of New Caledonia’s collegial government and its president.

The organic law to integrate the natives is scheduled to be tabled before the Senate on  May 18, and later before the Lower House, the National Assembly.

On the same day in Nouméa, the local Congress will be asked to vote and therefore express its position on the same matter, even though the vote would be non-binding for the French lawmakers.

Under a particularly tight schedule, the proposed organic law is also supposed to be endorsed by France’s Constitutional Council before the end of May 2026.

If it fails, New Caledonia’s provincial elections will still take place, but without any change to the “frozen” electoral roll.

In a special, 30-minute long address dedicated to New Caledonia, on social networks on May 8, Lecornu said the “status quo is not a destiny”.

After the provincial polls, Lecornu intends to bring politicians together again sometime in July to resume wider talks on New Caledonia’s political future.

In preparation for the poll, most of New Caledonia’s political parties and groups, whether pro-independence or pro-France (those who wish New Caledonia to remain a part of France), have already positioned themselves, especially on the electoral roll issue.

In the pro-France camp, there are ructions within leading parties, such as Rassemblement-LR and other components, such as Les Loyalistes or Nicolas Metzdorf’s Génération NC.

Rassemblement president and head of the local government Alcide Ponga’s suggestion that his party should run the provincial elections behind Metzdorf — who is also one of New Caledonia’s two representatives at the French National Assembly — has drawn criticism and several resignations from Rassemblement.

Since August 2024, the FLNKS has lost two of its pillars: the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and the UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia) have formed their own “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance) group, mostly based on their disapproval of the hardline approach promoted by the main component of FLNKS, Union Calédonienne and its allied “pressure groups”.

One of those groups, the CCAT (Field Action Coordination Committee), was perceived as the main force behind the protests that later degenerated into riots, in May 2024.

In August 2024, CCAT leader Christian Téin was elected as FLNKS president, even though he was at the time serving a pre-trial jail term in Mulhouse (north-east of mainland France).

Pending the ruling on his case for alleged crime-related charges, which has not happened yet, Téin was allowed to return to New Caledonia.

The purpose of the march was to reaffirm that “the fight is not over” and to pay homage to the Kanak “martyrs” of May 2024.

“We are here because what happened in 2024 is about to happen again,” FLNKS politburo member Henri Juni told the crowd, denouncing what he terms another “passage en force” from the French State.

Juni said the FLNKS now aimed at restoring “maximal unity” within the pro-independence camp to obtain maximal results at the coming provincial elections.

FLNKS’s official stance on the matter is that the electoral roll can be modified, but that this can only take place as part of a comprehensive agreement on the future of New Caledonia.

PALIKA, on its part, held an extraordinary congress over the weekend that mostly concluded that its commitment to the Bougival process, further reinforced by more talks in January 2026, had now de facto come to an end, since it regarded this process as also de facto ended due to the April 2026 French parliament’s rejection.

In view of the June 2026 provincial polls, PALIKA is now calling for “mobilisation” from voters “in order to create the conditions of a ‘rapport de force’ to support our project of full sovereignty in partnership”.

On the sensitive issues of relaxing the restrictions of the electoral roll, PALIKA says in a release published on Tuesday that they are in favour of a readjustment for the “natives”.

One heart, one voice
On the pro-France side, parties are in support of the relaxation of the electoral roll, not only for the “natives”, but also for qualified “spouses”.

A local association named “Un, Coeur, une voix” (One heart, one voice, or OHOV) is campaigning against the minimal inclusion of “natives”, but calls for a wider opening for the roll.

“This is a minimal adjustment that institutionalises a durable exclusion”, OHOV wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron early in May 2026.

OHOV is also preparing to bring the matter to a court, in opposition to the partial “readjustment” of the proposed organic law to eventually contest the future outcome of the provincial polls.

“You have thousands of (New) Caledonians who were born there, or their spouses, … And they cannot vote… This is a matter of justice, of balance also and this is not a great demographic upset, it’s a point of equilibrium”, Minister Moutchou pleaded earlier this week during an interview with French national media France Info.

Security issues
On the security front, French High commissioner Jacques Billant has already enforced a ban on the sale of alcohol between 11 and 17 May 2026. The only exception being the sale of alcohol at New Caledonia’s international airport, Nouméa-La Tontouta.

Billant said this was “to prevent any public order unrest”, or “events and demonstrations” taking place around the symbolic date of 13 May 2024.

Earlier in April, 3-star Lieutenant-General Pierre Poty, who commands all gendarmerie forces in France’s Overseas Territories, told New Caledonian media French forces were “ready to confront fresh unrest, thanks to its prepositioned forces and their armoured components”.

But he said he did not see “any precursor sign of a resumption of violence”.

Meanwhile, in Nouméa, a neighbourhood watch group of so-called “Citizen Resistance Collective” (CRC), said earlier this week they have remained vigilant and would not allow “another May 13 to happen, because the response would be immediate and determined”.

The CRC was formed during the 2024 unrest, mainly to protect their property against burning and looting from protesters.

Early in May 2026, the French High Commission in Nouméa revealed latest statistics showing that in 2025, the number of burglaries on residential properties has risen by 46.7 percent, mostly in the capital Nouméa and its urban surroundings.

Economy
New Caledonia’s economic situation remains a matter for concern.

Most private sector stakeholders have sounded the alarm bell over the past months, despite French assistance being deployed over the past two years, mostly to refinance the construction of destroyed public buildings and infrastructure.

Businesses, employers and employees are up in arms against the current situation which deprives business leaders and investors of the required “visibility” to regain confidence.

Most of them are demanding that a political agreement be reached, which would provide them a minimum of predictability in the long term.

“We don’t believe things are getting better”, New Caledonia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) vice president Stéphane Yoteau told an economic forum earlier this month.

Yoteau said businesses in New Caledonia have now reached “a degree of absolute urgency”.

“The situation is catastrophic, we’re now caught in a vicious circle that is feeding itself: less business (-20 percent), less employment (-12,000), less spending revenues (household budgets have lost 10 percent on average), so there is less consumption, therefore less public tax income, etc. And so on”, the CCI leader explained.

The forum gathered representatives from employers federations MEDEF-NC, CPME-NC (small and medium industries confederation) and FEINC (federation of industries of New Caledonia).

‘A degree of absolute urgency’
They are asking for five emergency measures, including a postponement or a tax holiday for some social contributions.

They said these measure could be drawn from French government assistance and re-directed to help small and medium businesses keep their heads above water.

They say New Caledonia’s economy is “on the verge of collapse” and “economic breakdown”.

“The question today is not even to access financing faculties. There is no more business in New Caledonia. Everything stops,” FEINC President Xavier Benoist told local media.

He said 40 percent of businesses only have a few weeks of visibility and 45 percent have only three months left in terms of cash flow.

Despite the recent announcement from the French PM of a “re-foundation” plan for more than 2 billion euros over the next five years, business leaders are asking for an immediate emergency package to “save New Caledonia’s economy”.

“What we are asking is not a favour, it’s not assistance. It’s something to keep our economic fabric alive. Otherwise, it will continue to go down”, said Sonia Critg, vice-president of the small industries branch of the CPME.

“Not doing anything today amounts to deliberately choosing a much deeper and much more expensive social crisis tomorrow”, she stressed.

On May 11, more than 100 business leaders, employees, unemployed, retired workers, staged a protest march in front of New Caledonia’s government building in downtown Nouméa.

Once again, at the heart of their plea, was a cry for assistance to ease their situation which, they said, was “no longer bearable”.

Minister for Economy Christopher Gygès received a delegation and promised some exemption measures were in the pipeline, especially targeting small and very small businesses.

Recently appointed head of the French inter-ministerial mission for reconstruction, Amaury Decludt recently completed his first mission in the French Pacific territory.

He assured that out of the more than 2 billion euros earmarked by France, about 10 percent was ready to be mobilised, mainly for large infrastructure projects such as one road across New Caledonia’s main island or a project to build bus exchange stations in rural areas.

He said talks were ongoing regarding New Caledonia’s crucial nickel mining sector and has been facing major difficulties over the past few years..

Out of the three companies currently in existence, two (one in the North of the main island, the other in the South) were currently up for sale.

Decludt also said the French government was also in contact with the European Union to persuade Brussels of the appeal of New Caledonia’s nickel.

New Caledonia’s nickel industry has been facing major structural challenges over the past few years, mainly due to the rise of world-class competitors in Indonesia, as well as high costs of production mainly related to high cost of the energy.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman has resigned, posting on social media that today, Friday, was her last day at TVNZ.

The broadcaster confirmed Maiki Sherman had resigned from her role.

“As the first wahine Māori to lead 1News’ political team, Maiki has made a significant contribution to our journalism,” TVNZ said in a statement.

• READ MORE: TVNZ’s political editor Maiki Sherman resigns after two weeks of making headlines — Catrin Owen
• ACT leader David Seymour is seeking to undermine public broadcasting — Steven Cowan
• Oceania and global media freedom reports

“Her reporting – from presenting our polls, to covering general elections and bringing breaking news out of the Beehive — has helped keep audiences across Aotearoa informed and engaged with the decisions being made on their behalf.

A statement from me… pic.twitter.com/yUdOKWEqqM

— Maiki Sherman (@MaikiSherman) May 8, 2026

“Maiki’s nomination in this year’s media awards for Political Journalist of the Year is a testament to the calibre of her work. Today, Friday 8 May is Maiki’s last day.”

She confirmed Friday was her last day at TVNZ in a post on social media, saying her position had become “untenable”.

“The level of scrutiny on me this past week has been unprecedented, and this has placed enormous pressure on me. My role has become untenable and so I am finishing up with TVNZ today. I wish the team well,” she said.

Sherman had used a homophobic slur against Stuff journalist Lloyd Burr during pre-Budget drinks in Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ office last May.

Offensive comment
In her post, Sherman acknowledged the offensive comment had been made and said there was “no excuse for the language I used,” but went on to say she had apologised to Burr and Willis the next morning, and informed her manager.

“From my own perspective and for context, my comment was made in response to deeply personal and inappropriate remarks made to me that evening.

“This does not excuse my actions, I took responsibility for that a year ago, it is merely to help others understand why I reacted in the way that I did.”

The event had come to public attention in a column by right-leaning political commentator Ani O’Brien last Tuesday.

In a statement, Stuff said the company “stands by its previous comments on the matter”, which included saying it would respect Burr’s wishes not to comment further.

She was also suspended from Parliament last week for five days for breaching parliamentary rules by pursuing an interview with National’s chief whip Stuart Smith.

National’s campaign chair Simeon Brown had complained about TVNZ’s pursuit of Smith, saying the team had followed Smith into his corridor, “aggressively” banged on his door for several minutes, refused to accept Smith declining to comment further, and pressured Smith about how his refusal would be portrayed the following morning if he did not speak.

Publicised complaint
Brown publicised his complaint on social media, but TVNZ disputed the details of his account and said the appropriate place for such complaints was with Parliament’s Speaker.

Brown’s subsequent complaint to Speaker Gerry Brownlee resulted in the suspension.

Smith had been a central figure in speculation about a potential spill in National, with several MPs having leaked anonymously to the media — including questioning the leadership of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in the wake of poor polling and ahead of a reshuffle of Cabinet.

Reports suggested Smith had sought to speak to Luxon over Easter weekend about MPs’ concerns about his leadership, and Smith had largely refused to comment on the story for four days, finally denying it in a written statement sent by the prime minister’s office.

That denial followed Luxon calling a vote of confidence in himself at a caucus meeting, after which Luxon was heavily critical of the media, saying he would not engage “if the media want to keep focusing on speculation and rumour”.

He subsequently cancelled his weekly slot on TVNZ’s Breakfast with host Tova O’Brien, who was one of those who broke the story about Smith.

Luxon had faced criticism over his three interviews with O’Brien who started as host in late March. He said his job was “the CEO” in their first face-off – with O’Brien interrupting to say his job was prime minister – and the following week he struggled to name a Māori MP in his Cabinet.

Challenging few weeks
In a message to staff, TVNZ’s chief news and content officer Nadia Tolich said the past few weeks had been challenging for Sherman, and she respected the decision to resign.

She thanked staff for supporting each other and “keeping the mahi front of mind”, saying she wished Sherman well in what she chose to do next.

Tolich noted Sherman was a nominee in this year’s media awards for Political Journalist of the Year and said this was a “testament to the calibre of her work”.

Plans for who would fill the role would be shared to staff in due course, the message said.

• Pacific Media Watch reports: In the latest 2026 World Press Freedom Index released last week, New Zealand ranked 22nd, a further decline of six places, behind South Africa (21st) but ahead of Australia (33rd).

New Caledonia’s crucial provincial elections will be held next month on Sunday, June 28, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has announced.

Lecornu’s announcement was widely relayed by New Caledonian politicians who have just participated in a video conference meeting yesterday.

The announcement also came with a condition: that the current restrictions on voter eligibility will be relaxed and that people born in New Caledonia and their spouses should now be allowed to cast their votes.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Even though the partial reopening of the electoral roll is reported to have been agreed by politicians from across the political spectrum during the same meeting with Lecornu, both pro-independence and pro-France have reacted expressing dissatisfaction on the compromise.

This concerns about 10,000 voters who will be allowed to vote and could not under the current restrictions as part of the “freeze” imposed by the 1998 Nouméa Accord.

The new conditions, however, remain to be enacted by an organic law yet to be endorsed by French lawmakers.

“It’s obviously not the ‘unfrozen’ electoral that we were calling for,” pro-France Rassemblement party leader Virginie Ruffenach reacted on social media.

“But this is a way forward,” she commented.

Broader political pact
Ruffenach said political stakeholders in New Caledonia had pledged to resume talks in July 2023 regarding a broader political agreement on New Caledonia’s future status after the much-awaited provincial elections.

Any modification to the French Pacific territory’s status would then be subjected to a Constitutional Amendment, which has so far failed to be endorsed by French lawmakers.

The latest setback to a Constitutional Amendment Bill was on 2 April 2026 as a result of unlikely alliances and convergences between left and far-left parties (such as La France Insoumise — LFI) and the far-right Rassemblement National.

Another prominent pro-France leader, Sonia Backès, commenting on this partial “opening” of the restrictions, said this was “insufficient” and “democratically unacceptable”.

She also mentioned local moves to bring the matter before the European Court of Human Rights “to have other excluded” voter categories re-included in New Caledonia’s “special electoral list”.

Altogether, the “special list” excluded about 37,000 voters(about 17 percent of the “general” list of 218,000 registered voters in New Caledonia), who are otherwise allowed to vote at other elections (such as French national polls), but do not meet the requirement for provincial elections (including being born outside New Caledonia or having arrived after November 1998).

The pro-independence FLNKS party, who also took part in the video talks on Thursday at the French High Commission in Nouméa, also reacted saying it “takes note” of the date announced by Lecornu and that the polls would be now open to “natives” and their spouses.

‘Heart of the Nouméa Accord’
But it added that the electoral provisions and conditions are “at the heart of the Nouméa Accord” and are “not negotiable”.

“They are at the heart of the Nouméa Accord and of the decolonisation process”, the pro-independence party pointed out in a release on Thursday.

“There should be no passage en force and unilateral decision,” it stressed.

New Caledonia’s provincial elections are crucial because their results determine not only the members of New Caledonia’s three provincial assemblies (North, South and the Loyalty Islands), but also the members of the Congress (New Caledonia’s Parliament), the members of its “collegial” government and its future president.

The last time provincial elections were held in New Caledonia was in 2019.

They were then supposed to have been held in 2024, but since then, the poll has been postponed three times.

The last time it was re-scheduled to be held no later than Sunday, 28 June 2026, France’s Constitutional Council warned it would no longer tolerate more postponements.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele has been ousted following a no-confidence vote in Honiara.

Manele was voted out by 26 votes to 22 in Parliament yesterday. There were two absentees.

Manele will remain in office and perform his normal duties until he is officially removed by the Governor-General Sir David Tiva Kapu.

• READ MORE: Other Solomon Islands reports

Parliament has been adjourned sine die to allow time for Sir David and parliament to organise the election of the new prime minister.

Manele, who previously served as the country’s foreign minister, was elected prime minister on 2 May 2024.

It was the third challenge against Manele’s leadership — he had previously survived a motion of no confidence in April 2025 after six ministers and five government backbenchers walked away.

It brings to an end a series of events that began on 15 March, with mass resignations from one of the key coalition parties in Manele’s Government of National Unity (GNUT).

New opposition group
Those members who defected from the coalition formed a new opposition group of 28 MPs in the 50-seat House. The defectors included 10 Cabinet ministers.

Peoples First Party leader Frederick Kologeto told RNZ Pacific at the time that they had lost “trust within the government”.

Manele had refused to convene Parliament for weeks, stating that he would do so only when the time was right, frustrating the opposition who said they had the numerical superiority to oust him.

However, an Appeal Court ruling last Friday ended the political back-and-forth, handing the prime minister a deadline to call Parliament and face a leadership challenge.

Before moving the no-confidence motion, MP for South Vella La Vella, Frederick Kologeto, called on the Prime Minister to resign immediately, citing the opposition’s numerical strength.

But Manele responded by refusing by calling Kologeto “scared”, declaring he would resign but only after stating the reasons for the no-confidence motion against him.

“I have accepted this responsibility not out of personal ambition, but on behalf of a majority of members who stand united with me today,” Kologeto said.

“Party room negotiations and dialogues … proved to be futile. They were not only unhelpful, they were strategically unproductive.”

Manele concedes
In his final statement responding to fiery arguments made for and against the no-confidence motion, Manele warned the opposition leader to “be very careful of who you are dealing with and sitting next to” — a pointed shot at the defectors.

He also claimed that the Appeal Court order raises serious questions about judicial overreach into that timing and management of parliamentary business.

“[The Court of Appeal] decision, with the greatest respect to the court, risks cementing instability into our constitutional arrangements. It creates a pathway where any group of members who are unhappy with the government of the day can combine a motion of no confidence with court proceedings and then ask the judiciary to intervene in the timing and programme of Parliament.”

Manele also made a last ditch attempt to woo opposition MPs to switch sides, saying his government was “willing to accommodate any political party in forming a new government”.

“We are willing to work with their party leaders, including on the issue, on the matter of leadership,” he said.

“We are willing to make that sacrifice so that the work that we have done over the past two years can continue our people and their needs.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Solomon Islands Parliament will convene tomorrow — Thursday, May 7 — to consider a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele.

Parliament House has confirmed to RNZ Pacific that the Clerk to Parliament Jefferson Hallu has issued advisory letters to all MPs that the sitting will begin at 9:30am local time to deal with the motion.

It follows a political saga that culminated in a court ruling that Manele needed to call Parliament to face the motion of no confidence in his leadership.

• READ MORE: Other Solomon Islands politics reports

The Court of Appeal dismissed Manele’s appeal against Chief Justice Sir Albert Palmer’s earlier ruling to that effect.

A drawn-out political impasse began in March after a mass resignation of government ministers and MPs.

The opposition and the defectors formed a new coalition and said they had the numbers for a majority of MPs in the 50-seat House, but have not been able to show that in Parliament because Manele refused to call a sitting.

The opposition coalition then took the matter to the High Court to try and force Manele to call Parliament and face their no-confidence motion.

Police call for public calm
Chief Justice Palmer ruled in their favour and ordered Manele to convene Parliament, and at the same time instructed the Governor-General to do so if he did not.

But the government appealed the ruling and the order to call Parliament was stayed — put on hold — until the appeal could be heard, and the appellate court gave their decision on Friday, May 1.

Police have called for public calm while the democratic process runs its course.

Police Commissioner Ian Vaevaso said police do not take sides in political matters but remain independent and committed to serving the people of the nation while upholding law at all times.

“Police will maintain high visibility presence to ensure the safety of all citizens and will respond to any incidents that may arise. Any unlawful activities will be dealt with accordingly.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

My name is Campion Ohasio, and I am currently the only political cartoonist in Solomon Islands.

In recent weeks, I have received many questions and comments from people across the country about my cartoons.

Some ask why I draw our national leaders in certain ways. Others wonder whether my caricatures are personal attacks or whether they violate the leaders’ rights.

• READ MORE: Other Campion Ohasio political cartoons and commentary
• Campion Ohasio artwork and cartoons

A few have even suggested that I should stop drawing critical cartoons.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain my work clearly and honestly.

As the only political cartoonist in our nation today, my job is simple: I use drawings to comment on the decisions, actions, policies, and laws made by our leaders.

My cartoons are not meant to attack any leader as a person or as a human being. Instead, they highlight issues that affect ordinary Solomon Islanders — issues such as corruption, poor governance, broken promises, and policies that may not serve the public interest.

Public figures hold power
In a democracy like ours, national leaders are public figures. They hold power on behalf of the people, and the people have every right to question how that power is used.

Political cartoons are one peaceful and creative way for citizens to express their views and hold leaders accountable.

As response to the many questions I have received. I believe healthy criticism is not an insult; it is an important part of democracy. Through my cartoons, I hope to encourage Solomon Islanders to think critically, ask questions, and stay engaged in the affairs of our country.

I remain committed to drawing honest cartoons that reflect the realities facing our people, always with the hope that our leaders will listen, improve, and serve the public interest better.

Thank you for your interest in my work.

A political caricature (also called a political cartoon) is a funny or exaggerated drawing that comments on a leader’s decisions, policies, or actions. It uses humour, symbols, and exaggeration to make a point about what the leader is doing in his public role.

Many people mistakenly think that a caricature is a personal attack on the leader as a human being. This is not true.

Eight reasons why leaders’ human rights are not violated
Here are eight reasons why cartoons and caricatures are not a violation of the leader’s human rights:

1 What a political caricature actually does: It criticises the actions, decisions, or policies of the leader.

It does not attack the leader’s basic human rights (such as the right to life, dignity, safety, or personal freedom). It focuses on the leader’s public role, not his private life as a father, husband, or ordinary person.

2 Why it isn’t a personal attack on human rights: Leaders are public figures. When someone becomes a president, prime minister, or national leader, they voluntarily step into the public spotlight. Their decisions affect thousands of citizens. Because of this, they must accept public criticism, including through cartoons and satire.

3 Criticism targets power, not the person: A caricature usually mocks a bad policy, a broken promise, corruption, or a harmful decision: not the leader’s race, family, or basic humanity. For example, drawing a leader as a big balloon floating away from reality is criticising his disconnection from people’s problems, not denying his right to exist.

4 Satire and humour are protected forms of free speech: In a democracy, freedom of expression includes the right to use humour and exaggeration to comment on those in power. Political caricatures have a long history of helping people understand and question government actions.

5 It doesn’t take away basic rights: Drawing a funny or critical cartoon does not stop the leader from: Living safely, having a family, practicing his religion, speaking freely, receiving fair treatment in court. These are real human rights. A caricature does not remove any of them.

6 Public accountability requires public criticism: Leaders exercise public power using taxpayers’ money. Citizens have the legitimate right to comment on how that power is used. Caricatures are one peaceful, creative way to do this.

7 Confusion between criticism and hate: Some leaders or supporters claim any negative drawing is “hate speech” or a human rights violation. This is usually an attempt to avoid accountability. Legitimate political satire is very different from threats, violence, or calls for harm.

8 Thin-skinned leaders weaken democracy: If leaders cannot handle a simple drawing or joke about their policies, it shows they may not be ready for the public scrutiny that comes with power. Strong leaders accept criticism; weak ones try to ban it.

For example: If a cartoon shows a leader pouring money into his own pocket while the people are hungry, it is highlighting possible corruption or bad priorities. It is not saying the leader has no right to live or be treated with dignity. It is saying: “Your policy or action is wrong.”

A political caricature is a form of peaceful criticism, not a personal attack. It doesn’t remove or violate any of the leader’s fundamental human rights. Instead, it exercises the public’s right to question those who hold power.

In a true democracy, leaders must learn to live with satire and criticism. Their job is to serve the people: and the people have the right to laugh, question, and point out when the leader is failing in that duty.

Criticising a leader’s actions through a caricature is about holding power accountable, not denying the leader’s humanity or human rights.

Campion Ohasio is a Solomon Islands-based self-taught visual artist, graphic designer, and prominent political cartoonist known for capturing South Pacific social issues. He gained early recognition in the 1990s for his work on Uni Tavur at the University of Papua New Guinea and later as a editor for the Solomons Voice. This commentary is republished with the author’s permission.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

During the two years I spent writing American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, I encountered numerous mini-Trumps. These self-proclaimed pastors — very few had any formal religious training — preyed on the despair of their congregants.

They were surrounded by sycophants and could not be questioned. They merged fact with fiction, peddled magical thinking and enriched themselves at the expense of their followers.

They claimed their wealth and ostentatious lifestyle, including mansions and private jets, was a sign of being blessed. They insisted they were divinely inspired and anointed by God. They were, within their hermetic circles of their megachurches, omnipotent.

• READ MORE: Lebanon truce extended; Trump says ‘clock is ticking’ for Iran to make deal

These cult pastors promised to use their omnipotence to crush the demonic forces that had created misery in the lives of their followers — unemployment and underemployment, evictions, bankruptcies, poverty, addiction, sexual and domestic abuse, and crippling despair.

The more power the cult leaders possess — according to their followers — the more certain is a promised paradise. Cult leaders stand above the law. Those who desperately place their faith in them want them to be above the law.

Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious adulation and total obedience. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s claim that Donald Trump is able to draw a “perfect map” of the Middle East, or White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statement that Trump is always the “most well-read person in the room,” are two of innumerable examples of the abject fawning required by those in a cult leader’s inner circle. Blind loyalty matters more than competence.

Cult leaders are immune from rational and fact-based critiques amongst those who invest hope in them. This is why Trump’s hardcore followers have not abandoned him and will not abandon him. All the chatter about fissures in the MAGA universe misreads Trump cultists.

All cults are personality cults. They are extensions of the prejudices, worldview, personal style and ideas of the cult leader. Trump, with his faux “Trump crest,” revels in Louis XIV-inspired tasteless kitsch awash in gold Rococo and glittering chandeliers.

The women in Trump’s court have “Mar-a-Lago Faces” — overinflated lips, taut, wrinkle-free skin, silicone gel-filled breast implants and chiseled cheekbones, capped off by gobs of make-up. They wear stiletto heels and garish outfits that Trump finds appealing.

Trump’s men, who in his eyes must be telegenic and from “Central casting,” dress like 1950s advertising executives. They sport Trump-gifted Florsheim black shoes, specifically $145 Lexington Cap Toe Oxfords.

Cults impose dress codes that mirror the style and taste of the cult leader.

The followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, dressed in red and orange robes, often combined with a turtleneck and beads. Heaven’s Gate members wore Nike Decade trainers and black jogging bottoms. Men in the Unification Church, known as Moonies, wore crisp white shirts and pressed slacks. Women wore dresses. They looked as if they were on their way to Sunday School.

Like Jim Jones, who convinced or forced over 900 of his followers — including 304 children aged 17 and younger — to die by ingesting a cyanide-laced drink, Trump is aggressively courting our collective suicide.

Trump dismisses the climate crisis as a hoax. He unilaterally withdraws from nuclear arms agreements and treaties. He antagonises nuclear powers, such as Russia and China. He impetuously launches wars. He alienates and insults US allies. He dreams of annexing Greenland and Cuba. He embraces holy crusade against Muslims.

He attacks his political opponents as enemies and traitors, belittling them with crude insults. He slashes social programmes designed to sustain the vulnerable. He expands an internal security apparatus — masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons — to terrorise the public. Cults do not nurture and protect. They subjugate, annihilate and destroy.

Trump employs the US military without oversight or constraint. He presides, for this reason, over what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called a “world-destroying cult.” Lifton lists eight characteristics of “world-destroying cults” that implant what he calls “totalistic environments.”

These eight characteristics are:

1. Milieu control. The total control of communication within the group.

2. Loading the language. Using “groupspeak” to censor, edit and shut down criticism or opposing ideas. Followers must mouth the mindless Trump-approved clichés and cult jargon.

3. Demand for purity. An us-versus-them view of the world. Those who oppose the group are wrong, unenlightened and evil. They are irredeemable. They are contaminants. They must be eradicated. Any action is justified to protect this purity. The goal of all cult leaders is to widen and make irreconcilable social divisions.

4. Confession: The public confession of past wrongs. In the case of Trump supporters, this includes the disavowal, as US Vice President JD Vance and others have done, of past criticism of Trump, with public admission of their former wrong-thinking.

5. Mystical manipulation. The belief that those in the group are specially chosen with a higher purpose. Those in Trump’s orbit act as though they are divinely elected. They convince themselves that they are not coerced to embrace Trump’s lies and vulgarities — or repeat cult jargon — but do so voluntarily.

6. Doctrine over person. The rewriting and fabrication of personal history to conform to Trump’s interpretation of reality.

7. Sacred Science. Trump’s absurdities — global temperatures are declining rather than rising, the noise from wind turbines cause cancer and ingesting disinfectants such as Lysol is an effective treatment for the coronavirus — are presented as grounded in science. This scientific patina means Trump’s ideas apply to everyone. Those who disagree are unscientific.

8. Dispensing of existence. Nonmembers are “lesser or unworthy beings.” Meaningful existence means being part of the Trump cult. Those outside the cult are worthless. They do not deserve moral consideration.

Trump is no different from past cult leaders, including Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles — the founders of the Heaven’s Gate cult — the Rev. Sun Myung Moon — who led the Unification Church — Credonia Mwerinde — who led the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda — Li Hongzhi — the founder of Falun Gong, and David Koresh, who led the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas.

Cult leaders are deeply insecure, which is why they lash out with fury at the slightest criticism. They mask this insecurity with cruelty, hypermasculinity and bombastic grandiosity. They are paranoid, amoral, emotionally crippled and physically abusive. Those around them, including children, are objects to be manipulated for their enrichment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment.

Cults are characterised by pedophilia and sexual abuse. Those, including Trump, who were frequently in the orbit of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, replicated the abuse endemic in cults.

“People’s Temple children were frequently sexually abused,” writes Margaret Singer in Cults In Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace. “While the group was still in California, teenage girls as young as fifteen had to provide sex for influential people courted by Jones. A supervisor of children at Jonestown had a history of child sexual abuse, and Jones himself assaulted some of the children.

“If husbands and wives were caught talking privately during a meeting, their daughters were forced to masturbate publicly or to have sex with someone the family didn’t like before the entire Jonestown population, children as well as adults.”

Cults, Singer writes, are “a mirror of what is inside the cult leader.”

“He has no restraints on him,” she writes of the cult leader:

“He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really his world.

“What most cult leaders achieve is akin to the fantasies of a child at play, creating a world with toys and utensils. In that play world, the child feels omnipotent and creates a realm of his own for a few minutes or a few hours.

“He moves the toy dolls about. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive. When I see the sand tables and the collections of toys some child therapists have in their offices, I think that a cult leader must look about and place people in his created world much as the child creates on the sand table a world that reflects his or her desires and fantasies.

“The difference is that the cult leader has actual humans doing his bidding as he makes a world around him that springs from inside his own head.”

The language of the cult leader is rooted in verbal confusion. Lies, conspiracy theories, outlandish ideas and contradictory statements, often made in the same statement or only minutes apart, paralysing those attempting to read the cult leader rationally. Absurdism is the point.

The cult leader does not take his or her statements seriously. They often deny ever making them, although they are documented. Lies and truth are irrelevant. The cult leader is not seeking to impart information or truth. The cult leader is seeking to appeal to the emotional needs of cult members.

“Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval,” Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control and Menticide. “They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot — it confuses those who think straight.

“The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counterargument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another.”

It does not matter how many lies uttered by Trump are meticulously documented. It does not matter that Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself by an estimated $1.4 billion over the last year, according to Forbes. It does not matter that he is inept, lazy and ignorant. It does not matter that he stumbles from one disaster to the next, from tariffs, to the war on Iran.

The traditional establishment, whose credibility has been destroyed because of its betrayal of the working class and subservience to the billionaire class and corporations, has little power over Trump’s supporters.

“Their vitriol only increases his popularity. Political cults are the bastard children of a failed liberalism. Trump’s approval rating may be at around 40 percent, as of April 20 — according to an average of multiple polls collated by The New York Times — but his base remains unmovable.

The Democratic Party, rather than pivot to address the social inequality and abandonment of the working class — which it helped orchestrate — has hit upon tax cuts as a road to regaining power. It will, once again, reduce our social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It will offer no reforms to rectify our failed democracy.

This is a gift to Trump and his followers. By refusing to acknowledge responsibility for inequality and proposing programmes to ameliorate the suffering it has caused, Democrats engage in the same kind of magical thinking as Trump cultists.

There is no way out of this political dysfunction unless popular movements rise to cripple the machinery of government and commerce on behalf of a betrayed public. But time is running out. Trump and his goons are serious about invalidating or cancelling the midterm elections if they perceive defeat. If that happens, the cult of Trump will be unassailable.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

• The Chris Hedges Report

A coalition of political parties opposing the Solomon Islands prime minister has accused government lobbyists of trying to woo its MPs with “huge money” bribes to “buy political allegiance”.

It comes amid an ongoing court wrangle over parliamentary moves to oust Jeremiah Manele.

The opposition grouping, which claims to have 28 of the country’s 50 MPs, says it has recorded voice and text messages from lobbyists promising millions of dollars to any five MPs willing to cross the floor to the government.

• READ MORE: Other Solomon Islands political crisis reports

“We have text messages and recorded voice messages from government lobbyists offering huge money. The price tag has increased from thousands to millions to any 5 MPs to move across. The latest attempt involved an offer in millions over the weekend,” the group said in a statement.

RNZ Pacific has viewed screenshots of text messages purportedly sent by Manele’s staff to certain MPs in the opposition coalition, offering up to S$300,000 (about NZ$63,000) to jump ship.

The Solomon Islands Prime Minister’s Office has told RNZ Pacific he will not respond to the allegations.

Manele will find out today from the Court of Appeal if he would be forced to call Parliament to face a motion of no confidence.

The opposition group says it is collecting evidence of the alleged cash inducements which it will provide to lawful authorities for investigation.

Manele, who previously served as the country’s foreign minister, was elected prime minister on 2 May 2024.

He survived a motion of no confidence in April 2025 after six ministers and five government backbenchers walked away.

On March 15, mass resignations from People First Party MPs — one of the key parties in Manele’s Government of National Unity and Transformation (GNUT) — rocked the Melanesian nation.

Since then, there has been a series of back-and-forths from both sides, with Manele maintaining he has the right to continue governing while the opposition group challenges his claim, arguing that his decision to hold on to power is unconstitutional.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Solomon Islands’ Attorney-General is challenging a ruling by the Chief Justice in favour of a new coalition of political parties seeking to oust the Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele.

In the High Court on Tuesday, Sir Albert Palmer ordered Manele to call Parliament within three days to face a motion of no confidence in his leadership.

Sir Albert ruled in favour of a new coalition of 28 MPs (in the 50-member house), including government defectors, who filed a judicial review claim in the High Court.

• READ MORE: Other Solomon islands reports

Palmer denied attempts by Attorney-General John Muria Jr to have the judicial review struck out.

It is the latest development in a political saga that began last month after a mass defection of government ministers to the opposition.

However, the prime minister said in a statement shortly after that Sir Albert’s order raised “profound issues” regarding the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.

Manele added that Muria Jr would appeal the decision “to protect the constitutional integrity of the Office of the Prime Minister for future generations”.

“It is the firm view of the government’s view that certain fundamental legal questions were not adequately dealt with in the judgement,” Manele said.

Remain calm plea
He also urged Solomon Islanders to remain calm as the government sought “absolute legal certainty” over the case in the Court of Appeal.

Muria Jr spoke to local media about an appeal outside the court on Tuesday.

He spoke Solomon Islands pijin, which has been translated: “I think firstly, its appealable, so we will be filing an appeal for that. A lot of the things in the original, all the orders that the claimants were seeking that is not what the Chief Justice has granted.”

Meanwhile, Gabriel Suri, the lawyer for new coalition, said the ruling over the political impasse facing the country represented a significant development in constitutional law.

Speaking outside court, Suri told local reporters that it provided clarity in the event of future constitutional crises.

“The order that he is given today is that the prime minister has a constitutional duty [to call parliament and face a no-confidence-motion] but he failed to exercise this. So that is what he clearly states,” Suri said.

“The prime minister failed to exercise his constitutional duty so he ordered the prime minister to perform his constitutional duty. If he does not perform it then the Governor-General can step in and exercise his residual power.”

‘Constitutional duty’
In his ruling, the Chief Justice stated that Manele had a “constitutional duty” to ensure the motion was brought before Parliament expeditiously and failing to do so was “unlawful.”

Despite their numerical superiority, the group has been locked out of parliament by Manele’s refusal to call a sitting and face a leadership challenge.

The mandatory orders go further in stating that, if the prime minister fails to call parliament within three days, the Governor-General can call parliament and the Speaker must ensure the motion of no confidence is prioritised.

The judgement stated that the judicial review raised questions that were “serious, arguable and justiciable.”

“The claim raises questions at the very core of the constitutional order-namely, the scope and limits of the powers of the Governor-General and the Prime Minister in relation to the summoning of Parliament, and the role of the court where those powers are said not to have been exercised in circumstances giving rise to constitutional impasse,” it said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Territorial Assembly of French Polynesia has for the first time shown a new configuration during its first administrative sitting on Friday, following a mass resignation of a group of young elected members of the ruling Tavini Huiraatira.

This follows the mass resignation of a group of 15 members of the Assembly, now headed by 25-year-old member Tematai Le Gayic.

The mass resignation de facto brings down Tavini’s majority to 22 within the Territorial Assembly (of a total of 57 MPs).

• READ MORE: Rift widens within French Polynesia’s ruling party following municipal election losses
• Other French Polynesia reports

The outcome of the rift within the ruling party is that now, for the first time in its history, it is divided into two groups.

One consists of the remaining “old guard”, headed by historic pro-independence “radical” members such as former president Oscar Temaru, 81, and his closest ally, Antony Géros (currently Speaker of the Assembly and vice-president of the Tavini Party).

On the other side, the breakaway group of Tavini members from a younger generation, called A Fano Tia (Stay the course) now gathers some 15 members.

A Fano Tia is also reported to be close to French Polynesia’s government President Moetai Brotherson, whose father-in-law is Temaru.

To mark their differences with their former party, under which they were elected during the territorial elections in May 2023, A Fano Tia members appeared in the chamber dressed in white in contrast to Tavini’s light blue.

The sitting was marked by heated debates between the two groups, while the opposition “pro-autonomy” (supporters of French Polynesia remaining part of France under the current Autonomy Status) essentially stood as spectators.

‘Independence … can be neither imposed nor rushed’ – Brotherson
As a preview to future debates and local Assembly’s modus operandi, until the next territorial elections, in 2028, questions have been raised as to how a more divided house could function.

There could be more open opposition during debates for future Bills, especially those which are related to points of notorious contention (such as the notion of independence).

Tavini’s hard line, defended by Temaru, favours a short-term process to gain French Polynesia’s independence, including a more confrontational approach towards France.

Speaking last Friday, Brotherson elaborated on the divergence of views regarding independence.

“Independence is not an end in itself . . .  it’s a choice, but this choice can be neither imposed nor rushed,” Brotherson said last week in the chamber.

In earlier statements, Brotherson had favoured a more gradual process within a window of “10 to 15” years.

More than ever, every Bill is likely to be treated on a case-by-case basis and alliances formed accordingly around the vote.

More alliances likely
This could also involve, on the same principle, more alliances between A Fano Tia and pro-autonomy Tapura Huiraatira, as well as a handful of independent MPs.

It could involve more open opposition from the “historic” Tavini, which could oppose future Bills from Brotherson’s government.

The other components of the Assembly include 16 from the opposition pro-France (pro-autonomy) Tapura Huiraatira and 4 others not registered under any party.

No party has an outright majority.

The rules have changed, but no one wants to topple the government

Sometimes floated during earlier Tavini internal debates, the notion of Brotherson’s departure or resignation as president was not regarded as a solution.

“Since we were elected and until 2028, there won’t be any no-confidence motion,” Géros publicly assured.

“We’re asking [Brotherson] to carry the weight of his presidency until 2028,” he told MPs.

Tapura said it was not prepared to “contribute to government instability”.

“We’ll always be here in a constructive way,” Tapura wrote in a release posted on social networks.

However, it deplored that during this session the floor had been “confiscated” by Tavini’s internal bickering.

Any no-confidence motion requires the approval of at least 35 of the 57 MPs.

Crucial legislative committees
At the sitting last week, the allocation of chairs for the Assembly’s influential legislative committees was also renewed.

A Fano Tia said it did not intend to bid for any of them because it did not want to be accused of being “opportunistic”.

As a result, Tavini retained the chair of key committees such as Economy, Finance and Budget, Education, Youth and Sports (which could turn crucial as French Polynesia is hosting the 2027 Pacific Games), as well as Tourism and Culture.

Opposition pro-autonomy Tapura also retains Employment and Public Service and gains one more committee (Health and Solidarity).

Other parliamentary committees (Institutions and International Affairs, Housing, Land and sustainable development, Transport and Public Works, as well as Agriculture and Marine resources — another point of contention between the historic Tavini and A Fano Tia — were allocated to other Assembly groups.

“Unfortunately, today, [Assembly] debates were confiscated by political statements. And at the end of the day it is [French] Polynesians who will be forgotten,” said French Polynesia’s representative at the French Senate Teva Rohfritsch.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

An hour before Trump said he’d cause the death of a “whole civilisation” if Iran didn’t open the strait of Hormuz, an Iranian official said the shipping channel would be reopened for two weeks if the United States stopped bombing Iran.

The US has now stopped bombing Iran.

So we’re back to the status quo before Trump began his war.

• READ MORE: Israel’s Lebanon attacks threaten US-Iran ceasefire as negotiations near
• Trump claims ‘success’ in Iran in just 32 days compared to lengthy US wars
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Only now, Iran can credibly threaten to close the strait if it doesn’t get what it wants from Trump — thereby causing havoc to the US and world economies. Trump’s only remaining bargaining chip is his threat of committing war crimes.

In other words, Tuesday’s showdown was a clear victory for Iran and a clear defeat for Trump (although he framed it as a victory).

The Iran fiasco is only the latest in a host of examples revealing how to defeat Trump.

In addition to Iran, similar strategies have been used by China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Greenland.

Inside the US
Inside the United States, the people of Minneapolis have used them, as have Harvard University, comedian Jimmy Kimmel, writer E Jean Carroll and the law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale.

What’s the strategy that connects them all? All refused to cave to Trump, despite his superior military or economic power.

Instead, they’ve engaged in a kind of jiujitsu in which they use Trump’s power against him, while allowing Trump to save face by claiming he’s won. Consider:

Iran knew it was no match for the superior might of the US (and Israel). So it used cheap drones and missiles to close the Strait of Hormuz and incapacitate other Gulf oil installations, thereby driving up the prices of oil and gas at the pump in the US, which has put growing political pressure on Trump, months before a midterm election. Hence, Trump has been forced to pause his war.

China knew what to do when Trump imposed a giant tariff on Chinese exports to the US: it put restrictions on seven types of heavy rare earth metals and magnets, crucial to US defense and tech industries. Beijing continues to use these rare earth restrictions as tactical levers in ongoing negotiations over trade, rather than demand complete surrender by Trump on his trade policies.

Russia has leveraged its vast deposits of oil and natural gas in gaining leverage over US allies. It has also demonstrated its potential ability to intrude into US elections (the Mueller report detailed a “sweeping and systematic” campaign by Russia to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, primarily favouring Trump).

Canada and Mexico have won tariff showdowns with Trump by leveraging the US’s substantial economic dependence on them for components and raw materials, but without crowing about their victories.

Greenland has leveraged public opinion globally and in the United States — overwhelmingly against an American invasion or occupation — to curb Trump’s ambitions there.

Minneapolis resistance
Now, as to what’s happened inside the United States:

The citizens of Minneapolis and St Paul have leveraged their asymmetric power against Trump’s ICE and border patrol agents by carefully organising themselves into a force of non-violent resistance to protect immigrants there.

Harvard University’s strategy for resisting Trump’s interference in Harvard’s academic freedom has been to leverage its influence with the federal courts in Boston and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, to get rulings that stopped Trump (although he’s still trying).

The comedian Jimmy Kimmel turned a political crisis into a ratings victory by using the public backlash against his suspension from ABC, which Disney owns. Since ABC reinstated him, Kimmel has continued to target Trump, and secured his contract through 2027.

The writer E Jean Carroll defeated Donald Trump in two civil cases over sexual abuse and defamation, ultimately securing over $88 million in damages from him — verdicts that have been upheld by federal appeals courts.

Carroll’s lawyers used a civil lawsuit, requiring a lower burden of proof than proving a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. They presented the jury with Trump’s Access Hollywood tape and testimony from other Trump accusers. His depositions, where he called her a “whack job”, were played for the jury.

The law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale refused to follow Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms that had represented causes or clients that Trump opposed.

First Amendment rights infringed
The firms leveraged constitutional arguments with the federal courts — arguing that the orders infringed on their First Amendment rights to advocate whatever causes they wished, violated the constitution’s separation of powers because the orders would prevent the judiciary from considering challenges to executive authority, and violated their clients’ rights under the constitution to be represented.

The Justice Department ultimately dropped its fight against these firms in March 2026 after federal appellate judges also found Trump’s orders unconstitutional.

What’s happened to the countries and organisations that have caved to Trump?

All have strengthened Trump’s leverage over them. Europe seems incapacitated, fearing Trump will leave Nato (despite a US law prohibiting it), but unable to decide where to draw the line with him.

The media network ABC continues to lose viewers, while being subject to Trump’s next whims. CBS was purchased by the Trump allies Larry Ellison and his son, David, and is hemorrhaging talent.

Columbia University has been racked by dissent from both students and faculty. The Trump regime continues to make demands of it.

The law firms that caved in to Trump’s executive orders have seen lawyers exit who felt the deals betrayed the firms’ values and principles.

Microsoft dropped Simpson Thacher to work with Jenner & Block — a firm that fought Trump. Students at elite law schools have also reportedly begun to shun firms that struck deals with the Trump regime.

Bottom line: there’s now a clear blueprint for how to defeat Trump. It’s available to any country, organisation or person on which he seeks to impose his will: reject his demands and then use your own asymmetric power — a form of jiujitsu — to turn Trump’s power against him.

Robert Reich, a former US Secretary of Labour, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and he blogs at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK. This article is republished from his Facebook page — other Robert Reich articles at Asia Pacific Report.

A Constitutional Reform Bill dedicated to New Caledonia was rejected on Thursday by the French National Assembly (Lower House) without debate, by a gathering of opposition parties by a score of 190 to 107.

The rejection came in the form of the endorsement of a preliminary Bill filed by a left wing opposition, Emmanuel Tjibaou, on behalf of the GDR group (Gauche démocrate et républicaine).

The “prior rejection motion” means that if the rejection motion is adopted, then it closes the current sitting on the matter and the Bill would then have to come back to the other House of Parliament, the Senate, following the “shuttle” rule.

• READ MORE: Thousands take to Nouméa streets ahead of French Parliament debate on New Caledonia
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Tjibaou, who is an indigenous Kanak pro-independence leader, is one of the two MPs representing New Caledonia in the Assembly.

The text was originally tabled for a vote to be held on 1 April 2026, but this was later delayed by one day, following an announcement by Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet.

However, on Thursday, during a sitting that only debated motives from the government and its Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou, the rapporteur Philippe Gosselin and representatives from all parties present, it quickly became clear that most of the opposition parties were going to support the rejection motion, and vote against the text without further debate.

The sitting only lasted 01 hour 40 minutes.

Tjibaou, speaking in support of his rejection motion, stressed that the Constitutional Bill, in his view, was “not consensual”, because his party, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) was opposed to the text and that the Bill “did not seek to reach a compromise” between all stakeholders.

Tjibaou said this was in contradiction to the previous Matignon-Oudinot (1988) and Nouméa Accord (1998), which initiated a decolonisation process for New Caledonia.

The present Constitutional Bill derives from talks held in July 2025 and January 2026 between New Caledonia political stakeholders and the French government. This was on two occasions — in the small city of Bougival in July 2025 and later in January 2026 in Paris, at the French Presidential palace of Élysée, and the French ministry of Overseas territories in Rue Oudinot.

Hence the name of Bougival-Élysée-Oudinot (BEO) for a text and an expanded project.

The project also envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, with a correlated “New Caledonia Nationality” available to people who are already French citizens.

Other participating parties pro-France and pro-independence (two pro-independence members of FLNKS) have since split to create their own “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance).

They have maintained their commitment to the BEO process, including their legislative adaptation (in the form of a Constitutional Amendment and an “organic Law”, which would de facto become New Caledonia’s constitution).

Tjibaou: ‘a logic of assimilation’
But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement.

The FLNKS later explained it saw these, as well as a planned process of transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, was, in their view, just a “lure” of independence.

Tjibaou said on Thursday the text was at best “symbolic”.

“To us, this amounts to a perennial status within France… It’s a logic of assimilation… It cannot be compared to a decolonisation in accordance with the UN resolutions and the international law”, he told MPs.

He called on local elections to be held sooner than later, currently no later than 28 June 2026.

Tjibaou said it was ironic that “a pro-independence” should tell the Minister that “when our Kanak country is damaged, it is also France that is damaged”… Because “when you make decisions that are leading us to chaos, you are also jeopardising France’s place in the Pacific”, he said at the tribune.

Moutchou: ‘There is no other agreement’
Moutchou, in her reply, said the rejection of the Bill would have repercussions on New Caledonians’ everyday life.

She stressed what New Caledonians needed, after the riots of May 2024 and a severe economic downfall since, was “visibility”, especially on the part of economic stakeholders who needed stability in order to restore confidence and investment.

“There is no other agreement. The Bougival process was approved by 5 of the 6 political parties of New Caledonia.

“Some are mentioning the absence of FLNKS. I’ve always maintained the principles of transparency, dialogue information for all. And the door was never closed”, she said.

“And the politics of the empty chair cannot dictate the future of a territory.

“So what do we do? How much longer do we have to wait… To be responsible, we move on with those who are here… Consensus does not mean unanimity, consensus is not perfection, it’s a point of equilibrium”, she replied to Tjibaou.

“And while we have this text that is not perfect, but opens a way, those who say, ‘we will wait and see later’ risk bringing us back to a confrontational situation”.

Metzdorf’s disappointment
The other MP for New Caledonia, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf, also took to the tribune to express disappointment.

“I don’t know what more we should do. After the 2024 riots, you asked us to find a political agreement. We did this and we made big concessions, we, the non-independentists. We did this for the good of New Caledonia.

“Then you said we had to meet again to further clarify… On Kanak identity and the self-determination process. So now we are back with two political agreements.”

“And now you are sending us back home without a debate… You know, New Caledonia may be far from Paris, but tonight, many are watching this debate on TV and they’re thinking ‘What will happen to us?”

“Many have lost their home, their work, but even worse, they have lost hope to live in peace in New Caledonia”.

“What I am asking (MPs) today is just to have the common decency to debate on this (Bill)… These agreements are being supported by the majority of New Caledonia’s political class (including the moderate pro-independence parties within the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), but also by the economic and business sector.”

“I’m asking for a vote on these accords and I’m asking to organise a consultation of New Caledonia’s people, because at the end of the day, we are the only legitimate ones to decide on our future.”

What now?
Following the rejection vote on Thursday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said all parties that had signed the Bougival-Elysée-Oudinot Accord would meet “next week”, because this is what was agreed in case of a deadlock.

Commenting on future options, Metzdorf told French media in Paris that “all options are now on the table”.

After the National Assembly’s rejection, another possibility was to bring the text back to the Upper House (the Senate).

Another option (that was almost implemented a few months ago, but later abandoned) would be to bring back a process of “consultation” directly in New Caledonia in the form of a de facto referendum for or against the Bougival process.

But the sensitive issue of who is eligible to vote at local elections remains for the looming provincial elections (which would now have to be held no later than 28 June 2026).

Pro-France parties are still determined to have those restrictions changed to allow the “frozen” electoral roll to be more open, if not fully “unfrozen”.

This could be the subject of separate negotiations between New Caledonia’s opposing parties in the coming days.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Thousands took to the streets of the capital Nouméa on Tuesday — hours ahead of a scheduled French Parliament debate in the National Assembly in Paris to discuss the French Pacific territory’s political future.

An estimated 2500 came in support of local Association Un Coeur, une Voix (UCUV–One Heart, One Voice) to oppose the prospect of the next local elections (to elect New Caledonia’s three provinces) being held under the current “frozen” electoral roll, which excludes people who have not resided in New Caledonia before 1998 or their direct descendents.

During a one-hour peaceful march in downtown Nouméa, the participants were brandishing tricolour blue-white-red flags and other placards denouncing what they described as “second-class citizens” treatment and their perceived condition of self-styled “victims of history”.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The march was designed to send a clear message to French MPs ahead of debates on New Caledonia later this week.

“I’m sorry for using harsh words, but it’s like we’re being robbed [of our rights],” UCUV president Raphaël Romano told local Radio Rythme Bleu.

“And now we have those MPs who are going to decide for us. They’re going to use New Caledonia for their own national political gains . . .  and make a mess”.

“If [MPs] can’t find an agreement, then they should let New Caledonians choose.

“It’s a shame for democracy, it happens nowhere else in the world”, Romano told local media.

His movement is strongly supported by several prominent pro-France parties, including Le Rassemblement and Les Loyalistes.

He said the situation affected all ethnic communities in New Caledonia.

“Those who can’t vote are men and women from all walks of life, all ethnic groups who live together in peace, every day,” he said.

“It’s hard enough to try and recover from the May 2024 riots, where people have lost their businesses and their job.”

The 2024 riots caused 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (almost NZ$4 billion) in material damage.

They were also initially triggered by peaceful protests against a plan to have the French constitution modified, especially regarding the electoral restrictions.

The protests turned violent and out of control in Nouméa on the very day debates started in Paris.

The “freeze” was enforced in 2009, as part of the Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.

Originally designed as a temporary measure, the restriction currently excludes up to 40,000 people, many of them born in New Caledonia.

‘Counter demonstrations’
Meanwhile, pro-independence movements have called for other “counter-demonstrations” outside of Nouméa.

One gathering took place on Tuesday, including in the outer Loyalty Islands of Lifou, while another demonstration is scheduled on Wednesday, in Koné (North of the main island, Grande Terre).

The voting restriction measure was originally included in the 1998 Nouméa Accord as a measure to prevent any erosion of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak population’s voice.

The proposed text derives from talks held between New Caledonia political stakeholders and the French government.

This was on two occasions: in the small city of Bougival in July 2025 and later in January 2026 in Paris, at the French Presidential Élysée Palace and the French Ministry of Overseas Territories, Rue Oudinot.

Hence the name of Bougival-Élysée-Oudinot (BEO) for a text and an expanded project.

But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), the main component of the pro-independence movement.

Other participating parties — pro-France and pro-independence (two pro-independence members of FLNKS have since split to create their own “UNI” [Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance]) — have since maintained their commitment to the BEO process, including their legislative adaptation (in the form of a Constitutional Amendment and an “organic Law, which would de facto become New Caledonia’s constitution).

The project also envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, with a correlated “New Caledonia nationality” available to people who are already French citizens.

The FLNKS later explained it saw these, as well as a planned process of transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, as just a “lure” of independence.

Reacting to the UCUV march, FLNKS said the “freeze” was ruled constitutional by France’s Constitutional Council in September 2025 and could only be changed if a “consensual” agreement was found.

But FLNKS considers the BEO-derived text “is not a logical continuation of the Nouméa Accord”.

The BEO-derived Bill, if adopted, could eventually replace the Nouméa Accord.

But it is now still undergoing legislative process.

The French Senate endorsed it on February 24, with a comfortable right-wing majority.

But this week, the same text is to be debated in the Lower House of Parliament, the National Assembly, which has been divided since the July 2024 French national snap election following President Macron’s decision to dissolve Parliament.

Current predictions are that since there is no clear majority within the Lower House, the Bill, which comes in the form of a Constitutional Amendment (with the capacity to replace the Nouméa Accord) is likely to be rejected.

The opposition to the current right-wing group comes from the left (far-left La France Insoumise -LFI-, the Socialists (who say the Bill is “heavy with threats and dangers”), the Communists, the Greens) and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN).

Last week, the Constitutional Bill came before the National Assembly’s Law Committee and suffered an initial rejection.

Parliamentary debates in the National Assembly are scheduled to begin on Wednesday (1 April 2026, Paris time) and could last for the next three days.

‘Barrage’ of three thousand amendments
Some opposition parties, especially the democratic and republican left (GDR, Gauche démocrate et républicaine, to which the pro-independence New Caledonian Kanak MP Emmanuel Tjibaou belongs) have already filed on the agenda a “prior rejection motion” to withdraw the Bill.

Some of those expressed strong reservations because the process and ensuing Bill was opposed by FLNKS and that, therefore, there was no unanimity.

Meanwhile, since last week, in a previously used barrage tactic, LFI has also filed over 3000 amendments.

Restrictions still apply under Nouméa Accord — French Constitutional Council
UCUV has been fighting for years to defend their rights, in front of what they term a “denial of democracy”.

Last year, they took their case to the French Constitutional Council, which ruled that in the present situation, the electoral roll “freeze” for local elections was part of the Nouméa Accord which was part of the French Constitution.

UCUV president Raphaël Romano said they now have no other option but to take their case before the European Court of Human Rights, even though they admit their hopes are “very weak”.

He said the deadline was 4 April 2026.

If the Constitutional Bill is rejected by Parliament, a new proposed calendar for implementation will automatically become obsolete.

And local provincial elections that have already been delayed three times since May 2024 will have to be held not later than 28 June 2026, instead of the proposed December this year.

If the BEO-derived text is rejected, then the Nouméa Accord applies again and the planned provincial elections will have to be held under the restricted — “frozen” — electoral roll system.

“The provincial elections will not be held under a frozen electoral roll. It’s just not possible”, Romano said.

Deadlock, imbroglio: what now?
Other possible alternative scenarios could include re-submitting a new, revised Bill, dedicated to the electoral roll, or organising a “consultation”, a de facto referendum with eligible New Caledonians.

Under the French parliamentary principle of the “shuttle”, the text could be sent back to the Senate.

Under the BEO text, people eligible for voting at local provincial elections can either be born in New Caledonia or having resided there for an uninterrupted 15 years (for the first five years of enforcement, then the minimum residence period would be reduced to 10 uninterrupted years).

From the French government’s point of view, an agreement on New Caledonia’s institutional future is the only solution to bring back stability and economic “visibility” for local and foreign investors.

“Everything is on the table to get things moving”, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told French media last week.

Overseas Minister Naïma Moutchou is still advocating for the benefits a parliamentary approval would bring to New Caledonia in terms of a “framework” for economic recovery.

France has earmarked some 2 billion euros in a “refoundation” pact, structured to put the economy, social services and the crucial nickel mining industry back on track, provided necessary reforms are carried out.

“Let’s give a chance to this process, because in New Caledonia, the alternative to an open political process is never quiet: it’s uncertainty and, over there, it always ends up weakening civil peace,” she told Parliament last week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A rift within French Polynesia’s ruling Tavini Huiraatira party has widened this week, pitting the leadership “old guard” against a younger generation embodied by the territory’s President, Moetai Brotherson.

The main reason for the rift is the outcome of the recent French municipal elections, especially in the capital city of Pape’ete.

Since the Tavini party came back to power after the 2023 territorial elections, Brotherson brought with him a new wave of young MPs, who sometimes were questioning the traditional political line.

• READ MORE: Other French Polynesian reports

This was often regarded as “radical” (in favour of a quick independence process), defended by the party’s iconic 81-year-old president Oscar Temaru and his close associates, including Territorial Assembly Speaker Antony Géros.

At the recent municipal elections, Géros was one of the most symbolic of Tavini casualties. He lost his stronghold city of Paea at the first round of votes to pro-autonomy Tapura Huiraatira leader Tepuaraurii Teriitahi, who secured more than 50 percent of the votes, making it unnecessary to hold a second round of polls.

Even though Temaru was re-elected Lord Mayor in his stronghold of Faa’a at the first round, other Tavini-held municipalities also suffered significant setbacks.

But it was in Pape’ete that the divisions between the two Tavini antagonistic trends materialised most visibly.

Two Tavini candidates
While no Tavini member was in a position to claim the lead (the new Lord Mayor remains an “autonomist”, in favour of continuing the current relationship with France under an “Autonomy” status), there were two Tavini candidates and lists — one officially endorsed by the party, under the name of Tauhiti Nena, who secured 11.03 percent of the votes.

The other was not officially endorsed but it fared much better. It was led by 25-year-old Tematai Le Gayic and received 23.3 percent of the vote.

Since the kick-start of the municipal elections campaign, Le Gayic’s list (Tutahi ia Pape’ete) was openly backed by Brotherson.

In his already long political career, despite his young age, Le Gayic’s was French Polynesia’s representative MP (2022-2024). He was once known for being the youngest French MP ever elected in the French National Assembly.

This week, the debate is now out in the open, sparking a controversy between the two antagonistic Tavini trends.

Adding fuel to fire, in an open letter to Temaru earlier this week, widely publicised through social networks, he announced his decision to leave Tavini and, as a member of the Territorial Assembly, will from now on sit as an independent member.

Family business
Brotherson reacted to the decision, saying Le Gayic’s move was a “responsible” decision.

Brotherson also belongs to the Tavini Huiraatira, a party led by his father-in-law Temaru (Brotherson’s wife, Teura, is Temaru’s daughter).

Since 2023, other young, newly-elected Tavini MPs had already voiced their questions about the party political line.

This was the case of Hinamoeura Cross-Morgant, a young female MP who has tried to get a few bills tabled in the Assembly.

She was later subjected to sanctions from the party, ranging from suspension to outright eviction.

Since then, she has been sitting as an independent MP.

Reactions from the other side (pro-autonomy) of the political spectrum were also swift.

Nicole Sanquer, who heads “A Here Ia Porinetia” party (and leader of the opposition in the current Assembly), said there were many subjects of discord within the Tavini Huiraatira which were never addressed.

“What we’re expecting now is the creation of a new group within the Assembly. You ask me, I call this the beginning of a political crisis”, she told local media.

Brotherson ‘not surprised’
Brotherson, 56, regarded as a moderate, favours a non-confrontational approach to the independence subject, vis-à-vis France.

He said the recent municipal election results were “catastrophic” and that the Tavini party he belongs to was now disconnected from reality.

He said he was not surprised at Le Gayic’s resignation.

“It was predictable. Tematai Le Gayic has been asking for Tavini’s support for months in his bid to contest (the municipal elections) in Pape’ete.

“He’s not the first one and unfortunately I think he won’t be the last if the party doesn’t react.”

“You don’t win elections through posturing,” he added, stressing the need to stay in touch with bread-and-butter issues when it comes to elections, especially municipal ones.

“Because voters simply don’t feed on ideology.”

He warned that as new territorial polls will take place in 2028, if the Tavini does not address the issue, it would face more “explosive” results and setbacks.

Speaking to local media Tahiti Nui Television on the recent municipal election results, Temaru admitted a few “tactical and strategic mistakes”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele has doubled down on his decision not to convene Parliament as he hangs on to power leading a minority government, following mass defections from his Government of National Unity and Transformation (GNUT).

Last week, 19 government MPs — more than half of them cabinet ministers — handed in their resignations, citing trust issues with Manele’s leadership.

Those who have jumped ship have joined the opposition group, which now claims to have 28 MPs on its side. This means Manele has been left with just 22 MPs in his camp.

• READ MORE: Solomons PM refuses to convene parliament amid political crisis
• Other Solomon Islands reports

“I will call our Parliament as and when it is appropriate,” Manele told local reporters during a news conference on Sunday.

He said “the assumption” that his government does not have the numbers “is political and not constitutional”.

“Government decisions are not made based on speculation, on pressure, but on lawful processes and the national interest,” he said.

Manele also downplayed the move by the opposition and “those outside Parliament” petitioning the country’s Governor-General to convene Parliament and to consider a motion of no confidence against him.

‘A matter of political choice’
He branded the decision of those MPs who resigned from his coalition as “a matter of personal and political choice”.

“Your government remains in office under the Constitution and continues to discharge its full responsibilities,” he said.

“What we are witnessing is not a constitutional crisis. It is a normal democratic process provided for under our Constitution; leadership may change within certain portfolios, but the machinery of government does not falter.”

Public services continue, national operations remain stable and uninterrupted, he added.

Manele has been in power less than two years and has already faced two leadership challenges.

He said the confidence in a Prime Minister is tested and determined only through a motion of no confidence on the floor of Parliament.

“This means that unless and until Parliament meets and decides on such a motion, the elected prime minister remains duly in office. I reiterate that Parliament will be convened in accordance with the Constitution and the proper process will take its course.”

New ministers appointed
Addressing concerns about MPs resigning from parliamentary standing committees, Manele said “these committees report to Parliament, not to the prime minister or the executive”.

Manele has also swiftly appointed new ministers to his government, including Manasseh Sogavare as his new deputy.

Sogavare was one of four ministers sworn in last Wednesday and has been handed the National Planning and Development portfolios.

Sogavare, who previously served as prime minister four times, was one of 11 ministers who resigned from government last April but failed to topple Manele.

Meanwhile, Peter Kenilorea Jnr, one of the 28 MPs in the opposition group, said Manele downplaying the situation was “truly disheartening”.

“So for me it’s clear, when a situation arises, like the mass resignation of GNUT MPs and those MPs joining those in the opposition and independents with a [numerical] strength of 28 it shows that the PM has lost the support he needs to be PM,” he said in a social media post.

“[Manele] is now in the minority. The honourable thing to do is either resign or test his support/numbers on the floor of Parliament.”

Another key figure in Manele’s coalition, Peter Shanel Agovaka, who was the Foreign Minister, told RNZ Pacific he left GNUT because he could not “work with some of the ministers” who were “trying to push their own agendas”.

He also confirmed that he had been offered the leadership by the opposition group which would see him become the Prime Minister should there be a change in government.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Solomon Islands Prime Minister is refusing to convene Parliament next week amid a takeover bid by government defectors who have joined forces with the opposition.

Jeremiah Manele is not expected to convene Parliament until May or June and maintains the government is continuing to function despite the political “crisis”.

Manele has been in power less than two years and has already faced two leadership challenges.

• READ MORE: Other Solomon islands reports

Now his former Foreign Minister, and fellow party member, Peter Shanel Agovaka, has been recruited by a breakaway group of MPs who want to form a new government.

In a statement, the opposition Leader’s office claimed the defection of 19 government ministers and backbenchers to the opposition and independent ranks has left Manele running a minority government.

Agovoka told RNZ Pacific on Tuesday that a change of government, led by the People’s First Party (PFP) would see him replace Manele.

“I feel it’s time for me, representing central Guadalcanal, to take up the challenge to lead our country,” he said.

New coalition agreement
The statement said 27 MPs signed a new coalition government agreement on Tuesday and have filed a motion of no confidence in Manele and his Ownership, Unity and Responsibility (OUR) Party.

The Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation reports the notice was signed by the former Deputy Prime Minister and Member of Parliament for South Vella La Vella, Frederick Kologeto.

It reports that the notice was received on Monday.

The motion can be moved and debated once a seven-day notice period ends, and when the Prime Minister convenes Parliament.

Government House has confirmed receiving a petition from opposition MPs for the Governor-General to order an extraordinary sitting of Parliament to debate the motion.

The opposition needs at least 26 MPs to vote in favour of the motion for it to pass. If successful an election for a new Prime Minister is then held by secret ballot.

The PFP, joined by the official opposition, have petitioned for an extraordinary sitting of Parliament.

‘Signals serious crisis’
“When such a significant number of sitting members, including ministers, abandon their own coalition, it signals a government in serious crisis,” the statement said.

“These decisions were not made lightly, they reflect deep frustrations over internal divisions, lack of trust, and growing concerns that the government has lost its sense of direction and purpose.”

The statement said the mass exodus raised urgent constitutional and governance questions.

“Can a government that has lost the confidence of 19 of its own members continue to claim legitimacy? Can it effectively govern while grappling with internal collapse?,” the statement said.

“What is unfolding is not just a reshuffling of numbers; it is a rejection of leadership that has failed to unite, failed to listen, and failed to deliver.”

The breakaway group took part in a highly-publicised photo shoot yesterday as a sign of solidarity.

Agovoka said previously that the 12-member PFP had the numbers to form a new government with the opposition and independent MPs, but the situation was “fluid”.

“There is a critical motion that should be dealt with immediately … we’ll just hope that our number, which is 27, holds,” he said.

Four new ministers
However a spokesperson for the Prime Minister, Georgina Kekea, said four new MPs would be sworn in as ministers on Wednesday and it was too early to speculate about numbers.

“It’s only through the floor of parliament that we can determine who has the majority, for now its just mere speculation on the numbers,” Kekea said.

Solomon Business Magazine reported that the four new ministers sworn in included former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare who becomes Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for National Planning and Development Coordination.

The prime minister had said he was not keen to convene parliament until progress was made at committee level on various crucial bills, she said.

“The government is continuing to function, word has gone out to all the ministries encouraging them to continue with their work.”

“In this time of crisis where things are uncertain, we are guided by our Constitution and our laws. We don’t want people to panic, it is what it is in terms of politics,” she said.

Kekea said the country was also being affected by the global crisis (the war in Iran), with rising fuel prices and inflation.

Support expected to rise
Current PFP leader Fredrick Kologeto told RNZ Pacific on Monday that he expected their support to rise beyond a simple majority in the Solomons’ 50-seat Parliament.

Kologeto said there was a breakdown in trust between ministers and that he ultimately saw no resolution while the OUR Party was in power.

Several ministers defected from OUR to PFP in the past year, including Finance Minister Harry Kuma and Justice Minister Clezy Rore.

Agovaka, who is now in the process of leaving OUR, called out Manele for sacking two PFP ministers in February and replacing them with OUR members.

“I can’t work with some of the ministers … undermining the integrity of cabinet and trying to push their own agendas,” he said.

He said the PFP have yet to offer portfolios to other ministers, but said that opposition leader Matthew Wale, who leads the Democratic Party, would be invited into a new cabinet.

“There [will be] a coalition between the opposition, independents, and People First … if we come through that, then we can start sitting down and looking at the portfolios,” Agovaka said.

“We look forward to this change of regime.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

In a spectacular triumph, Britain’s Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton byelection in Greater Manchester.

Local plumber Hannah Spencer has now become the party’s fifth MP — a historic victory for the ascendent Greens, who ran a campaign of national hope and international solidarity against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The byelection result is also a huge upset in Britain’s political status quo.

• READ MORE: Green Party leader hails ‘seismic’ byelection victory as new MP says ‘we can win anywhere’
• Other Green UK party reports

The Labour party, which won the seat with more than 50 percent of the vote in 2024 and held the seat for many years, was pushed into third place behind Reform UK. No more.

After coming third behind the Greens and Reform, questions over the future of the party’s leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, now grow increasingly urgent.

Meanwhile, Reform UK came second. On their own terms, a result.

Clear defeat by Left
And yet, a clear defeat by the Left. Its candidate, Matt Goodwin, along with the party as a whole, will now be taking stock, disappointed that a major target constituency has rejected them.

The Greens stormed the seat and Spencer won a majority of more than 4000 despite a race sullied by dirty tricks and cynicism from a Labour Party that appeared desperate at every turn.

Tactics included an invented electoral organisation and misinformation over polling. A last ditch effort to transport Starmer to the constituency may have amounted to a final and fatal backfire.

This is the second byelection loss to the Green Party since Labour’s general election victory in 2024.

French Senators have endorsed a Constitutional amendment text regarding New Caledonia’s future political status.

Two-hundred and fifteen senators (mostly an alliance between right and centre-right parties) voted in favour, and 41 voted against.

The four-hour sitting was marked by a lengthy address by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who supported the text, saying a status quo on New Caledonia was “not a viable option”.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

He said to leave things as they were would amount to “abandoning France’s republican ideals, social progress and the renewed construction of peace” in the French Pacific territory.

“This [Bougival] agreement is not perfect”, Lecornu conceded, “but it is the best we have collectively come up with in four years of negotiations.”

New package, conditions
During the same address, Lecornu also outlined a new financial package for New Caledonia, in the form of a “refoundation pact” amounting some 2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) over a five-year period.

Lecornu said the extra package contained some sizeable chunks dedicated to “strengthening (New Caledonia’s) attractiveness” (330 million euros) through the creation of trade free zones, tax exemptions for future investing businesses and another 500 million euros dedicated to support the crucial nickel mining and processing industry.

But not without conditions.

“A credible transformation plan was currently in the making,” Lecornu explained.

“To support and accompany, yes, but to fund losses indefinitely, no.”

The vote comes almost two years after unrest and riots in May 2024, leaving 14 dead and more than 2 billion euros in material damage, as well as hundreds of businesses looted and destroyed.

Since then, New Caledonia has struggled to put its economy (which suffered a reduction of its GDP by 13.5 percent) back on its feet.

Trigger issue
The main triggering factor for the 2024 riots was a legislative process before the French Parliament in a bid to modify conditions of eligibility for New Caledonian citizens at local elections.

These elections are important because they determine the members of the three provinces (North, South and the Loyalty Islands), membership of the territory’s Parliament  (Congress), and members of New Caledonia’s government and its president.

The process was eventually aborted after initially peaceful protests (organised by one of the main components of the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — Union Calédonienne, and its Field Action Coordinating Cell — degenerated into riots.

During the same sitting, French Senators have also endorsed another amendment that once again postpones the date of New Caledonia’s provincial elections to 20 December 2026 at the latest.

The crucial poll has already been postponed three times since its initial scheduled date of May 2024.

The Senatorial vote is only the first step in a longer legislative path for the text on New Caledonia, based on the transcription of talks that were held in July 2025 and in January 2026.

The meetings, which respectively resulted in texts dubbed “Bougival” and “Elysée-Oudinot”, were initially endorsed by a large majority of New Caledonia’s parties represented at its local Congress.

But since August 2025, the FLNKS has withdrawn its support, saying the proposed agreements do not represent a credible path to the full sovereignty they demand.

Over the past few weeks, intense lobbying has taken place both in New Caledonia and  Paris, both on the pro-independence and the pro-France side of the political chessboard, in order to win over French MPs.

‘Don’t repeat the errors of the past’ – Kanak Senator
Speaking during the Tuesday sitting, New Caledonia’s pro-independence (Union Calédonienne) Senator Robert Xowie, in a direct reference to the May 2024 riots, also warned the French government “not to repeat the errors of the past”.

“Kanaky-New Caledonia has already paid a heavy price because of the [French] government’s stubbornness,” he told senators.

The text tabled in the French Parliament proposes to establish a “State of New Caledonia” within the French realm, as well as a correlated New Caledonian “nationality” (tied to a pre-existing French nationality), as well as a new process of gradual transfer of powers from Paris. But at the same time it rejects any future use of referendums (an instrument regarded by Paris as “divisive”).

Between 2018 and 2021, as prescribed by the 1998 Nouméa Accord, three referenda have been held regarding New Caledonia’s self-determination. They resulted in three rejections of independence, even though the last poll — in December 2021 — was widely boycotted by the pro-independence movement.

“It is because of these three votes, which say ‘yes’ to the French Republic, that this very republic must deploy its economic and social ambition, regardless of the future outcome of political talks”, pro-France Les Loyalistes leader Sonia Backès commented on social networks.

Another prominent pro-France politician, New Caledonia’s MP at the National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, said Tuesday’s vote was “a first step”.

But the text, just like in 2024, also touches on the conditions of eligibility to gain the right to vote at local elections.

Until now, under the ageing Nouméa Accord (1998), the right to vote at local elections is “frozen” to a special roll that includes people born in New Caledonia or residing there before 1998, among other conditions.

“Unfreezing” the electoral roll would mean allowing some 12,000 more people born in New Caledonia and another 6,000 people who have been residing for at least an uninterrupted 15 years.

‘Waiting for stability’
Opponents to the project, just like in 2024, argue that this opening would contribute to diluting the indigenous voice at local political elections.

The other Senator for New Caledonia, Georges Naturel (regarded as pro-France, Les Républicains party) abstained because “deep inside, I know this Constitutional reform will unfortunately not bring the stable and long term political solution New Caledonia needs”.

Socialist and Green Senators also abstained, saying any future comprehensive agreement has to include everyone, including the FLNKS.

Otherwise, “there is no lasting solution to ensure peace, stability and development”, Socialists leaders argued last week in an op-ed in national daily Le Monde.

They went even further saying that the text currently under scrutiny, as it stands, is “ominous” and “dangerous”.

The move, already announced last week by the Socialists, was designed to give the government “the opportunity to suspend debates on the text and call for provincial elections at the end of May or beginning of June 2026, instead of the now re-scheduled December 2026).

According to this scenario, this would then be followed by a new round of discussions, involving newly-elected members of New Caledonia’s Congress.

French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou reacted to the Senate’s vote, saying New Caledonians “have gone through tiring months and are now waiting for stability and useful decisions regarding their day-to-day lives”.

Moutchou admitted the proposed process and associated calendar was “very imperfect and in parts very unsatisfactory . . . but it is indispensable. To stop this constitutional bill now would mean to close the door to the ongoing process since Bougival [talks],” she told a French Senate committee on 17 February 2026.

“We have to give this imperfect process a chance because it has the merit of providing visibility to local stakeholders,” she said.

Uncertain support for future sittings
After this relatively comfortable vote, further down the legislative process, the text is to be tabled at the other House of Parliament, the National Assembly (Lower House), starting from 31 March 2026.

In the Lower House, opposition ranks are much stronger and therefore debates and process are expected to be much rockier, with the open support of large blocks of opposition, including far-left LFI (La France Insoumise, Unbowed France).

Another significant and openly declared opponent is the far-right Rassemblement National (RN).

Others include the Socialists, the Greens, the Communist Party, according to latest reports.

Later, since this is a Constitutional Amendment, both Houses of Parliament are expected to be summoned and to be endorsed validly, the Constitutional Bill needs to receive the support of three fifths of the joint sitting (called a Congress, held in the city of Versailles).

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

As Tonga’s 26 newly elected representatives turn to choosing a prime minister among them, one potential candidate is identifying economic development and raising the standard of living as necessary priorities for the next government and its leader.

Lord Fakafanua was re-elected as a nobles’ representative for Ha’apai in last week’s general election.

He spoke to RNZ Pacific after the results were announced and outlined a range of areas he believed Tonga’s next prime minister and cabinet needed to focus on.

• READ MORE: Other Tongan election reports

“There are a few low-hanging fruits available to Tonga, a few policy decisions that we don’t have to spend taxpayers’ money on — they can immediately show dividends and improve people’s lives, and especially lower the cost of living,” Fakanua said.

“In the last few weeks, we’ve experienced a shortage of fuel, and I think a lot of people will be looking towards how a new government will handle energy security and [consistency of] supplies that people are getting the services that they require from the government.

“And there’s always the issue of unemployment and job opportunities.”

Fakafanua, who has held the position of Parliament’s Speaker since 2017, would not explicitly confirm whether he wanted to be prime minister, but also said he was not excluding himself from the race.

Experience as Speaker
Speaking to RNZ Pacific, he drew on his experience as Speaker when asked about his regional ambitions should he become prime minister.

“I don’t want to pre-empt anything right now, but I just have to say that if given the opportunity, I think it would be important for the Pacific to stand as a unit, especially in this polarised world.

“There are certain priorities that the Pacific holds dear, and climate change is one of them. And of course, that’s something that us in the Pacific hold as an existential threat.

“So something like that is a commonality that we can find working together would prove very beneficial, not just for Tonga, but also for the region.”

Currently, the country is under a caretaker government as negotiations between the newly elected representatives take place for a prime minister. Once a prime minister is selected, they go on to pick a cabinet for approval, and appointment by the King.

Fakafanua was among the nine nobles who won a seat in the election, while caretaker prime minister Dr Aisake ‘Eke and his predecessor Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni were among the 17 people’s representatives elected.

Both ‘Eke and Hu’akavameiliku, alongside Fakafanua, have been touted as potential prime ministers for the next four-year parliamentary term. RNZ has requested interviews with ‘Eke and Hu’akavameiliku.

Another potential candidate
Meanwhile, another nobles’ representative — Lord Tu’ivakano — has also been flagged as a potential candidate for prime minister. Tu’ivakano is a former speaker and was also the first prime minister following Tonga’s 2010 constitutional reforms.

Fellow noble Lord Vaea told Pacific Media News he believed a noble as prime minister would provide stability for the government and country that had been lacking under prime ministers who were peoples’ representatives.

“It’s time to have a noble in,” Vaea said.

“Over the last four elections, PMs have had great difficulties controlling, that’s why I recommend that we go back in with the nobility.”

But not everyone is convinced.

Teisa Pohiva, the daughter of the late pro-democracy movement leader and prime minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, has warned Tongans to be wary of a potential shift in power back to the nobility and monarchy.

“It’s as if slowly they’re coming back for the executive powers of the country, something that we’ve fought for so long for the people to be given the authority to run the country, the executive powers with due consultation with the monarchy, with His Majesty,” Pohiva said in an interview with PMN.

Crown Prince influence
She highlighted the position the Crown Prince held in ‘Eke’s government as both minister for foreign affairs and defence. He was appointed to ‘Eke’s cabinet as a minister outside of parliament. Under the constitution, the prime minister is permitted to appoint up to four ministers in this capacity.

“Personally, I would urge the representatives of the people, whoever is elected into Parliament, to stand together, try and put the differences aside and stand together and keep the prime minister position within the people,” Pohiva said.

“There’s nothing more important for us but performance and accountability to the people of Tonga.”

Under the current system, only nobles vote towards their nine representatives to Parliament, while the general public have a separate election process that results in the 17 peoples’ representatives.

Both voting processes take place on the same day and make up the general election.

The setup was implemented through the 2010 constitutional reforms which increased the number of people’s representatives in the legislative assembly from nine to 17.

Prior to that, the balance of power in the executive branch sat with the nobles, the King and his Privy Council, with the number of people’s representatives set at just nine.

For now, Tonga’s newly elected 26 representatives will be discussing who they believe would be best to lead. They will vote for the position by secret ballot, which must be won by a majority.

Under the constitution, the vote will be repeated if no one gains a majority, with the candidate who wins the least number of votes eliminated from the next round.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Two new noble representatives have been elected in Tonga, according to results announced today in Nuku’alofa.

Lord Dalgety, chairman of the Tonga Electoral Commission, announced the results of the nobles election at the Palace Office in the Tongan capital shortly after midday.

The two newly elected nobles are Lord Veéhala in Eua, who secured 20 votes, and Lord Ma’afu in Tongatapu, who received 12 votes.

• READ MORE: Other Tongan election reports

Lord Veéhala, a senior military officer with His Majesty’s Armed Forces, replaces Lord Nuku, who was eliminated from the election on Wednesday due to ongoing court cases.

Lord Ma’afu continues the tradition of his family being represented in parliament, with his late dad, the previous Lord Ma’afu, having been a nobles representative over a number of years.

Voting continues for the general public to elect 17 people’s representatives, who will join their nine nobles counterparts in the Legislative Assembly.

Speaking after the result was announced, the re-elected nobles’ representative for Ha’apai, Lord Fakafanua played down reports he had his eye on becoming the next prime minister of Tonga.

‘Always rumours’
“That didn’t come up, and you know, leading up to a general election there are always rumours coming around,” he said.

However, he did not rule it out completely.

“Everything is a bit premature right now because it is up to the 26 members, so once we know who is in there then it will be something that we will look forward to,” he said.

“There are many possibilities. There is still some time now before we have to go through that process.”

Election results for Tonga’s Nobles Representatives

Va’vau (2 representatives)

• Incumbent Lord Tuiafitu 5 votes (re-elected)
• Incumbent Lord Tuilakepa 5 votes (re-elected)
• Lord Luani 3 votes
• Lord Fulivai 1 vote

Ha’apai (2 reps)

• Incumbent Lord Fakafanua 6 votes (re-elected)
• Incumbent Lord Tuihaangana 6 votes(re-elected)
• Lord Tuihaateiho 2 votes

Eua – (1 rep)

• Lord Lasike 1 vote
• Lord Veéhala 20 votes (newly elected)

Tongatapu – (3 reps)

• Lord Lasike 6 votes
• Lord Ma’afu 12 votes (newly elected)
• Lord Tu’ivakano 8 votes (elected)
• Lord Vaea 10 votes (elected)

Ongo Niua (1 rep)

• Lord Fotofili (won unopposed)

Polls have closed in Tonga for the 2025 general election.

The preliminary results are expected to be available tonight.

The return of the writs of election to the King is scheduled for December 4.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

With just three weeks to go before Tongans head to the polls, the debate over election issues is heating up.

Under the spotlight are the role of the palace in the country’s democratic process and calls for voting rights for overseas-based Tongans. The state of the economy and access to health care are also being examined.

Tongan political scientist Dr Malakai Koloamatangi said for many Tongans, bread-and-butter election issues remained important.

• READ MORE: Other Tongan politics reports

“People are just wanting to get on with life, and they want the best conditions . . .  for them to get a job, put their kids through school, a roof over their heads, vehicles and to meet their obligations around social [and] cultural [customs].”

Dr Koloamatangi, who is the registrar at the Tonga National University, believed voters wanted to see policies that addressed increasing living costs and fuel shortages, which have caused significant disruptions to daily life.

“We’re not seeing abject poverty in Tonga but things like wages need to be raised in order to meet the rising cost of the standard of living.

“And we’re still having issues with petrol and oil not arriving on time. So big queues at the gas stations and so on.”

Scrutiny over palace role
A former political adviser, Lopeti Senituli, said the role of the palace and its noble representatives in Parliament was under increasing scrutiny.

The Tonga Parliament is made up of noble and people’s representatives. On polling day, regular voters cast ballots to elect 17 people’s representatives to Parliament, while the kingdom’s nobles vote for nine noble representatives.

Senituli said King Tupou IV’s displeasure over the behaviour of previous noble representatives to Parliament was well known.

“Some of them have not performed like a noble, have not acted like a noble. Some of them, for example, have been investigated for being involved in drug smuggling from America,” he said.

He said candidates would be acutely aware of the power dynamic between the palace and Parliament, particularly since former Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni resigned in December last year ahead of a vote-of-no confidence.

Hu’akavameiliku reportedly clashed with King Tupou VI over key ministerial portfolios that were traditionally held by the monarchy.

“The King is, to put it mildly, not happy with the noble representatives in cabinet in previous governments. And of course, he was not happy with the previous prime minister.”

Top job not guaranteed
Senituli said, while Hu’akavameiliku’s successor, incumbent Prime Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke enjoyed the support of the king, he was not guaranteed the top job again.

“Winning his actual electoral electorate is guaranteed in my view, but whether or not he can pull together a cabinet made up of 12 supporters from the nine members of nobility and 16 people’s reps is another matter.”

Both Senituli and Dr Koloamatangi believe the provision in Tonga’s Constitution, which states the Prime Minister can nominate up to four cabinet ministers who were not elected representatives, added another layer of complexity to Tonga’s governing processes.

Crown Prince Tupoutoʻa ʻUlukalala was appointed to his cabinet position in Dr Eke’s government through this mechanism. He holds both the foreign affairs and defence force portfolios.

Senituli believed that overlap in power between the palace and executive needed to be addressed as Tonga worked towards becoming a mature democracy.

However, Dr Koloamatangi disagreed, saying it was a long-standing tradition for future monarchs to hold cabinet positions.

“Most of the kings of Tonga, the monarchs, were trained in that way,” Dr Koloamatangi said.

‘Good training ground’
“While their fathers were still on the throne, they were given the responsibilities in government. So I think it’s a good training ground for the Crown Prince.”

Meanwhile, overseas-based Tongans are also keeping tabs on developments, with many calling for voting rights in their home nation. Under current rules, only those who live in Tonga are eligible to vote.

Kennedy Fakanaanaaki-Fualu, secretary for the Auckland Tongan Community organisation, said members of the diaspora like him contributed significantly to Tonga.

“If it wasn’t for the remittances [sent from overseas-based Tongans], Tonga would be in deep, deep trouble,” he said.

“We should be given the right to vote, especially if you’re a Tongan citizen.”

Tonga’s polling day is set for November 20.

About 65,000 people will be eligible to vote. Those casting ballots must do it in person, with no provisions for overseas or absentee voting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

French MPs narrowly endorsed the postponement of New Caledonia’s provincial elections to no later than 28 June 2026 in a crucial vote in Paris this week.

It comes as newly appointed Overseas Minister Naïma Moutchou prepares to visit the French Pacific territory for more talks on its political future.

The vote took place in the Lower House, the National Assembly, on Tuesday in a climate of division between national parties.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

It was a narrow score, with 279 MPs backing the postponement and 247 voting against the “Constitutional organic” Bill.

A final vote (298 for and 39 against) in the other chamber, the Senate (Upper House), on Wednesday in a relatively less adverserial environment, was regarded as a sheer formality.

After this, the French Constitutional Council is to deliver its ruling on the conformity of the text.

New Caledonia’s provincial elections have already been postponed several times: originally set for May 2024, they had to be delayed due to the riots that took place, then were further delayed from December 2024 to November 2025.

As part of an emergency parliamentary procedure, a bipartisan committee earlier this week also modified the small text (which contains only three paragraphs), mainly to delete any reference to an agreement project signed in July 2025 in Bougival (near Paris).

The text was supposed to serve as the blueprint for New Caledonia’s future status. It contained plans to make New Caledonia a “State” within France’s realm and to provide a new “nationality”, as well as transferring powers from Paris to Nouméa (including foreign affairs).

The “agreement project” was initially signed by all of New Caledonia’s political parties, but one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) later said it withdrew its negotiators’ signatures.

The FLNKS said this was because the agreement was not in line with its aim of full sovereignty and was merely a “lure of independence”.

The party has since reaffirmed that it did not want to have anything to do with the Bougival text.

No more mention of Bougival
The bipartisan committee modified the Bill’s title accordingly, introducing, in the new version, “to allow the pursuit of consensual discussions on New Caledonia’s institutional future”.

The modifications to the Bill have been described as a way of allowing discussions and, even though no longer specifically mentioned, to use the Bougival accord as a base for further talks, mainly with the FLNKS.

“This is a political message to the FLNKS, Bill rapporteur Philippe Gosselin (Les Républicains -centre right) said this week

One of the FLNKS key representatives at the National Assembly, pro-independence Emmanuel Tjibaou (who also chairs the Union Calédonienne party, the main component of FLNKS), however maintained his opposition to the modified text.

The postponement was also said to be designed to “give more time” to possible discussions.

The other National Assembly MP for New Caledonia, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf, said even though the name Bougival was eventually removed, “everyone knows we will continue to talk from the basis of Bougival, because these are the most advanced bases in the negotiations”.

Tjibaou said the slight change can be regarded as “an essential detail” and mark “a new sequence” in future political talks.

“We’re still in the negotiating phase,” he said.

‘Denial of democracy’
However, he maintained his stance against the postponement of the local polls, saying this was a “denial of democracy”.

“The bill was originally designed to postpone provincial elections to allow Bougival’s implementation. Then they remove any mention of Bougival and then they say ‘we vote for the postponement’. What are we talking about? It just doesn’t make sense”, he said.

Tjibaou’s FLNKS has called for a peaceful march on Friday, 31 October 2025, to voice its opposition to the postponement of local elections.

Newly-appointed French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou is expected to arrive in New Caledonia on Saturday.

Since she was appointed earlier this month in the second cabinet of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu (who was also Minister for Overseas between 2000 and 2022), Moutchou has repeated that her door remained open to further talks with FLNKS and that “nothing can be done” without the FLNKS as long as FLNKS “does not want to do things without the (other parties)”.

In New Caledonia, she said she would “meet all of the partners to examine how an agreement can be implemented”.

Ahead of her trip that will be her baptism of fire, Moutchou also spent hours in video conference talks with New Caledonia’s key politicians earlier this week.

‘Dialogue and respect’
“My approach will be based on dialogue, consistency and respect. Nothing should be rushed. It’s all about refining and clarifying certain points”.

Under the Bougival text, several key aspects of New Caledonia’s future remain highly sensitive. This includes a “comprehensive” agreement that would lift restrictions to the list of people entitled to vote at local provincial elections.

Since 2007, until now, under the existing Nouméa Accord (signed in 1998), only people who were born or resided in New Caledonia before 1998 are entitle to cast their votes for the local polls.

Under the Bougival roadmap, the “special” electoral roll would be “unfrozen” to allow French citizens to vote, provided they have resided for 15 (and a later stage 10) uninterrupted years, as well as those who were born in New Caledonia after 1998.

The change would mean the inclusion of about 15,000 “natives” and up to 25,000 long-term residents, according to conservative estimates.

The sensitive subject was regarded as the main trigger for civil unrest that started in May 2024 and caused 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in damage and a drop of 13.5 percent of New Caledonia’s gross domestic product (GDP).

MP Arthur Delaporte (Socialist party), who backed the modifications on October 27 at the bipartisan committee, assured his party would not support any constitutional reform that would not have been the result of a consensus or could be regarded as a “passage en force”.

The warning is especially meaningful on a backdrop of persistent instability in the French Parliament.

Lecornu is leading his second cabinet since he was appointed early September 2025 — his first was short-lived and only lasted 14 hours.

He has since narrowly survived two motions of no-confidence.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

It was hardly a dream debut for Labour’s long-awaited, much-argued-over tax package for Aotearoa New Zealand.

What was meant to be a carefully choreographed reveal of a capital gains tax (CGT) later this week instead arrived early — leaked to RNZ over the long weekend and hastily confirmed by Chris Hipkins this morning.

In his media conference at Parliament, Labour’s leader downplayed the premature release, saying the details had been circulated widely and could have come from anywhere.

• READ MORE: What you need to know: Seven questions about a capital gains tax

He delivered a stern warning to any leaker, but also said he was not interested in pursuing any sort of investigation.

That is sensible. History shows such hunts usually end badly. Just ask National about Jami-Lee Ross.

Still, the leak will be of some concern to Hipkins.

The party’s internal debate over whether to pursue a wealth tax or CGT has been long and bruising, with strong feelings on both sides.

RNZ understands the caucus vote for a CGT plan was near unanimous – but not quite. And the party’s ruling council and policy council were more divided again.

Hipkins needs those proponents of a wealth tax to now fall in behind the selected proposal.

Unity will be crucial if Labour is to sell yet another version of a policy it has repeatedly failed to convince voters to support.

Containing the risk
Labour knows the political peril of talking tax. It’s been burned before — in 2011, 2014, and 2017.

This time, the party has chosen the smallest possible target: a cautious CGT applying only to property sales, excluding the family home and farms.

The rate would be set at 28 percent, in line with company tax, and would apply to profits made after 1 July 2027.

National disputes the description of “narrow” but compared to the other options on offer, it meets the definition. This does not cover shares, KiwiSaver, inheritances, or personal assets, like classic cars or artwork.

In many respects, it’s little more than an expanded bright-line test — closely resembling the minority view of the 2019 Tax Working Group.

The strategy is clear: keep it simple and sellable.

Labour believes a modest CGT will be more palatable to the public than the more novel and ambitious wealth tax. Capital gains taxes are familiar overseas and no longer as frightening a concept as they once were.

Definition complications
But even the narrowest design can have complications. For example, look to the definition of “family home”.

Labour is using the definition used currently by the brightline test which requires a person to be currently living in that house “most of the time”.

It means that a person who owns just one house, but lives in a rental property elsewhere, would still be taxed if they sold that property.

Keeping the scope tight also limits revenue.

Labour’s own policy paper concedes the returns will be “small relative to GDP and total tax revenue” – roughly $700 million a year.

And almost all of that will go straight into Labour’s accompanying health policy.

The sweetener: A ‘Medicard’ for GP visits
In a bid to soften any political blow, Labour has paired the tax with a tangible benefit — a “Medicard” giving every New Zealander three free GP visits a year.

By tying its CGT to the health system, Labour hopes to frame it not so much as punishment for property owners, but more as a pragmatic way to fund something people actually want.

It’s no mistake that the policy touches the two issues named most important by voters in polling: the cost-of-living and healthcare.

Labour has also intentionally made the entitlement universal to ensure the widest possible appeal — even if critics argue the money would be better targeted to those most in need.

Speaking of the critics, government MPs were practically salivating today, having eagerly awaited this announcement as a potential turning point in the polls.

Labour’s rise in popularity has come despite having little in the way of a policy platform and the coalition hopes the tide will turn as voters look more sceptically at the alternative.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis branded the proposal a “terrible idea”, warning it would hit small businesses that own property.

‘Tall-poppy politics’
Act’s David Seymour called it divisive “tall-poppy politics”, while New Zealand First declared the rollout “a trainwreck”.

NZ First’s post on social media included a noteworthy kicker, describing the CGT as merely “a foot in the door” for the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

Hipkins today tried to shut down that attack, claiming that Labour’s tax plan would be the next government’s tax plan.

But he received no assistance from his purported partners, with the Greens insisting they would not be relinquishing their advocacy for a wealth tax.

Expect more heat on that front as the election approaches.

RNZ’s latest Reid Research poll shows the task ahead for Labour: 43 percent in support of a CGT, 36 percent opposed, and 22 percent undecided.

That’s not exactly a decisive mandate – but it’s not dismal either.

After months of indecision, Labour is finally in the policy game.

This may not be how it had hoped to roll out its flagship policy, but the real test will be how well it can sell it over the coming months.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A controversial piece of legislation to postpone the date for New Caledonia’s crucial provincial elections passed its first hurdle in the French Senate on Wednesday.

The vote was endorsed in the French Upper House by a large majority of 299-42.

The day before, another piece of constitutional legislation was also tabled before the Council of Ministers as a matter of emergency just hours after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s second Cabinet in a week was appointed.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Earlier this month, the postponement of the polls was approved in principle by New Caledonia’s Congress.

In the form of an “organic law”, it is part of the implementation process of the Bougival agreement text, which was signed on July 12 near Paris, and initially signed by all of New Caledonia’s parties, both pro-France and pro-independence.

However, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), denounced the agreement a few days later, saying it did not meet the party’s demands in terms of quick accession to full sovereignty.

The FLNKS said their negotiators’ signatures were therefore now considered null and void.

For the purposes of implementing the text, despite very tight deadlines, one part of its implementation should leave more time for negotiations and it was perceived one way to achieve this was to postpone the elections (which were scheduled to be held not later than November 30) until not later than end of June 2026.

The move, if it succeeds, has to happen before November 2. It means that before then the same text has to be endorsed by the Lower House, the French National Assembly.

If it fails, then the provincial elections’ date will have to be maintained at the original date and under the current voting restrictions.

Before that, New Caledonia’s provincial elections were already postponed twice — initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, then re-scheduled to no later than December 2024 — mostly because of the civil unrest that shook New Caledonia after the deadly May 2024 riots.

The riots were themselves the culmination of pro-independence protests and marches that escalated in response to a French government project to modify the conditions of eligibility for local elections and lift previous restrictions on the electoral roll.

At the time, pro-independence opponents said this would have resulted in indigenous voters becoming a minority because their vote would be diluted.

During debates in the Senate this week, what was presented as a “bipartisan” Bill also stressed the need to resolve current disagreements on the Bougival agreement and take more time to include FLNKS with the rest of New Caledonian parties.

Opponents to the text, among others the French Greens (les Ecologistes) and the Communist Party, maintained that FLNKS had rejected the Bougival deal “in block”, because such agreement simply “doesn’t exist”.

Passage en force
They are accusing the French government of attempting to pass the text “by force”.

The same text is scheduled to be tabled before the Lower House (National Assembly) next week on October 22.

But in the Lower House, debates will be tougher and the final vote will be much more uncertain. The Lower House majority is not clear, MPs being split between the centre right, the far right, the centre left and the far left.

While reactions from the pro-France politicians in Nouméa yesterday were mostly favourable to the latest Senate vote, the now-dominant component within FLNKS, the Union Calédonienne (UC), held a media conference to once again express its disapproval of postponing the local elections.

Instead, it wanted the original dates — before November 30 — to be maintained, along with the current voting eligibility restrictions.

Fresh talks with FLNKS?
UC President Emmanuel Tjibaou told local media this did not exclude that further negotiations could be held after the local elections.

But in reference to the May 2024 riots, Tjibaou said he feared that “the same mistakes of the past … The passage en force… are being made again”.

He said discussions and debates must prevail on the Parliament floor.

Tjibaou is flying to Paris at the weekend to take part in the National Assembly (of which he is one of the two elected MPs for New Caledonia) vote on 22 October 2025.

“This is an alert, an appeal to good sense, not a threat,” UC secretary-general Dominique Fochi added.

“If this passage en force happens, we really don’t know what is going to happen,” Fochi said.

Another component of the pro-independence chessboard in New Caledonia, the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party), usually described as more “moderate”, has also reacted on Thursday to the French Senate’s vote.

“This is rather good news, because it is part of the Bougival timeframe and we support this,” PALIKA leader Charles Washetine said.

PALIKA and UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia) both decided to distance themselves from the FLNKS, of which they were both key members, at the end of August 2024.

Since the Bougival agreement was signed, PALIKA and UPM have sided in support of the deal, which envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, of a French-New Caledonian dual nationality and the short-term transfer of key powers from France, such as foreign affairs.

Those notions, amounting to a de facto Constitution for New Caledonia, are to be also later included to translate into appropriate legal terms in the French Constitution.

This should be submitted to Parliament “by the end of this year”, Lecornu said during his maiden Parliament address on Tuesday, October 14.

And sometime “this spring (2026)”, qualified citizens of New Caledonia would also have to vote on the text by way of a referendum dedicated to the subject.

Bougival agreement ‘allows a path to reconciliation’ – Lecornu
“The Bougival agreement allows a path to reconciliation. It must be transcribed into the Constitution”, Lecornu told the National Assembly.

Also speaking in Parliament for the first time since she was appointed Minister for Overseas, Naïma Moutchou said that in her new capacity, she would be there “to listen” and “to act”.

This, she said, included trying to re-engage FLNKS into fresh talks, with the possibility of bringing some amendments to the much-contested Bougival text.

“To translate Bougival into facts takes time”.

She also admitted that a real consensus was needed.

“We cannot do it without the FLNKS. And we will not do it without the FLNKS,” she said.

She spoke in defence of the postponement of local elections.

“To postpone elections does not mean to postpone democracy, it means giving it back solid foundations, it is to choose lucidity rather than precipitation”, she told MPs.

Meanwhile, yesterday in Paris, PM Lecornu, who formed his cabinet last Sunday, survived his first batch of two simultaneous motions of no-confidence in the National Assembly.

The first, filed by far-right Rassemblement National (RN), received the support of 271 MPs, not enough to reach the necessary 289 votes.

The second, filed by far-left La France Insoumise (LFI, France Unbowed), received 144 votes.

During the pre-censure vote debates, New Caledonian MP pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf took the floor for a few minutes telling MPs that if it could serve as an inspiration, in the French Pacific territory, local laws made it impossible for a government to be toppled less than 18 months after it was formed.

Lecornu, who is very knowledgeable on New Caledonia’s affairs because of his two-year experience as French Minister for Overseas in 2020-2022, was all smiles.

Of 42 referendums, 17 voted to retain Māori Wards in Aotearoa New Zealand’s local elections yesterday, which suggests something about where we are at as a nation — but you already knew that right?

We all know that it’s only recently that we’ve been attempting to teach New Zealand history in our schools.

As a consequence few people understand it — and even less understand Te Tiriti, and our obligations to it — and things like “active protection” not being based on race, but being based on a constitutional foundation which protects the interests of our indigenous.

• READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t feel like election day’: South Aucklanders cast final votes amid low local election turnout
• Ken Laban makes history as Pasifika candidates win across Aotearoa
• Māori wards, candidates voted down across Taranaki in NZ local elections
  

They are not just the same as some other minority.

There’s a special status to this and we would like to think we can independently maintain it in a so called “liberal democracy” but, as you know, the guardrails are shaky and under neoliberal attack.

We know Education Minister Erica Stanford is working with Atlas plants and one-eyed folk to dilute that effort, and we know history and social sciences are under attack under this government.

They pull the funding for the humanities. That’s the fact.

Not always equitable
While the electoral system may be formally equal (one person, one vote), it does not always lead to equitable outcomes for groups with distinct cultural, historical, and political status — such as Māori.

You try to talk fairness to your average rightwing, under-educated Act voter and they will tell you about fairness based on their own victimhood and “equality” not “equity”.

While Māori are guaranteed representation through the Māori electoral roll at the national level — Māori seats in Parliament — Māori wards are the local government equivalent to me.

Without Māori wards, Māori communities often lack meaningful say in local decisions affecting their lands, resources, and wellbeing, especially given the legacy of colonisation and ongoing disparities.

Nobody at Hobson’s Pledge cares much about that because it does not effect them. Self interest is their bottom line.

Without dedicated representation, Māori voices are often sidelined or overruled as we all have seen, many times and here we go again — as Code Brown is rife in Auckland and celebrations begin with no real mandate after such a low turnout.

Code Brown will tell you otherwise that these results are all about the public voting for “doing a good job” and not “just a pretty face” but in reality it’s about disconnection and the cost of living crisis and double digit rates increases in 18 councils, and who bothers to vote?

Many new mayors
In 18 councils which gave ratepayers a double digit rate increase, 13 elected new mayors — just like that!

Overall, out of 66 mayoral races, 31 councils elected a new mayor

Māori wards ensure there are elected representatives directly accountable to Māori constituents, strengthening democracy, but we’ve seen the erosion of it under this government.

We have all seen how they are pushing all things Māori backwards in a dedicated ideological push to clear the way for foreign investment — and that’s the battle.

Act picked up 10 candidates — but much of that is about who votes, and rather than a swing to the right it’s about rates and low turnout.

Ratepayers tend to get out and vote more than renters, according to Code Brown as we stare at voter turnout in 2025 which appears significantly down compared to 2022 in major cities.

Auckland dropped from about 35.5 percent to about 23 percent. Wellington dropped from 45 percent to around 36 percent. Christchurch also dropped, though somewhat less sharply — and while that’s preliminary, it’s a statement.

Nationwide turnout drops
Overall, the nationwide turnout is looking lower — around 36 percent preliminary results for the 2025 local elections, and offical counts will be known on Friday, October 17.

So in the end, we need to vote out the central government which gave us upward pressure on rates with unaffordable water infrastructure reform — while trying to blame councils —  attacked Māori on many fronts; and eroded progress towards a proper constitutional transformation .

After a recent byelection and now this result — there’s a message to people who do not vote . . . and it’s about the outcomes. You either vote or you get screwed.

I’m sure you already can see the need as some suggest voting should be compulsory like in Australia – and we all saw the gerrymandering by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith about enrolment dates.

Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.

Fauono Ken Laban has been elected Mayor of Lower Hutt, making history as Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Pasifika mayor.

Fauono secured 8704 votes, comfortably ahead of Brady Dyer (6974), Karen Morgan (5529), and Prabha Ravi (3608).

His victory marks a historic milestone for Pacific representation in local government.

• READ MORE: Māori wards, candidates voted down across Taranaki in NZ local elections
  
• Other Local Democracy Reporting stories

A long-time broadcaster, sports commentator, and former councillor, Fauono has been a visible advocate for inclusion, youth opportunity, and safer communities across the Wellington region.

He is also the only Pasifika mayoral candidate to have been successfully elected in this year’s local elections.

Also in Hutt City, Mele Tonga-Grant won a council seat in the at-large race by a margin of just one vote, 7759 to 7758 over independent candidate Kath McGuinness, one of the tightest results in the country.

The result remains provisional, with preliminary results due on Monday and the final count, including special votes, to be confirmed on Friday.

In the Hutt Valley, Pacific representation also continues at the community level. In the Wainuiomata Community Board election, Lesa Bingley (Independent) received 2264 votes, followed by Vatau Sagaga with 2097 and Lahraine Sagaga (Independent) with 1914.

Their results reflect a strong Pacific presence among local candidates contributing to grassroots leadership across the Wellington region.

Poriua
In neighbouring Porirua, Kylie Wihapi (Māori Ward) and Izzy Ford (Onepoto General Ward) have both been re-elected as city councillors, the incumbent councillors from the previous term. Their wins add to Porirua’s long tradition of strong Pasifika and Māori civic leadership. Both are community advocates known for their work in health, housing, and youth empowerment.

Dunedin
In Ōtepoti, Marie Laufiso (Building Kotahitaka) has been re-elected to the Dunedin City Council. First elected in 2016, Laufiso has chaired several council committees, including Community Services, Grants, and the Social Wellbeing Advisory Group. A strong advocate for social equity, sustainability and collective care, she continues to ensure Pacific and community perspectives remain part of local decision-making in Dunedin.

Nelson
In Nelson, Matty Anderson (Independent), who is of Niuean and Pākehā heritage, has been re-elected to the Central Ward alongside Lisa Austin, Pete Rainey and James Hodgson. A former Navy serviceman and community advocate, Anderson has worked across disability, youth, Pacific, migrant and homelessness support. He continues to promote inclusion, grassroots engagement and positive civic participation across the city.

Waitaki
In Ōamaru, Mata’aga Hana Melania Fanene-Taiti has been elected to the Waitaki District Council, representing the Ōamaru Ward. A New Zealand-born Samoan with family ties to Vaiee, Moata’a and Saleimoa in Samoa, she holds the matai title Mata’aga from her mother’s village of Vaiee. Fanene-Taiti’s election reflects a new generation of Pasifika voices stepping into civic leadership in smaller centres, with a focus on inclusion, wellbeing and community representation beyond the main cities.

National significance
The 2025 local elections have seen a rise in Pasifika representation across Aotearoa, with both returning leaders and new candidates elected to councils nationwide.

Fauono’s election as New Zealand’s first Pacific mayor marks a significant milestone in local government, reflecting the growing participation of Pasifika communities in civic life.

Saturday’s progress results indicate a tight race for several seats. Preliminary results will be released on Monday, with final results confirmed on Friday once the special votes have been counted.

Mary Afemata is a reporter with Pacific Media Network. LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a member of LDR.

Bougainville’s re-elected President Ishmael Toroama has announced a caretaker government following a formal swearing-in ceremony on Monday in the capital Buka.

The former Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) commander won more than 90,000 votes in a landslide victory after the election on September 5-6.

The interim Bougainville Executive Council (BEC) will consist of the President, the Vice President Ezekiel Masatt and the Member of Parliament for Atolls Amanda Masono.

• READ MORE: ‘We want legitimate leaders’: Bougainvilleans head to the polls amid push for independence

In his address, Toroama said the occasion marked an important step in Bougainville’s democratic process, signifying a time of transition, continuity and renewed commitment, according to a statement on the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) Facebook page.

“During this caretaker period, our priority is to safeguard good governance and maintain the trust and confidence of our people,” Toroama said.

The interim BEC will oversee government operations until the full Cabinet of the Bougainville Executive Council is formed.

The president will choose four cabinet ministers, while the remaining 10 will be selected by regional committees.

Assigning portfolios
However, Toroama will assign portfolios to each of them.

This will take place after the swearing-in of the 5th Bougainville House of Representatives on Friday, October 10.

Toroama added that Bougainvilleans had expressed concern over the conduct of some losing candidates, saying their actions undermine Bougainville’s democratic values.

“It is disappointing that several have chosen to express their dissatisfaction in premature and disorderly ways. Such conduct mocks the democratic values enshrined in the Bougainville Constitution and insults the people of Bougainville, who have spoken with unity and purpose through the ballot box,” he said.

“The people have made their choice, they have elected leaders whom they trust to guide Bougainville through the next phase of our political journey, particularly toward our aspiration for independence.

“Leadership is not about personal ambition. It is about service, humility, and accountability to the people who have placed their faith in us.”

He also called on elected representatives to unite as Bougainville enters a new political chapter.

‘Set aside differences’
“Let us set aside personal differences and work together for the greater good of Bougainville. Our people deserve leadership that is mature, united, and focused on building a future that is peaceful, prosperous, and independent.

“The strength of our democracy lies not in how we win elections, but in how we respect their outcomes and continue to serve our people with humility and purpose,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Bougainville Electoral Commission (OBEC) returned the writs for 45 seats on Monday.

Electoral commissioner Desmond Tsianai handed them to the outgoing Speaker Simon Pentanu, marking the end of the electoral process.

The writs included the presidency, 38-single-member constituencies and six reserved regional seats for women and former combatants.

Tsianai said the democratic spirit of the people of Bougainville was a testament to their unity and resilience.

“To every voter who stood in line with patience, dignity, and determination, we say thank you. You have proven once again that the heart of Bougainville beats strong with a belief in peaceful democratic choice and representation,” said.

More women candidates
“We recorded a total of 408 candidates, including a growing and welcome number of women candidates. Some 21 women contested constituency seats, up from 14 in 2020.”

The presidential race featured seven candidates, reflecting a vibrant and competitive democratic environment, he said.

He said the final electoral role included 238,625 registered voters, the most inclusive and comprehensive roll in the history of the autonomous region.

Notably, he added, 14.3 percent of enrolled voters were aged 18 to 24, a significant increase from 8.9 percent in 2020.

“This shows that our youth are claiming their place in shaping Bougainville’s future. Our systems of verification, oversight, and accountability were tested and they held firm.”

Officials will now begin their post-election review, listening to lessons from this election, to improve the next.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Bougainvilleans went to the polls today, keen to elect a leader who will continue their fight for independence.

“There’s a mood of excitement among the people here,” said Electoral Commissioner Desmond Tsianai.

“It is important that this election is successful and credible, because we want legitimate leaders in the government, who will continue discussions with Papua New Guinea over independence,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville election reports

Tsianai said there were more than 239,000 registered voters in the autonomous PNG region and he expects a better turnout than the 67 percent during the 2020 election.

“We anticipate voter turnout will increase due to the importance of this election in the political aspirations of Bougainville.”

Tsianai said his office had been proactive, encouraging voters to enrol and reaching out through schools to first-time voters aged 18 and over.

He is adamant Bougainville could achieve a one-day poll, despite the election being rescheduled at the last minute.

Polling pushed back
Polling was scheduled to begin on Thursday but was pushed back a day to allow time to dispatch ballot papers.

In addition, he said, there were some quality control issues concerning serial numbers.

“These are an important safeguard against fraud. We, therefore, took measures to ensure that these issues were rectified, so that electoral integrity was assured.”

The final shipment of ballot papers, which was scheduled for delivery on August 23, finally arrived on September 2, he said.

This did not allow enough time for packing and distribution to enable polling to take place on Thursday.

“The printing of the ballot papers and the delay afterwards was out of our hands, however we’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the process.

The polling period for the elections was from September 2-8, and the office had discretion to select any date within that period based on election planning, he said.

“Rescheduling allowed sufficient time to resolve ballot delivery delays and to ensure that polling teams are ready to serve voters.”

Preventing risk
He said that the rescheduling was done in the interest of voters, candidates and stakeholders, to prevent any risk of disenfranchisement.

“We remain fully committed to delivering a credible election and will continue to provide regular updates to maintain transparency and confidence in the electoral process,” he said.

“We have taken the necessary steps and anticipated that some wards within constituencies have a larger voting population so extra teams had been allocated to those wards so polling can be conducted in a day.”

The dominant issue going into the election remained the quest for independence.

In 2020, there were strong expectations that the autonomous region would soon achieve that, given the result of an historic referendum.

A 97.7 percent majority voted for independence in a referendum which began in November 2019.

However, that has not happened yet, and Port Moresby has yet to concede much ground.

Toroama not pressured
Bougainville’s 544 polling stations will open from 8am to 4pm local time (9am-5pm NZT) in what is the first time the Autonomous Bougainville Government has planned a single day poll.

Some 404 candidates are contesting for 46 seats in the Bougainville Parliament, including a record 34 women.

Six men are challenging Ishmael Toroama for his job.

Toroama recently told RNZ Pacific that he was not feeling any pressure as he sought a second five-year term in office.

“I’m the kind of man that has process. They voted me for the last five years. And if the people wish to put me, the decision, the power to put people, it is democracy. They will vote for me.” he said.

Counting will take place on September 9-21, and writs will be returned to the Speaker of the House the following day.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A former New Zealand politician says there is a sense of relief in Samoa following snap general election day.

Aupito William Sio is in Samoa to vote and support the communities he has responsibilities for as a chief.

Aupito, the Pacific General Assembly Council of Chiefs chair, told RNZ Pacific, from a busy cafe in Samoa yesterday morning, he felt as if a weight had been lifted off.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan general election reports

“Thank goodness it’s over. For a while, the general public, outside of the Apia township, just felt like we can’t wait to cast our vote and make the decision for these politicians,” he said.

“There was a sense of fatigue throughout the campaigning period, but now I think there’s huge relief.”

Finally, the people have spoken and a decision has been made, Aupito added.

Doing the maths
Preliminary election results show Laʻauli Leuatea Schmidt’s FAST Party in the lead and Tuilaepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi’s HRPP trailing behind.

FAST is the same party that won last time with Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa at the helm.

Now, Fiamē heads the new SUP party and Laʻauli is FAST’s leader.

While the preliminary results provide a “good indication,” Aupito said there are still special votes to be added and women candidates to be considered.

Preliminary results from Friday night show FAST on 30, HRPP with 14, SUP had three and IND sat at four as of midday Saturday.

Last election was much tighter but for now, FAST is on track to win by a solid margin.

With the gap between the winner and those who have lost according to unofficial results significant, Aupito thinks there is a good indication as to the outcome.

Quota system for women
Samoa also has a quota system for women. They must have a minimum of six women in Parliament.

“So, if two women MPs have made this round. It’s likely that four women candidates who did not win in their seats but who still had the highest votes would be added on to the 51 seats,” Aupito said

The women’s seats will not be considered until all court challenges are settled, the election office said.

Traditionally, there have been challenges from losing candidates, who might challenge the winning candidates for something that may have occurred that is not in alignment with the laws during the campaign period.

There is a rule though in Samoa where the losing candidate cannot challenge the vote in court unless they have 50 percent of the winning vote, Aupito explained.

“I am hopeful that the rest of the politicians would see that the people have spoken,” Aupito said.

“The preliminary results give you a clear indication that FAST won the popular vote, and perhaps just to allow them to go through, set themselves up as the new government, while these minor challenges might occur behind the scenes, but very rarely have we seen any significant changes after the preliminary results.”

What next?
Official results will be tallied from Monday with an announcement expected next Friday, Samoa’s electoral commissioner Toleafoa Tuiafelolo Alexander Stanley told the media on Friday evening.

“Everything ran smoothly today [Friday], there weren’t any issues apart from one,” Toleafoa explained.

People were transporting voters which was not allowed, so the matter had been referred to the police, he said.

Leadership transition
Aupito described how a transition of leadership began back in 2021. The HRPP had been in government for 40 plus years.

“In fact, the prime minister had been the prime minister for 23 years, and now he has continued to remain as the leader of the HRPP and has kept HRPP relevant in the hearts and minds of the population,” he said.

Even in the strength of being a senior politician, was also seen as a weakness as a transitional generational shift began back in 2021.

For the first time ever, ordinary Samoan citizens in the villages made a big statement about what their expectations about leadership were.

“Clearly, they’ve spoken loud and clear,” Aupito said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The dominant issue going into the next election in Bougainville next week is not much different from the last election five years ago.

The autonomous Papua New Guinea region goes to the polls on September 4.

In 2020, there were strong expectations Bougainville would soon be independent, given the result of an overwhelming referendum for independence just months earlier.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville reports

That has not happened yet, and Port Moresby has yet to concede much ground.

Most recently, at Burnham in Christchurch in June, little progress was made, as Massey University academic Dr Anna Powles points out.

“Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape referred to Burnham as a spiritual home of the Bougainville peace process,” she said.

“And yet, on the other hand, you have the Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama saying very clearly that independence was non-negotiable, and setting out a number of terms, including the fact that Bougainville was to become independent by the 1st of September 2027.

“If Papua New Guinea did not ratify that, Bougainville would make a unilateral declaration of independence.”

Seven candidates standing
There are seven people standing for the presidency, including long-time MP in the PNG national Parliament, Joe Lera.

He said everyone wants independence, but he wants to see a more conciliatory tone from the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG).

“Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside the [Bougainville] Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result. But the Peace Agreement does not say independence will be given to us based on the result,” Lera said.

“What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.

“When we fix those, the nation-building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.”

However, Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama has no intention of deviating from the path he has been following.

“It gives us the opportunity whether the national government likes it or not,” he told RNZ Pacific this week.

“It is a national constitution guarantee of the framework of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, and that is how I’m saying to them, whether we come into consultation, we have different views.

“At least it is the constitutional guaranteed process set in by the National Constitution.”

Achieving sovereignty as soon as possible is the driving force for the man who has been leading Bougainville’s campaign, the Independence Implementation Minister Ezekiel Masatt.

He said the signing of the Melanesian Agreement at Burnham was pivotal.

“We must obtain political independence in order to have some sovereign powers, in order to make some strategic economic decisions,” he said.

“Now, given the Melanesian Agreement where Bougainville can achieve some sovereign powers I think that is a great start in the right direction.”

Masatt is standing in the Tonsu electorate in North Bougainville.

Former army officer Thomas Raivet is running for a second time. He is confident that he and his New Bougainville Party colleagues, Nick Peniai and Joe Lera, can be a formidable presence given the impact of preference votes.

“We believe that we can make a difference, because for the last five years, nothing has really happened here and and maybe five years ago, and maybe you go back 10 years, nothing has really happened for us,” Raivet said.

“I see this as an opportunity just to be part of the development of new Bougainville.”

Sam Kauona, who once led the Bougainville Revolutionary Army alongside Ishmael Toroama, is another presidential candidate.

He has run before but says this time he will win because of the Toroama governmment failure to bring independence.

“Because the government, for the last five years, did not achieve what Bougainvilleans, what we, wanted. They were concentrating on one option only. That’s why it wasted the last five years, and we did not achieve anything.”

The vote in Bougainville is being held over just one day for the first time, with results anticipated within a week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Samoa’s electoral commissioner Toleafoa Tuiafelolo Alexander Stanley told the media the official count kicks off on Monday then next Friday is when official results are expected.

The election, described as the most unpredictable in Samoa’s history, had no clear favourite going in given the governing party had split into two factions, leading to the collapse of caretaker Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa’s minority government.

Unofficial results showed Fiame’s former FAST Party in the lead and HRPP not far behind as of last night.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan general election reports

Preliminary election results are still trickling in for Samoa’s snap election.

Fiame’s newly established SUP Party was trailing behind both.

Electoral Commissioner’s update
Results will only be made official when the Head of State issues the writ.

Prepolling and special votes will be counted today.

Voter turnout was not able to be determined as of last night.

There were more than 100,000 eligible voters expected to take part in election 2025.

Toleafoa said counting was done manually.

A mini server has been used to resolve issues that cropped up in the last election.

“O Le fa’aogaga o Le channel, ma Le mea lea e Ta’u o Le Mac box it’s really a mini server o Le solution lea ga fai lea e sao ai faafikauli lea ga Kupu I Le paloka 2021 e le’i iai se Mac box, faamoemoe ā I numbers foi ga le, ga faamoemoe I le kalagoa ai,” Toleafoa told the media late last night.

His words have been translated: “The use of the channel and this thing called Mac box it’s really mini server for the solution from what happened in 2021 there was no Mac box we relied on numbers manually to communicate”.

“No one can vote twice. For example, if someone voted in one constituency and then went to another the service would pick it up and flag it.

“That is why it will take a week [next week] to fully count,” Toleafoa said.

Voting is compulsory in Samoa and the Electoral Commission has said people in line at close of polling were allowed to vote.

However, they had warned anyone registered to vote who did not cast their ballot would face penalties.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The President of Bougainville, Ishmael Toroama, says he is not feeling the pressure as he seeks a second five-year term in office.

Bougainville goes to the polls next Thursday, September 4, with 404 candidates vying for 46 seats in the Parliament of the autonomous Papua New Guinea region.

Toroama is being challenged by six others — all men.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville election reports

He spoke with RNZ Pacific as he continues campaigning in Central Bougainville.

Don Wiseman: Last time you and I spoke before an election, you had just been ushering a rock band around Bougainville. It’s a very different situation for you this time round.

Ishmael Toroama: Yes, indeed, it’s a totally different situation. But you know, principle never changes. Principles of everything, in terms of whatever we do, remain the same. But it changes as environment changes.

DW: What are your key planks going into this election? What are the most important things that you’re telling people?

‘Political independence’
IT: It’s what my government has done in the last five years.

I am telling them, firstly, of the political independence. Political independence has been agreed by the national constitution of Papua New Guinea, amendment on part 14, which gives the people of Bougainville the right to vote for independence referendum.

As our leaders at that time, while they were negotiating with late Kabui [first Bougainville President Joseph Kabui], they told the Papua New Guinea government that if you cannot change your constitution, then we will no longer sign a peace agreement that creates that opportunity for Papua New Guinea and Bougainville.

So what I’m telling them is it has been guaranteed by the national constitution, which created the amendment of part 14, the Organic Law on Peace Building, Bougainville Peace Agreement and the Constitution of the Autonomous Bougainville Government.

In all consultation, national constitution guarantees us to even the consultation, even through the definition of independence, which most Bougainvilleans have voted for, which has been defined by the national government, saying that it is a separate state apart from the state of Papua New Guinea.

And the United Nations must also verify that, and that is the definition which national government has given to the people of Bougainville before the actual voting happened. If you closely look at all consultation, the Bougainville Peace Agreement says after the referendum vote made by the people, the two governments will consult over the result.

What I’m telling my people is that as your fifth president in the fourth House of Representatives, we have made a consultation at Kokopo, Wabag, and in Moresby we signed the Era Kone Covenant. And latest is the Melanesian Relationship Agreement [signed at Burnham, New Zealand, in June this year].

Constitutional guarantee
Having said in order that constitutional guarantee as a guarantor guarantees the people’s right to vote for independence, that is what I’m telling them.

DW: Yes but you’re not carrying Port Moresby with you on this. Are you? You guys are not very much closer to resolution of this problem than you were five years ago.

IT: Well, that is in line with the consultation process. Whatever they say to me, I see that. It has been amended of the national constitution, then it gives us the opportunity whether the national government likes it or not.

It is a national constitution guarantee or the framework of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, and that is how I’m saying to them, whether we come into consultation, we have different views.

At least it is the constitutional guaranteed process censored by the National Constitution.

DW: There are people, including some running against you in this election, who are saying that your approach through these negotiations has been too strident, that you go into these meetings making bold statements beforehand and there’s no room to move, that you’re not giving room for negotiation.

Defining result
IT: If you look at all the consultation that we have consulted. You will look at the consultation which I am saying we are consulting over the result. The Bougainville Peace Agreement says that the consultation should be over the result.

And what is the result? It is the 97.7 percent and who has defined the 97.7 percent — it is the national government of Papua New Guinea.

I understand where they’re coming from, because if you want to retain a political power, you can make all sorts of arguments trying to say that President Toroama has not left room, [made] political spaces available.

But if you closely look at what the Bougainville Peace Agreement says, we are consulting over the result, whether these presidents or candidates are saying that I haven’t made a room.

You just look at every space that we have gone into. And a consultation, as per the Bougainville Peace Agreement, is over the result.

What is the result? It is the independence which people voted — 97.7 percent. We cannot deny the people’s power moving into the referendum saying that we want to govern ourselves. So yes, people’s power.

DW: Except you’re overlooking that that referendum is a non-binding referendum?

Where is it non-binding?
IT: Can you specifically say to me, can you give me a clause within the Bougainville Peace Agreement that it says it is a non-binding.

I’m asking you, you will not find any non-binding clause within the framework of the Peace Agreement. It has been cultivated in there by people that want to drive us away from the exact opposition of the people.

There is no clause within the political peace agreement that says non-binding. There is no clause.

DW: We’re here now, just a week out from the election. How will you go?

IT: I’m the kind of man that has process. They voted me for the last five years. And if the people wish to put me [back], the decision, the power to put people, it is democracy. They will vote for me.

If not, they can choose another president. I don’t get too much pressure, but because it has been described within the constitution of the autonomous government that a president can serve two terms, so that’s why I am running.

But I’m not in a pressure mood. I am all right.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pre-polling has kicked off in Samoa today, with around 1700 people expected to cast their votes ahead of Friday’s polling day.

At the Tuana’imato Sports Complex in the capital, Apia, the atmosphere was upbeat as special voters began arriving.

Special voters include those from Savai’i, the largest island in Samoa. There are no polling booths open on Wednesday in Savai’i, so all voters from there have to come to Upolu to cast their votes.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan general election reports

Five constituencies have been through the polling booths at Tuana’imato to vote. Voters are being called in by election officials according to their constituency.

Families are on hand to assist elderly relatives and members of the disabled community, making sure they can exercise their right to vote.

The country’s Electoral Commissioner, Toleafoa Tuiafelolo Alexander Stanley, said pre-polling was open only to those who had been pre-approved, including the elderly, disabled, and others unable to vote on Friday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

COMMENTARY: By Asofou So’o

Although seven political parties have officially registered to contest Samoa’s general election this Friday, three have been politically visible through their campaign activities and are likely to share among them the biggest slice of the Parliament’s 51 seats.

The question on everyone’s lips is: which one of them will win enough seats to form the next government without the assistance of possible coalition partners?

The three main political parties are the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party and Sāmoa United Party (SUP), under the leadership of Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi (Tuila’epa), La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polata’ivao Schmidt (La’auli) and Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa (Fiamē) respectively.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan general election reports

La’auli and Fiamē were both long-serving members of the HRPP until their defection from that party when Tuila’epa was prime minister to form the FAST party before the last general election in April 2021.

Fiamē and La’auli became the leader and president of the FAST party respectively while Tuila’epa continued his parliamentary career as the leader of the opposition following the election.

A falling-out between La’auli and Fiamē in January 2025 resulted in the break-up of the FAST into two factions with Fiamē and the 14 ministers of cabinet of her caretaker government establishing the SUP following the official dissolution of Parliament on June 3.

La’auli, now leader of the FAST party, has retained the support of the remaining 19 FAST members of Parliament.

First to publicise manifesto
HRPP was the first political party to publicise its campaign manifesto, launched on June 23. Its promises include:

• a $500 cash grant per year for every family member;
• tax cuts; expansion of hospital services;
• a new bridge between Upolu and Savai’i Islands;
• disability benefit enhancements;
• a $1000 one-off payment at the time of birth to help families cover essential costs for newborn babies;
• an additional $1,000 one-off payment upon completion of infant vaccinations (Hexa-B and MMR-2) at 15 months; and
• zero-rating of Value Added Goods and Services Tax (VAGST) on essential food items.

The FAST party’s manifesto, launched on July 12, reflects a strong focus on social welfare and economic revitalisation. It promises:

• free public hospital services;
• monthly allowances for pregnant women and young children;
• cash top-ups for families earning under $20,000 per annum;
• an increase in the retirement age from 55 to 65;
• VAGST exemptions on essential goods;
• development of a $1.5 billion carbon credit market;
• establishment of a national stock exchange; injection of $300 million into Sāmoa Airways; and
• the expansion of renewable energy and district development funding.

FAST’s signature campaign promise in the last general election was giving each electoral constituency one million tala for them to use however they wanted. That amount will increase to two million tala this time around.

Officially registered on 30 May 2025 and launched on June 5, the SUP launched its campaign manifesto on July 15. It promises:

• free education and hospital care;
• disability allowances and increased Accident Compensation Act payouts;
• land restitution to villages;
• pension increases; and
• expanded services for outer islands that were not reached during Fiame’s premiership — all with a focus on restoring public trust in government.

‘People first’ party
SUP is promoting itself as a people-first party focused on continuity and ongoing reform.

The three main parties are following the practice established by the FAST party in the last general elections in 2021 where all party election candidates and their supporters tour the island group to meet with constituencies and publicise their manifestos.

As part of this process, the HRPP has been branding various FAST claims from last general election as disinformation.

It had been claimed, for example, that the HRPP was moving to cede ownership of Samoan customary land to Chinese people, that the HRPP presided over a huge government deficit and that, as Prime Minister, Tuila’epa was using public funds to send his children overseas on government scholarships.

At the HRPP rallies, Tuila’epa did not mince words in labelling La’auli a persistent liar, asserting that La’auli had been involved in several questionable and unauthorised dealings during the three-year life of the last FAST government, and that La’auli alone was responsible for the break-up of the FAST party when he refused to step down from cabinet following the Ministry of Police’s lawsuit against him in relation to the death of a young man on the eve of FAST general election victory in 2021.

Fiamē, equally, blames La’auli for the unsuccessful completion of the FAST government’s parliamentary term when he refused to step down from cabinet following the Ministry of Police’s lawsuit against him.

Convened caucus meeting
After refusing to step down, La’auli convened a FAST party caucus meeting at which a resolution was passed to terminate the party membership of Fiamē and four other ministers of her cabinet. The split between Fiamē and La’auli culminated in the defeat of Fiamē’s budget and the abrupt dissolution of Parliament.

HRPP said at their rallies that, should they win government, they would pass a law to prohibit roadshows as they do not want “outsiders” influencing constituencies’ voting preferences.

Furthermore, these road shows are costly in terms of resources and time, and are socially divisive.

Instead, they prefer the traditional method of choosing members of Parliament where political parties restrict themselves to compiling manifestos, leaving constituencies to choose their own preferred representatives in Parliament.

Given that the HRPP was the first political party to publicise its manifesto, they probably have a valid point in suggesting that other political parties, in particular the FAST party and SUP, have not come up with original ideas and have instead replicated or added to what the HRPP has taken some time to put together in its manifesto.

Given the political visibility achieved by the HRPP, FAST and SUP through their campaign road shows and their full use of the media, it is to be expected that collectively they will win the most seats.

Furthermore, owing to the FAST party’s turbulent history, HRPP is probably the front-runner, followed by FAST, then SUP. It is unlikely that the smaller parties will win any seats; likewise the independents.

Enough seats main question
The main question is whether HRPP will have enough seats to form a new government in its own right. Coalition government does not seem to work in Samoa’s political landscape.

The SNDP/CDP coalition in the 1985-1988 government and the last FAST quasi-coalition government of 2021-2025 (FAST depended on the support of an independent as well as pre-election alliances with other parties to form government) all saw governments fail to deliver on their election manifestos and provide needed public services.

Perhaps a larger question is how the three parties might fund their extravagant campaign promises.

The HRPP leadership is confident it will be able to deliver on the main promises in its manifesto — compiled and costed by the HRPP Campaign Committee, consisting of former Government ministries and corporations CEOs (Finance, Custom and Inland Revenue, National Provident Fund, Electoral Commissioner, President of the Land and Titles) and a former senior employee of the Attorney-General’s Office — within 100 days of assuming government.

The other two main parties, FAST and SUP, are equally confident.

The public will have to wait and see whether the campaign promises of their preferred party will be realised. Right now, they are more interested in whether their preferred party will get across the line.

Dr Asofou So’o was the founding professor of Samoan studies at the National University of Samoa from 2004 before being appointed as vice-chancellor and president of the university from 2009 to 2019. He is currently working as a consultant. This article was first published by ANU’s Development Blog and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Elizabeth Tako Palin is one of five women contesting the Bougainville North women’s reserved seat next month.

It was previously held by Amanda Masono, who has chosen to contest the open Atolls seat, which was once held by her father.

The autonomous Papua New Guinea region is holding a single-day poll on 4 September to elect a new 46-member House.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville election reports

A record 34 women are standing, including 14 in the three seats reserved for women.

Former teacher Palin ran in 2020 and has wide political experience at the local level.

She spoke with RNZ Pacific.

(This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Elizabeth Palin: I was a former chair lady in the local level government, community government, and I just resigned to contest the seat. I served in the community government and at the ward assembly system for 10 years. But prior to that I was a teacher by profession,

Don Wiseman: Being in the local level government. Is that a full time activity, is it for you?

EP: It is, yes.

DW: What does it involve?

EP: It involves chairing the local level government at the community base level, and also taking care of the five wards within the respective community government that I’m heading.

And, formally, in the first establishment of the first House of Assembly, I was the vice-chair lady. So as one of the ward members in the five wards under the urban council, urban community government. I contested the fourth House and I came second. I came back to be with the community, and then I worked with the people.

I went contested [a second election] and I became the ward member and also lobbied for the chair position, and I became the chairperson.

DW: So you want to be in the ABG [Autonomous Bougainville Government]. What is it you want to achieve there?

EP: Being in the local level government, I have experienced a lot where we do not see the link. We do not really see that link from the top level of leadership down to the local level. We do not really feel it in some sense.

Therefore, I decided that maybe I can be able to contest and get that leadership, and in experiencing my leadership at the ward level and community government level, I believe that I can be able to take that leadership and build that link from the top down to the ward assembly level, which includes the community government and vice versa, from the community government up to the top.

This is what I experienced, and that is the main reason why I am contesting the seat. Also, I believe in my leadership because I have been with the local level government, and I believe I can perform at a much higher level as well.

DW: Yes, well, you will have been campaigning now for weeks, because it’s such a long period of campaigning, isn’t it? How are people reacting to you?

EP: Oh, I have been receiving positive responses from the people, from the voters, in terms of the way I present my campaign strategy, my platform, especially.

I have so far received very positive response from the general public and the voters in the region, and from all the locations that I have conducted my campaign.

DW: Yes, I wouldn’t expect a politician to say anything else going into an election. Independence for Bougainville is, it would seem, very close. How important is it to you that it’s sorted sooner rather than later?

EP: Being a leader, a woman leader in having gone through my people’s experience in terms of fighting for their rights and for their independence, this coming independence, and what we we have been standing for as our political agenda is very, very crucial to me as with the general population of Bougainville.

I cannot say no to that. I do understand a lot of work to do in terms of getting us prepared, in terms of demonstrating the indications and so forth, that we are able to get independence and we are independently ready. But based on the fights of our forefathers and our people and having lost the 20,000 lives, I stand for that.

I believe that such a person like me, a woman with a strong voice at the political scene, in the political scene and level, I can be able to work as a team with the other leaders of Bougainville to get that independence.

But having said that, it does not really mean that that is it. We are ready. As leaders, on the ground and at the different levels of governance, we need to work, and we have this how many years that have been given within the time frame for us to work in order to show that we’re able to be an independent, sovereign state, and that is what I believe in.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Former Pacific candidates and new faces are putting their names forward for this year’s Auckland local government election in Aotearoa.

The final confirmed list of candidates is out.

In the Manukau ward, Councillor Lotu Fuli, one of three current Auckland councillors of Pacific descent, has also served on the local board and is seeking re-election.

• READ MORE: Other local government elections reports

“Currently, we only have three Pasifika councillors at the governing body table — the mayor and 20 councillors. Out of 21, only myself, Councillor Bartley and Councillor Filipaina, who Is half Samoan, sit around that very important decision-making table,” Fuli said.

She said she feels the weight of responsibility of her role.

“I know that I’m here in this space to speak up and advocate for them, because with all due respect to the mayor and to our other councillors from other areas, they don’t know what it’s like for a Pasifika person growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand — in Manukau, in Otara, in Papatoetoe, in Magele [Māngere], or Otahuhu or Maungakiekie, Glen Innes.

“They don’t know because they haven’t lived that experience.

“They haven’t lived that struggle, and so they can’t really, truly relate to it.”

One Pasifika mayoral candidate
Twelve individuals have put their names forward for the mayoralty, including current mayor Wayne Brown. Ted Johnston is the only mayoral candidate with Pasifika links.

Each Auckland ward has a set number of council seats. For example, in Manukau, there are only two seats, currently held by incumbents Alf Filipaina and Lotu Fuli.

In the Manurewa-Papakura ward, there are two seats, and in Maungakiekie-Tāmaki there is one, held by Josephine Bartley. For local board nominations, the number of seats varies.

Those elected make decisions about things like community funding, sports events, water quality, and even dog walking regulations.

Vi Hausia, one of the youngest Pacific candidates this year, is running for the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board (Papatoetoe subdivision). He said he was born and raised in south Auckland.

“Growing up I’ve always had the sense of, ‘oh, it is what it is. It’s always been like that’. And then you get a bit older and you realise that actually things isn’t ‘is what it is’.

“It’s been as a result of people who make decisions in important forums, like local board.”

Strengthening youth engagement
Safety and strengthening youth engagement are issues for him.

“Ensuring that when kids come out of high school there’s a strong pathway for them to get into work or into training, whether that’s a vocational training like builder apprenticeship or university, because that’s the link to ensure that our people, particularly our Pacific people, are engaged within our society, and are able to to find who they are and to be able to contribute back to society.”

He said Māori and Pasifika youth were overrepresented in the statistics of high school leavers who come out of high school and there’s quite a high number of people who go straight onto welfare.

“So we’ve got a responsibility on the local board as well as central government, to be able to understand what the issues are, and to ensure that young people are having the opportunity to be able to be the best versions of themselves.”

Another current Auckland councillor, Josephine Bartley, said it was vital that Pasifika were at the table.

“It’s important because if you look at the make-up of the city, we have a large percentage of Pasifika, and we need to be active. We need to be involved in the decision-making that affects us, so at a local board level and at a city council, at a governing body level.”

She said she was hopeful voter registrations would go up.

“It’s always difficult for people to prioritise voting because they have a lot on their plate.

“But hopefully people can see the relevance of local government to their daily lives and make sure they’re enrolled to vote and then actually vote.”

‘Stop blaming’ Pasifika
Reflecting on Pacific representation in mayoral races, Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board chairperson Apulu Reece said the 2022 race, where Fa’anana Efeso Collins came second to now-mayor Wayne Brown, could have had a different outcome.

Apulu said it was time to stop blaming communities for low turnout and instead question the structure.

“There’s probably some value or truth in the fact that we needed to get more people out voting for Efeso and Māori and Pacific people often too busy to worry about the voting paper that they’ve left on the fridge.

“But I want to twist that and and ask: why didn’t the white people vote for Efeso? Why is it always put on us Pacific people and say, ‘oh, it’s your fault?’ when, actually, he was one of the best candidates out there.

“In fact, one of the candidates, the palagi [Pākeha] lady, dropped out so that her supporters could vote for Wayne Brown.

“So no one talks about the tactics that the palagis (Pākeha) did to not get Efeso in.

“That’s his legacy is us actually looking at the processes, looking at how voting works and and actually dissecting it, and not always blaming the brown people, but saying, ‘hey, this system was built by Pākeha for Pākeha’.”

There is a total of 12 mayoral candidates, 80 council ward candidates, 386 local board candidates and 80 licensing trust candidates.

Voting papers will be posted in early September.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Caledonia’s population has shrunk to 264,596 over the past six years, the latest census, conducted in April and May 2025, has revealed.

This compares to the previous census, conducted in 2019, which recorded a population of 271,400 in the French Pacific territory.

To explain the population drop of almost seven thousand (6811), Jean Philippe Grouthier, Census Chef de Mission at the French national statistical institute INSEE, said that even though the population natural balance (the difference between births and deaths during the period) was more than 11,000, the net migration balance showed a deficit of 18,000.

READ MORE

In terms of permanent departures and arrivals, earlier informal studies (based on the international Nouméa-La Tontouta airport traffic figures) already hinted at a sharp increase in residents leaving New Caledonia for good, after the destructive and deadly riots that erupted in May 2014, causing 14 dead and over 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in damages.

The census was originally scheduled to take place in 2024, but had to be postponed due to the civil unrest.

“New Caledonia is probably less attractive than it could have been in the 2000s and 2010s years,” Grouthier told local media yesterday.

However, he stressed that the downward trend was already there at the previous 2019 census.

‘Not entirely due to riots’
During the 2014-2019 period, a net balance of around then 1000 residents had already left New Caledonia.

“It’s not as if it was something that would be entirely due to the May 2024 riots,” he said.

At the provincial level, New Caledonia’s most populated region (194,978), the Southern Province, which makes up three quarters of the population, has registered the sharpest drop (about four percent).

Meanwhile, the other two provinces (North, Loyalty Islands) have slightly gained in population over the same period, respectively +2.1 (50,947) and +1.7 percent (18,671).

The preliminary figures released yesterday are now to be processed and analysed in detail, before public release, ISEE said.

The latest population statistics are regarded as essential in order to serve as the basis for further calculation for the three provinces’ share in public aid as well as planning for upgrades or building of public infrastructure.

The latest count will also be used to organise upcoming elections, starting with municipal elections (March 2026) and provincial elections later that year.

One of the first women to hold an open seat in Bougainville, Theonila Roka Matbob, is confident she can win again.

Bougainville goes to the polls in the first week of September, and Roka Matbob aims to hold on to her Ioro seat in central Bougainville, where she is up against nine men.

The MP, who is also the Minister of Community Government, recently led the campaign that convinced multinational Rio Tinto to clean up the mess caused by the Panguna Mine.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville election reports

RNZ Pacific asked her if she is enjoying running for a second election campaign.

THEONILA ROKA MATBOB: Very, very much, yes. I guess compared to 2020, it is because it was my first time. I had a lot of butterflies, I would say. But this time has been very different. So I am more relaxed, more focused, and also I am more aware of issues that I can actually concentrate on.

DON WISEMAN: And one of those issues you’ve been concentrating on is the aftermath of the Panguna Mine and the destruction and so on caused both environmentally and socially. And I guess that sort of work is going to continue for you?

TRM: Yes, so the work is continuing. I had three platforms when I was contesting in 2020: leadership, governance, institutional governance and the accountability on the issues, legacy issues of Panguna Mine. I thought that the third one was going to be very challenging, given that it involved international stakeholders.

But I would say that the one that I thought was going to be very challenging was actually the one that got a lot of traction, and it’s already in motion while I’m like back on the trail, defending my seat.

DW: In terms of the work that has been undertaken on an assessment of the environmental damage, the impact that the process had had, and the report that has come out, and the obligations that this now places on Rio Tinto?

TRM: The recommendations that were made by the report was on a lot of like imminent survey areas that is like on infrastructure that were built by the company back then in the operation days that is now tearing down.

And also a lot more than that, there was a call for more intrusive assessment to be done on health and bloodstreams as well for the people, but those other things and also now to into the remediation vehicle, what is it going to look like?

These are clear responsibilities that are at the overarching highest level of engagement through the what we call this process, the CP process. It has put the responsibility on Rio Tinto to now tell us, what does the remediation vehicle look like.

At the moment, Rio Tinto is looking into that to be able to engage expertise in communication with us, to see how the design for the remediation vehicle would look. It is from the report that the build-up is now coming up, and there is more tangible or visible presence on the ground as compared to the time we started.

DW: So that process in terms of the removal of the old buildings that’s actually got underway, has it?

TRM: That process is already underway, the demolition process is underway, and BCL [Bougainville Copper Limited] is the one that’s taking the lead. It has engaged our local expertise, who are actually working abroad, but they have hired them because under the process we have local content policy where we have to do shopping for experts from Bougainville, before we’ll look into experts from overseas.

Apart from that as well, one of the things that I have seen is there is an increased interest from both international and national and local partners as well in understanding the areas where the report, assessment report has pointed out.

There is quite a lot happening, as compared to the past years when, towards the end of our political phase in parliament, usually there is always silence and only campaigns go on. But for now, it has been different.

A lot of people are more engaged, even participating on the policy programmes and projects.

DW: Yes, your government wants to reopen the Panguna Mine and open it fairly soon. You must have misgivings about that?

TRM: I have been getting a lot of questions around that, and I have been telling them my personal stance has never changed.

But I can never come in between the government’s interest. What I have been doing recently as a way of responding and uniting people, both who are believers of reopening and those that do not believe in reopening, like myself.

We have created a platform by registering a business entity that can actually work in between people and the government, so that there is more or less a participatory approach.

The company that we have registered is the one that will be tasked to work more on the politics of economics around Panguna and all the other prospects that we have in other natural resources as well.

I would say that whichever way the government points us, I can now, with conviction, say that I am ready with my office and the workforce that I have right now, I can comfortably say that we can be able to accommodate for both opinions, pro and against.

DW: In your Ioro electorate seat it’s not the biggest lineup of candidates, but the thing about Bougainville politics is they can be fairly volatile. So how confident are you?

TRM: I am confident, despite the long line up that we have about nine people who are against me — nine men, interestingly, were against me. I would say that, given the grasp that I have and also building up from 2020, I can clearly say that I am very confident.

If I am not confident, then it will take the space of giving opportunity for other people and also on campaign strategies as well. I have learnt my way through in diversifying and understanding the different experiences that I have in the constituency as well.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A longtime Bougainville politician, Joe Lera, wants to see widespread changes in the way the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) is run.

The Papua New Guinea region, which is seeking independence from Port Moresby, is holding elections in the first week of September.

Seven candidates are running for president, including Lera.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville independence reports

He held the regional seat in the PNG national Parliament for 10 years before resigning to contest the presidency in the 2020 election.

This time around, Lera is campaigning on what he sees as faults in the approach of the Ishmael Toroama administration and told RNZ Pacific he is offering a different tack.

JOE LERA: This time, people have seen that the current government is the most corrupt. They have addressed only one side of independence, which is the political side, the other two sides, They have not done it very well.

DON WISEMAN: What do we mean by that? We can’t bandy around words like corruption. What do you mean by corruption?

JL: What they have done is huge. They are putting public funds into personal members’ accounts, like the constituency grant – 360,000 kina a year.

DW: As someone who has operated in the national parliament, you know that that is done there as well. So it’s not corrupt necessarily, is it?

JL:Well, when they go into their personal account, they use it for their own family goods, and that development, it should be development funds. The people are not seeing the tangible outcomes in the number two side, which is the development side.

All the roads are bad. The hospitals are now running out of drugs. Doctors are checking the patients, sending them to pharmaceutical shops to buy the medicine, because the hospitals have run out.

DW: These are problems that are affecting the entire country, aren’t they, and there’s a shortage of money. So how would you solve it? What would you do differently?

JL: We will try to make big changes in addressing sustainable development, in agriculture, fishing, forestry, so we can create jobs for the small people.

Instead of talking about big, billion dollar mining projects, which will take a long time, we should start with what we already have, and develop and create opportunities for the people to be engaged in nation building through sustainable development first, then we progress into the higher billion dollar projects.

Now we are going talking about mining when the people don’t have opportunity and they are getting poorer and poorer. That’s one area, the other area, to create change we will try to fix the government structure, from ABG to community governments to village assemblies, down to the chiefs.

At the moment, the policies they have have fragmented the conduit of getting the services from the top government down to to the village people.

DW: In the past, you’ve spoken out against the push for independence, suggesting I think, that Bougainville is not ready yet, and it should take its time. Where do you stand at the moment on the independence question?

JL: The independence question? We are all for it. I’m not against it, but I’m against the process. How they are going about it. I think the answer has been already given in the Bougainville Peace Agreement, which is a joint creation between the PNG and ABG government, and the process is very clear.

Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside of the Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result.

But the Peace Agreement doe not say independence will be given to us based on the result. What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.

When we fix those, the nation building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.

DW: So you’re talking about something that would be quite a way further down the line than what this current government is talking about?

JL: The issue is timing. They are putting deadlines themselves, and they are trying to push the PNG government to swallow it. The PNG government is a sovereign nation already.

We should respect and honestly, in a family room situation, negotiate, talk with them, as the Peace Agreement says, and reach understanding on the timing and other related issues, but not to even take a confrontational approach, which is what they are doing now, but take a family room approach, where we sit and negotiate in the spirit of the Peace Agreement.

This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Don Wiseman is a senior journalist with RNZ Pacific. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

More than 400 candidates have put their hands up to contest the Bougainville general election in September, hoping to enter Parliament.

Incumbent President Ishmael Toroama is among the 404 people lining up to win a seat.

Bougainville is involved in the process of achieving independence from Papua New Guinea — an issue expected to dominate campaigning, which lasts until the beginning of September.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville reports

Voting is scheduled to start on September 2, finishing a week later, depending on the weather.

Seven candidates — all men — are contesting the Bougainville presidency. This number is down from when 25 people stood, including two women.

Toroama is seeking a second term and is being challenged by his former colleague in the leadership of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), Sam Kauona.

Kauona is one of several contesting a second time, along with Thomas Raivet and a former holder of the Bougainville Regional Seat in the PNG Parliament, Joe Lera.

There are 46 seats to be decided, including six new constituencies.

Two seats will have 21 candidates: the northern seat of Peit and the Ex-Combatants constituency.

Several other constituencies — Haku, Tsitalato, Taonita Tinputz, Taonita Teop, Rau, and Kokoda — also have high numbers of candidates.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Bougainville election process begins today with the issuance of the writs yesterday.

Nominations open Tuesday, July 8, and close on Thursday, July 10.

Voting is scheduled for one week starting on September 2, allowing seven weeks of campaigning.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville articles

Candidates will be vying for a total of 46 seats, with the autonomous Parliament agreeing earlier this year to add five additional seats.

The seats were created with the establishment of five new constituencies: two in South and Central, and one in North Bougainville.

“This is one of the most important democratic tasks of any nation — to conduct elections where the people exercise the ultimate power to re-elect or de-elect the representatives who have served them in the last House,” Bougainville Parliament Speaker Simon Pentanu said.

“The elections in Bougainville have always been fair, honest, transparent, and equitable. This is a history we should all be proud of and a record we must continue to uphold,” he said.

The region’s Electoral Commissioner Desmond Tsianai said the issuing of writs was a significant event in the electoral calendar.

“We have delivered credible elections in the past and I assure you all that we are prepared, and we will have this election delivered at international standards of free, fair and inclusive — and most importantly, according to the law.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Australian solidarity activists today marked the 27th anniversary of the Biak massacre in West Papua and have warned the human rights crisis in the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region is deteriorating.

No Indonesian security force member has ever been charged or brought to justice for the human rights abuses committed against peaceful West Papuan demonstrators.

According to Elsham Papua, a local human rights organisation, eight people were killed and a further 32 bodies were found near Biak in the following days. However, some human rights sources put the death toll at about 150.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

“Twenty seven years later, the human rights situation in West Papua continues to deteriorate,” said Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) in a statement today.

“West Papuan people continue to be arrested, intimidated and killed by the Indonesian security forces.

“There are ongoing clashes between the TPNPB [West Papua National Liberation Army] and the Indonesian security forces with casualties on both sides.

“As a result of these clashes, the Indonesian security forces carry out sweeps in the area, causing local people to flee in fear for their lives.

‘Bearing the brunt’
“It’s the internal refugees bearing the brunt of the conflict.”

According to the AWPA statement, 6 July 1998 marked the Biak massacre when the Indonesian security forces killed scores of people in Biak, West Papua.

The victims included women and children who had gathered for a peaceful rally. They were killed at the base of a water tower flying the Morning Star flag of independence.

As the rally continued, many more people in the area joined in with numbers reaching up to about 500 people.

The statement said that from July 2 that year, activists and local people started gathering beneath the water tower, singing songs and holding traditional dances.

“On July 6 the Indonesian security forces attacked the demonstrators, massacring scores of people,” said the statement.

Internally displaced
Human Rights Monitor reported in its June update that more than 97,721 people in West Papua were internally displaced as a result of armed conflict between Indonesian security forces and the TPNPB.

Human Rights Watch in a media statement in May 2025 reported that renewed fighting between the security forces and the TPNPB was threatening West Papua civilians.

“As the West Papuan people struggle for their right to self-determination, they face great challenges, from the ongoing human rights abuses to the destruction of their environment,” said Collins in the statement.

“However, support/knowledge for the West Papuan struggle continues to grow, particularly in the Pacific region,” he said.

“If some governments in the region are wavering in their support, the people of the Pacific are not.

Pacific support ‘unwavering’
Jakarta has been targeting Pacific leaders with aid in a bid to convince them to stop supporting the West Papuan struggle.

Civil society and church groups continue to raise awareness of the West Papuan situation at the UN and at international human rights conferences.

“The West Papuan people are not going to give up their struggle for self-determination,” Collins said.

“Time for the countries in the region, including Australia, to take the issue seriously. Raising the ongoing human rights abuses with Jakarta would be a small start”.

• The Biak Citizens Tribunal

French President Emmanuel Macron has sent a formal invitation to “all New Caledonia stakeholders” for talks in Paris on the French Pacific territory’s political and economic future to be held on July 2.

The confirmation came on Thursday in the form of a letter sent individually to an undisclosed list of recipients and June 24.

The talks follow a series of roundtables fostered earlier this year by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

But the latest talks, held in New Caledonia under a so-called “conclave” format, stalled on  May 8.

This was mainly because several main components of the pro-France (anti-independence) parties said the draft agreement proposed by Valls was tantamount to a form of independence, which they reject.

The project implied that New Caledonia’s future political status vis-à-vis France could be an associated independence “within France” with a transfer of key powers (justice, defence, law and order, foreign affairs, currency ), a dual New Caledonia-France citizenship and an international standing.

Instead, the pro-France Rassemblement-LR and Loyalistes suggested another project of “internal federalism” which would give more powers (including on tax matters) to each of the three provinces, a notion often criticised as a de facto partition of New Caledonia.

Local elections issue
In May 2024, on the sensitive issue of eligibility at local elections, deadly riots broke out in New Caledonia, resulting in 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in damage.

In his letter, Macron writes that although Valls “managed to restore dialogue…this did not allow reaching an agreement on (New Caledonia’s) institutional future”.

“This is why I decided to host, under my presidency, a summit dedicated to New Caledonia and associating the whole of the territory’s stakeholders”.

Macron also wrote that “beyond institutional topics, I wish that our exchanges can also touch on (New Caledonia’s) economic and societal issues”.

Macron made earlier announcements, including on 10 June 2025, on the margins of the recent UNOC Oceans Summit in Nice (France), when he dedicated a significant part of his speech to Pacific leaders attending a “Pacific-France” summit to the situation in New Caledonia.

“Our exchanges will last as long as it takes so that the heavy topics . . . can be dealt with with all the seriousness they deserve”.

Macron also points out that after New Caledonia’s “crisis” broke out on 13 May 2024, “the tension was too high to allow for a dialogue between all the components of New Caledonia’s society”.

A new deal?
The main political objective of the talks remains to find a comprehensive agreement between all local political stakeholders, in order to arrive at a new agreement that would define the French Pacific territory’s political future and status.

This would then allow to replace the 27-year-old Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.

That pact put a heavy focus on the notions of “living together” and “common destiny” for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanaks and all of the other components of its ethnically and culturally diverse society.

It also envisaged an economic “rebalancing” between the Northern and Islands provinces and the more affluent Southern province, where the capital Nouméa is located.

The Nouméa Accord also contained provisions to hold three referendums on self-determination.

The three polls took place in 2018, 2020 and 2021, all of those resulting in a majority of people rejecting independence.

But the last referendum, in December 2021, was largely boycotted by the pro-independence movement.

‘Examine the situation’
According to the Nouméa Accord, after the referendums, political stakeholders were to “examine the situation thus created”, Macron recalled.

But despite several attempts, including under previous governments, to promote political talks, the situation has remained deadlocked and increasingly polarised between the pro-independence and the pro-France camps.

A few days after the May 2024 riots, Macron made a trip to New Caledonia, calling for the situation to be appeased so that talks could resume.

In his June 10 speech to Pacific leaders, Macron also mentioned a “new project” and in relation to the past referendums process, pledged “not to make the same mistakes again”.

He said he believed the referendum, as an instrument, was not necessarily adapted to Melanesian and Kanak cultures.

In practice, the Paris “summit” would also involve French minister for Overseas Manuel Valls.

The list of invited participants would include all parties, pro-independence and pro-France, represented at New Caledonia’s Congress (the local parliament).

But it would also include a number of economic stakeholders, as well as a delegation of Mayors of New Caledonia, as well as representatives of the civil society and NGOs.

Talks could also come in several formats, with the political side being treated separately.

The pro-independence platform FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has to decide at the weekend whether it will take part in the Paris talks.

Will Christian Téin take part?
During a whirlwind visit to New Caledonia in June 2024, Macron met Christian Téin, the leader of a pro-independence CCAT (Field Action Coordination Cell), created by Union Calédonienne (UC).

Téin was arrested and jailed in mainland France.

In August 2024, while in custody in the Mulhouse prison (northeastern France), he was elected in absentia as president of a UC-dominated FLNKS.

Even though he still faces charges for allegedly being one of the masterminds of the May 2024 riots, Téin was released from jail on June 12 on condition that he does not travel to New Caledonia and reports regularly to French judges.

On the pro-France side, Téin’s release triggered mixed angry reactions.

Other pro-France hard-line components said the Kanak leader’s participation in the Paris talks was simply “unthinkable”.

Pro-independence Tjibaou said Téin’s release was “a sign of appeasement”, but that his participation was probably subject to “conditions”.

“But I’m not the one who makes the invitations,” he told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on 15 June 2025.

FLNKS spokesman Dominique Fochi said in a release Téin’s participation in the talks was earlier declared a prerequisite.

“Now our FLNKS president has been released. He’s the FLNKS boss and we are awaiting his instructions,” Fochi said.

At former roundtables earlier this year, the FLNKS delegation was headed by Union Calédonienne (UC, the main and dominating component of the FLNKS) president Emmanuel Tjibaou.

‘Concluding the decolonisation process’, says Valls
In a press conference on Tuesday in Paris, Valls elaborated some more on the upcoming Paris talks.

“Obviously there will be a sequence of political negotiations which I will lead with all of New Caledonia’s players, that is all groups represented at the Congress. But there will also be an economic and social sequence with economic, social and societal players who will be invited”, Valls said.

During question time at the French National Assembly in Paris on 3 June 2025, Valls said he remained confident that it was “still possible” to reach an agreement and to “reconcile” the “contradictory aspirations” of the pro-independence and pro-France camps.

During the same sitting, pro-France New Caledonia MP Nicolas Metzdorf decried what he termed “France’s lack of ambition” and his camp’s feeling of being “let down”.

The other MP for New Caledonia’s, pro-independence Emmanuel Tjibaou, also took the floor to call on France to “close the colonial chapter” and that France has to “take its part in the conclusion of the emancipation process” of New Caledonia.

“With the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, and the political forces, we will make offers, while concluding the decolonisation process, the self-determination process, while respecting New Caledonians’ words and at the same time not forgetting history, and the past that have led to the disaster of the 1980s and the catastrophe of May 2024,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Reports in Papua New Guinea say the governments of Bougainville and PNG have agreed to table the 2019 independence referendum results in Parliament.

While discussions are ongoing, some degree of consensus has been reached during the talks, being held at Burnham Military Camp, just outside of Christchurch in New Zealand’s South Island.

The talks are not open to the media.

• READ MORE:  Bougainville wants independence. China’s support for a controversial mine could pave the way
• Other Bougainville reports

A massive 97.7 percent of Bougainvillians voted for independence in 2019.

Former Bougainville president John Momis told delegates in Burnham to “take the bull by the horn” and confront the independence issue without further delay.

Both governments have agreed to present three highly pivotal documents to the PNG National Parliament.

The commitment was formally conveyed by PNG’s Minister of Bougainville Affairs, Manaseh Makiba.

Only sovereignty acceptable
Meanwhile, the ABG President, Ishmael Toroama, said Bougainville would not accept a governance model that did not grant sovereignty.

This comes amid talk of other options, such as self-government in free association.

To achieve membership of the United Nations sovereignty is needed.

Writing in the Post-Courier, journalist Gorethy Kenneth said the Bougainville national leaders, for the “first time have come out in aligning with the Bougainville team in New Zealand”.

She reported that Police Minister and Bougainville regional MP Peter Tsiamalili Jr said he was in a peculiar position but he represented the 97.7 percent who voted for independence and he would go with the wishes of his people.

The ICT Minister, and South Bougainville MP Timothy Masiu also said his one vote in Parliament would be for independence as far as his people were concerned.

The PNG government has spoken previously of fears that independence for Bougainville would encourage other provinces to seek autonomy.

Provinces, such as New Ireland, have made no secret of their dissatisfaction with Port Moresby and desire to control more of their own affairs.

But the Bougainville Minister of Independence Implementation, Ezekiel Massat, said Bougainville’s status was constitutionally “ring-fenced” and could not set a precedent for other provinces.

He said “under the Bougainville Peace Agreement, independence is a compulsory option”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.