France’s abolition of the status of an overseas minister has received mixed reactions in both France and its overseas territories, with a pro-independence Tahitian member of the National Assembly condemning the “bad signal”.

The position was abolished in yesterday’s government reshuffle and replaced with a minister delegate, a post given to Jean-Francois Carenco.

He will work alongside Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia’s Backès joins French government in citizenship post
• Other New Caledonia politics reports

A French Polynesian member of the French National Assembly, Moetai Brotherson, said the change of of status “sends a bad signal to the overseas territories”.

“We remember the way Mr Darmanin sent forces to Guadeloupe. We also remember the declarations [against independence] in New Caledonia,” he said.

Brotherson said the new representatives were unknown to French Polynesia and New Caledonia, adding he would rather have a single minister exercising full power over the overseas territories.

Negative reactions also came from the French right-wing opposition’s Marine Le Pen as well as overseas territory officials.

Newly elected MP in favour
However, a newly elected New Caledonian French National Assembly member and anti-independence politician, Nicolas Metzdorf, said he supported this new move.

“An association of overseas territories minister and minister of interior is excellent news for our territories,” he said.

“It is a demonstration that Emmanuel Macron considers the overseas territories in the same way as mainland France.”

Darmanin and Carenco are set to tour all of the overseas territories, starting with a visit to Reunion on Thursday.

Darmanin said he put the institutional questions of New Caledonia at the top of his priorities.

“I think of the subject of ecology but also institutional questions,” he said.

“I think of New Caledonia and the Ministry of the Interior that has for a long time pondered on the subject with many colleagues there. There is a clear need for two ministers to take care of the overseas territories.”

Resigned after one month
The previous minister, Yael Braun-Pivet, resigned last month after just one month in office to successfully run for the presidency of the French National Assembly.

Carenco was Secretary-General of New Caledonia in 1990 and 1991.

Last December, New Caledonia voted against independence in the third and final referendum under the Noumea Accord.

The vote was boycotted by the pro-independence side which refuses to accept the result as the legitimate outcome for the indigenous Kanak people to be decolonised.

It regards the rejection of full sovereignty at the ballot box as the Noumea Accord’s failure to entice the established French settlers to join it to form a new nation.

However, the anti-independence camp says the three “no” votes are the democratic expression of the electorate to remain part of France.

Paris wants to draw up a new statute for a New Caledonia within France and put it to a vote in New Caledonia in June 2023.

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

The French Pacific territories have shown their support for President Emmanuel Macron at the polls, but with a much lower voter turnout than has been usual.

Macron captured 61 percent of New Caledonia’s votes overall in the presidential election final stage last Sunday, while far-right candidate Marine Le Pen scored 39 percent.

Across New Caledonia’s provinces, Macron took 75 percent of the votes in Loyalty Island, 61 percent in the South, and 64 percent in the North.

• READ MORE: Other French presidential election reports

Voter turnout varied across the provinces with the South recording the biggest turnout, 44 percent. In contrast, the North only recorded 15 percent and the Loyalty Islands a mere 5 percent.

The low turnout in the North and Loyalty Islands may be the result of the high numbers of pro-independence supporters in those electorates.

Pro-independence voters may have boycotted this election, as they did the final independence referendum in December 2021.

This year, during the first round of the presidential election, pro-independence leaders urged supporters to back left-wing candidates ahead of centrist Macron or any perceived right-wingers.

Call to boycott second round
Pro-independence leaders also urged supporters to boycott the second round.

In French Polynesia, the election results were more polarised between Le Pen and Macron.

Macron won 51 percent of the territory’s total votes which equated to 31 out of 48 districts.

Marine Le Pen’s total voters were only 3000 less than Macron; she won 48 percent of the overall vote and 17 districts.

Figures show Le Pen going from 12,000 votes for the first round to 28,000 votes in the second round. She obtained the majority of votes in several districts of the island of Tahiti.

The highest voter turnout was recorded in the Marquesas Islands, Gambier Islands, and Tuomotu Islands. Hikueru Atoll recorded an 85 percent turnout.

The Mayor of Faa’a, Oscar Manutahi Temaru, said many voters he had spoken to, including police officers and teachers, were not voting for Macron.

In contrast, Wallis and Futuna voters were extremely supportive of Macron. The President won 67 percent of the vote, while 32 percent voted for Le Pen.

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

The French have done it again. Despite having been utterly scandalised by the result of their own vote in the 2017 presidential elections, they have propelled the unpalatable Emmanuel Macron and the deplorable Marine Le Pen to yet another runoff.

But such is the state of French politics — chaotic and in flux. Now, the power of the traditional centre-left and centre-right parties has diminished, and the Fifth Republic is changing beyond recognition, with dramatic consequences for Europe.

After five years in power, the incumbent won only 28 percent of the vote in comparison with Le Pen’s 23 percent in the first round two weeks ago, and the result of the second round, due to take place tomorrow, looks even less certain than ever, considering Macron’s controversial domestic and foreign policy record.

• READ MORE: French Pacific readies for presidential election as Macron seeks second term
• Kanak pro-independence parties urge supporters to boycott French election

In 2017, Marcon defeated Le Pen by 30 points, but today she’s too close for comfort, with some polls putting them almost at the same level, given the 3 percent margin of error. Although some polls have also shown him opening a significant lead.

Predictably, most of the other candidates have lent their support to Macron as he rushed to emphasise Le Pen’s “extremism” and present an ultimatum: It is me or the far right (read the neofascists), or in the words oft attributed to King Louis XV, “After me, the deluge”.

But the trick may not work as well as it did the last time, because this time it smacks of despair and duplicity.

The president looks desperate if he chooses to focus on Le Pen’s record instead of focusing on his own, especially now that he has a record to run on. And he looks desperate if he engages in the politics of fear instead of laying out a hopeful agenda for the next crucial five years.

Neither the pain nor the gain has spread evenly
In terms of numbers, and considering Brexit, the pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Macron has actually done better than expected for the French economy as a whole; better than most other Western economies.

Yet, neither the pain nor the gain has spread evenly during his term.

Despite lower unemployment and higher growth, Macron is widely seen as a “president of the rich”, focused on improving corporate performance as the engine of growth, investing more in white-collar jobs than in blue-collar labour, and showing no sympathy for struggling families.

Macron has proven a good speaker but a bad communicator; better at lecturing than listening, condescendingly talking at people instead of talking to them.

Some now fear that, free of electoral pressures in his second and final term in office, Macron could become even more indifferent, raising the retirement age, undermining labour rights and shrinking the welfare state to suit his neoliberal economic agenda.

Either way, Macron should have mustered the courage in the past two weeks and beyond to set the record straight about where he is taking the country. This is especially important because Macron also needs to come clean about a record of double standards.

He, who had appealed for “hope over fear”, was quick to spread panic about so-called “Islamist separatism” during his presidency, in an opportunistic manoeuvre to deflect attention from his failures and salvage his waning popularity on the right.

Le tour de l’actualité du jeudi 21 avril en #nouvellecaledonie https://t.co/70wucLZaG1 pic.twitter.com/MvMMsxmWA6

— Les Nouvelles calédoniennes (@lncnc) April 20, 2022

Accused Muslims of living on margins
He accused Muslims living on the margins of French society of offending democratic and secular values, instead of fulfilling his promise to end social marginalisation in France.

In the process, he paved the way for the likes of populist candidate Eric Zemmour to claim Islamists and Muslims are one and the same; demonising Islam as an imminent danger to the French republic.

Paradoxically, just as Macron embraced such a xenophobic image, Le Pen shed hers in order to appeal to mainstream conservative voters.

Though she has not changed her fanatic views or chauvinistic agenda, the far-right candidate has replaced her image as an angry extremist, obsessed with immigration, Islam and French identity, with a more moderate one of a warm caring leader, speaking to peoples’ economic and personal anxieties.

Instead of her usual rants against EU authoritarianism, Le Pen has railed against high prices and high taxes in order to rally her base.

Le Pen’s clever but deceiving repositioning has allowed her to make inroads to the political centre without losing the radical right, and propelled her to the top of the polling charts along with Macron, despite her dark past and her admiration for Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, both very unpopular in France.

She has long shared Putin and Trump’s vision of nativist white Christian nationalism, but understood that French voters today are fixated on domestic woes, not on foreign worries, and therefore spoke only in slogans about making France strong, authentic and great again.

Activist president on world stage
But Macron has been an activist president on the European and world stage, believing that France must lead on both fronts. What he lacked in experience, he made up for in youthful energy, bouncing about world forums, hosting important leaders and expressing an opinion on every issue.

Yet despite his energy and ambition, Macron has fared worse on foreign policy than he did domestically. Not only did he fail to make any breakthroughs on any major issue, but much of what he touched also seemed to blow up in his face.

In Europe, he failed to score any gains in his so-called “Normandy format” summit in 2019 and later failed to anticipate, prevent or reverse a Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the process, his vision of European defence autonomy at the expense of a “brain-dead” NATO dissipated to no return.

In Africa and the Middle East, Macron failed to preserve or expand French influence, especially in the Sahel and North Africa. He also fared miserably in Libya, Lebanon and in Palestine despite PR stunts on the streets of Beirut and Jerusalem.

His hastily arranged photo-op with warring Libyan leaders early in his presidency underlined his amateurish approach to foreign policy, as the conflict hardened and France’s role waned. Macron’s appeasement of authoritarian Arab regimes while preaching human rights has been utterly hypocritical.

Macron has lost huge multibillion-dollar arms deals to the United States, including those with the Australian navy and European air forces. Unable to make up his mind about Beijing, or settle on a strategy, he failed to create any form of partnership or make economic inroads with China.

And yet again, it is the immediate bread-and-butter (and, ahem, cheese) issues that count most for the French in these elections, not far-off conflicts and conspiracies.

Macron and Le Pen clash over Russia, hijabs in fractious debate https://t.co/fprafErGgI

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 21, 2022

Faced and debated Le Pen
So far, President Macron has used France’s turn at the presidency of the European Union and the threat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses to European security to avoid debating other candidates or defending his record — until this week’s traditional television debate.

He faced and debated Marine Le Pen, who is much better prepared, more polished and experienced than the last time. Any major faux pas in the next two weeks could have cost him the presidency, but he seems to have the edge as demonstrated in the debate.

Winning back the Elysees is not the only challenge facing him. He will also have to win back the majority in the National Assembly come June legislative elections, in order to pass any major laws or programmes.

It should come as no comfort for the incumbent that his victory was driven, not once but twice, by the electorate’s fear of his far-right opponent

But Macron could still turn a second mandate into a second chance and show the French that he can ensure that the gain, as well as the pain, is fairly shared.

Marwan Bishara is an author who writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as a leading authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs. He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris.

Several pro-independence parties in New Caledonia are urging supporters to boycott the second round of the French presidential elections this Sunday.

The election pits far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National) candidate Marine Le Pen against the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.

Before the first round the pro-independence parties advised supporters to vote for a left-oriented candidate.

• READ MORE: Caledonian Union vows to end French ‘neo-colonial putsch’ in Pacific
• French presidential debate – who was the most convincing?
• More French presidential election reports

The best of those were Jean-Luc Melenchon, who narrowly failed to make the second round.

The La France Insoumise (LFI – France Unbowed) leader topped the charts in a majority of overseas territories, scoring particularly high in the Caribbean, in the first round of the presidential election.

President Macron of the centrist LREM party only came first in the Pacific territories.

Daniel Goa, president of the Union Calédonian — largest of the pro-indendence parties — said the poll was an election only for people living in France.

In a short release signed on Wednesday, numerous parties urged a boycott of both Le Pen and Macron.

A member of the committee supporting Melenchon said in a release “The advice not to vote for the right hand side of politics will be respected without hesitation.

“However, voting Emmanuel Macron signifies agreeing with a dumb referendum that happened on December 12 which the president did not stop in defiance of the pleas of the Kanak people.”

During the first round of elections on April 10, Macron was massively ahead of Le Pen in New Caledonia with 40.51 percent of votes.

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

As the French Pacific is gearing up for Sunday’s first round of the French presidential election, incumbent President Emmanuel Macron appears to be enjoying the most support among the 14 candidates.

Committees set up in support of Macron have been campaigning with the backing of those in power in New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

However, pro-independence parties have remained aloof, either declining to express a preference for any of the candidates or suggesting the election be ignored altogether.

• READ MORE:  French election: Minority youth voice frustrations ahead of vote
• New Caledonia’s Palika party wants people to vote Left in Sunday’s first French election
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However, pro-independence Palika has called on people to vote for “any Left politician” in the first round on Sunday.

Candidates include Marine Le Pen of the National Rally, who is running for a third time, Valerie Pecresse of the Republicans and Jean-Luc Melenchon, who heads the left-wing La France Insoumise movement.

In the 2017 election, Macron defeated Le Pen nationwide, winning 66 percent of the votes.

In Wallis and Futuna, his victory was even more decisive as he won almost 80 percent of the vote.

Smallest vote in New Caledonia
In French Polynesia, Macron won 58 percent, while in New Caledonia, his score was 52 percent.

With 48 percent voting for Le Pen, her score in New Caledonia was her best result of any French overseas territory.

In the Noumea area, which wants close links with Paris, she won more votes than Macron

Anti-independence side backs Macron
In the run-up to this year’s election, Noumea-based anti-independence politicians set up a Macron re-election committee, headed by Mayor Sonia Lagarde.

The committee was formed in December, weeks before Macron confirmed that he would stand for a second term, and just days after 96 percent voted against independence from France in a referendum boycotted by the pro-independence camp.

Lagarde hailed Macron’s support for New Caledonia as flawless, saying the referendum decision to stay with France was due to his commitment.

France’s fearful election. Video: Al Jazeera’s People and Power

After meeting Macron in Paris in January, the president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, Sonia Backes, said she would also support him, praising his engagement as a key factor in winning the referendum.

In an interview this week, Backes said that in 2017 she abstained because she refused to vote for either Le Pen or Macron.

She said what had turned her off Macron was his declaration in Algeria, when he said colonialism was a crime against humanity.

Macron’s letters to Pacific territories
In recent weeks, Macron delivered open letters tailored to French overseas territories and outlining his achievements and policies.

He told New Caledonia that “France, the powerhouse of the Indo-Pacific, is destined to stay.

“Investments mean that the armies have been able to commit since 2017 and from which the armed forces in New Caledonia will benefit in the coming months.

“I want to accelerate this and complement it with new regional partnerships at the economic, scientific, academic and cultural levels.”

The make-up of the restricted electoral rolls in New Caledonia is enshrined in the French constitution but calls for change persist now that the anti-independence camp won the final referendum.

This is alarming indigenous Kanaks who still want to achieve their promised decolonisation.

“There will be no shortage of difficult topics — everyone is thinking about the thorny issue of the electorate. We all know the terms: Caledonian citizenship can and should be open to those who live it.

Citizenship of tomorrow?
“But who is a Caledonian? How should this citizenship of tomorrow work?,” he asked.

The left-wing candidate Melenchon has urged caution in New Caledonia, saying the outcome of last year’s referendum was a catastrophe.

He said the French government destroyed the consensus process of the accord by imposing last December’s referendum date and triggering a huge abstention by the pro-independence side.

Melenchon suggested keeping the 1998 Noumea Accord going for another decade.

The Republicans’ Valerie Pecresse said that if elected she would make New Caledonia a policy priority.

She said she would want accelerated discussions with New Caledonia’s leaders to prepare a roadmap on the territory’s future status within the French republic by December.

This would include revisiting the electoral rolls.

‘Respect, traditions and modernity’
Le Pen’s support committee in Noumea said its “programme is called ‘respect, traditions and modernity’. It is to give a voice to the people, to democracy, which is sorely lacking today.

“To get out of this incessant authoritarianism by repealing vaccine pass regulations, which are a major attack on freedom.”

Running for the top job for a third time, Le Pen said she wanted to create a full-time overseas ministry and fight against the high cost of living while developing the blue economy.

In his letter to French Polynesia, Macron again stated his geopolitical views.

“The Indo-Pacific strategy I wanted for France is a major step in our common history. Through you, France is present and alive in the Pacific,” he wrote.

“At the strategic level, the continuous increase in the resources of our armies will provide for this,” adding that “we must accentuate this military effort and, moreover, accompany it with new co-operation in the region.”

French Pacific nuclear legacy lingers
The compensation for victims of France’s nuclear weapons tests has continued to be a contentious issue in the relationship between Paris and Papeete.

Twenty-five years after the last test and more than a decade after France for the first time conceded that radiation had an impact on human health, Macron assured French Polynesians that France would try to find all those affected by the blasts.

“We are going to look for the victims and their beneficiaries. We will accompany them towards compensation. The road will still be long but there is a commitment which is irreversible,” he wrote.

“Because I want truth and transparency with you,” he added.

The ruling Tapura Huiraatira is officially supporting Macron, although in 2017 he was only the party’s third choice.

Then it backed the Republicans’ Alain Juppe in the primaries and after his elimination, the party supported Francois Fillon, who after also being eliminated, called for his support to go to Macron.

The Republicans’ Pecresse, who in Tahiti has the endorsement of veteran leader Gaston Flosse, promised to launch a major investigation in French Polynesia on nuclear weapons tests to reassess the compensation allocations.

She said if elected she would want to create an Overseas Bank, which would include several of the existing institutions, such as the current Development Bank.

Nuclear test legacy
Le Pen also addressed the nuclear test legacy, saying she would recognise the effects of the nuclear fallout and pay compensation for test victims.

She added that she would reimburse the expenses incurred by the CPS welfare agency.

Since 1995 the CPS has paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from any of the 23 cancers recognised by law as being the result of radiation.

However, Paris has so far rejected calls to bear these costs.

The pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party suggested to its supporters to abstain from voting.

Its leader Oscar Temaru said voters were free to choose but he said none of the candidates represented French Polynesia’s interests.

He said his party’s agreement with the Socialist Party of François Hollande had turned out to be a bad adventure because once in power the French side did not deliver on its promises.

The two top candidates will contest a run-off election two weeks later, with the winner becoming the President of France for five years.

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