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.

A rift within French Polynesia’s ruling party Tavini Huiraatira deepened during Easter weekend with a mass resignation from a group of 14 members.

The resignation was tendered by a group of young members of the local Territorial Assembly.

In their resignation letter, the members of the local parliament, writing to Tavini’s historic 81-year-old leader Oscar Temaru, insist that their decision was “carefully considered” and “does not question the respect we have [towards Temaru].”

• READ MORE: Other French Polynesia reports

The mass resignation reduces Tavini’s majority to 22 within the Territorial Assembly (out of a total of 57 MPs).

This also means Tavini no longer has an absolute majority within the House.

The Assembly is scheduled to convene at its next sitting this week on 9 April 2026.

Crucial Assembly meeting on Thursday
Any motion of no confidence requires the approval of at least 35 MPs.

The other components of the Assembly include 16 from the opposition pro-France (autonomists) and 5 others who are independents.

The 14 resigning MPs belong to a group of “moderate” members of the Tavini, who were mostly elected at French Polynesia’s last territorial elections in May 2023.

Tensions have since surfaced between the newly-elected members of the “new generation” and the founding members of the Tavini, including party president Oscar Temaru and the party’s number two, Antony Géros (who is also the Speaker of the Territorial Assembly).

At the recently-held municipal elections, Géros lost his position of Mayor of the small city of Paea and in the capital city of Pape’ete, pro-autonomy figure Rémy Brillant won — well ahead of two pro-independence figures, Tavini-backed Tauhiti Nena (who secured 11.03 percent of the votes) and 25-year-old Tematai Le Gayic, 25 (who scored much better with 23.3 percent).

In the wake of the municipal elections, Le Gayic was the first to signal the split with his party.

The next territorial elections are scheduled to be held in 2028.

The group of dissident MPs is perceived as close to Brotherson, 56, who became French Polynesia’s President in May 2023.

Géros was not chosen at the time.

Less confrontational approach
Brotherson has since embodied a less confrontational approach, especially with regards to his perceived good relationship with the French government, as opposed to a more confrontational approach from his party’s historic leadership.

Among the most often cited causes of the rift between Tavini’s old guard and the younger group of MPs are such issues as French Polynesia’s undersea mineral resources exploitation (which Temaru favours, as a key to the French Pacific territory’s independence).

The younger Tavini MPs, as well as French Polynesia’s Tavini President Moetai Brotherson (who is also Temaru’s son-in-law), are opposed to this exploitation of resources.

This anti-deep sea mining exploitation is also the official stance of the French government, which is warning of potential environmental damage from such operations.

Brotherson’s general stance over independence is also more nuanced and contrasts with the party’s support for a short timeline and process.

Since the resignation, Tavini has held several “emergency” meetings in a bid to reconcile the two opposing factions.

But none of those have been conclusive.

Some of the views expressed by militants support a resignation from Brotherson, which he is opposed to.

Others recommend a one-on-one meeting between Temaru and Brotherson to try and iron out their differences.

“If nothing comes out of this meeting, then Tavini Huiraatira will take action on April 9,” the party wrote on social networks at the weekend.

“If we start entertaining diverging views of the party’s objectives, we’re in trouble”, an irate Géros told local media.

Biblical references
Temaru and his son-in-law have separately commented on the Easter weekend crisis.

On Good Friday, they both used biblical, religious metaphors and direct references to Easter.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing” said Temaru, quoting crucified Jesus Christ during his Easter martyrdom.

But he also admitted there were “reasons to be worried”.

Meanwhile, Brotherson posted on social networks: “While some are meeting in tribunal mode, on this Good Friday, I prefer to leave it to God.”

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.

After 10 years of non-attendance, France turned up to this week’s French Polynesia sitting of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24) — but the French delegate did not deliver the message that pro-independence French Polynesian groups wanted to hear.

French Polynesia was re-inscribed to the United Nations (UN) list of non-self-governing territories in 2013.

Pro-independence leader Moetai Brotherson, President of French Polynesia, came to power in May 2023.

• READ MORE: Macron warns of ‘new colonialism’ in Pacific, but clings to French ‘colonies’
• Other France in the Pacific reports

Since then he has claimed he received assurances from French President Emmanuel Macron that France would end its “empty chair” policy regarding UN decolonisation sessions on French Polynesia.

President Macron apparently kept his promise, but the message that the French Ambassador to the UN, Nicolas De Rivière, delivered was unambiguous.

He declared French Polynesia “has no place” on the UN list of non-autonomous territories because “French Polynesia’s history is not the history of New Caledonia”.

The indigenous Kanak peoples of New Caledonia, the other French Pacific dependency currently on the UN list, have actively pursued a pathway to decolonisation through the Noumea Accord and are still deep in negotiations with Paris about their political future.

French public media Polynésie 1ère TV quoted the ambassador as saying: “No process between France and French Polynesia allows a role for the United Nations.”

The ambassador also voiced France’s wish to have French Polynesia withdrawn from the UN list. At the end of his statement, the Ambassador left the room, leaving a junior agent to sit in his place.

This was just as more than 40 pro-independence petitioners were preparing to make their statements.

The C-24 session started on Tuesday morning.

This week, French Polynesia’s 40-plus strong — mostly pro-independence delegation — of petitioners included the now-ruling Tavini Huiraatira party, members of the civil society, the local Māohi Protestant Church, and nuclear veterans associations and members of the local Parliament (the Territorial Assembly) and French Polynesian MPs sitting at the French National Assembly in Paris.

It also included President Moetai Brotherson from Tavini.

French position on decolonisation unchanged
For the past 10 years, since it was re-inscribed on the UN list, French Polynesia has sent delegates to the meeting, with the most regular attendees being from the Tavini Huiraatira party:

“I was angry because the French ambassador left just before our petitioners were about to take the floor [. . . ] I perceived this as a sign of contempt on the part of France,” said Hinamoeura Cross, a petitioner and a pro-independence member of French Polynesia’s Territorial Assembly, reacting this week to the French envoy’s appearance then departure, Polynésie 1ère TV reports.

Since being elected to the top post in May 2023, President Brotherson has stressed that independence, although it remains a long-term goal, is not an immediate priority.

Days after his election, after meeting French President Macron for more than an hour, he said he was convinced there would be a change in France’s posture at the UN C-24 committee hearing and an end to the French “empty chair policy”.

“I think we should put those 10 years of misunderstanding, of denial of dialogue [on the part of France] behind us [. . .]. Everyone can see that since my election, the relations with France have been very good [. . . ]. President Macron and I have had a long discussion about what is happening [at the UN] and the way we see our relations with France evolve,” he told Tahiti Nui Télévision earlier this week from New York.

President ‘for all French Polynesians’ – Brotherson
President Brotherson also stressed that this week, at the UN, he would speak as President of French Polynesia on behalf of “all [French] Polynesians, including those who do not want independence today”.

“So in my speech I will be very careful not to create confusion between me coming here [at the UN] to request the implementation of a self-determination process, and me coming here to demand independence which is beside the point,” he added in the same interview.

He conceded that at the same meeting, delegates from his own Tavini party were likely to deliver punchier, more “militant”, speeches “because this is Tavini’s goal”.

“But as for me, I speak as President of French Polynesia.”

Ahead of the meeting, Tavini Huiraatira pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru said that “It’s the first time a pro-independence President of French Polynesia will speak at the UN (C-24) tribune”.

Temaru, 78, was French Polynesia’s president in 2013 when it was reinscribed to the UN list.

Speaking of the different styles between him and his 54-year-old son-in-law — Moetai Brotherson is married to Temaru’s daughter — Temaru said this week: “He has his own strategy and I have mine and mine has not changed one bit [. . .] this country must absolutely become a sovereign state.

“Can you imagine? Overnight, we would own this country of five million sq km. Today, we have nothing.”

French Minister of Home Affairs and Overseas Gérald Darmanin wrote on the social media platform X, previously Twitter, earlier this week: “On this matter just like on other ones, [France] is working with elected representatives in a constructive spirit and in the respect of the territory’s autonomy and of France’s sovereignty.”

Darmanin has already attended the C-24 meeting when it considered New Caledonia.

The United Nations list of non-self-governing territories currently includes 17 territories world-wide and six of those are located in the Pacific — American Samoa, French Polynesia, Guam, New Caledonia, Pitcairn Island and Tokelau.

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

RNZ Pacific

The Appeal Court in French Polynesia has acquitted the pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru and two others in the case of the funding of community Radio Tefana.

In 2019, Temaru was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and fined US$50,000 after the criminal court had found that, as mayor of Faa’a, he had funded Radio Tefana to benefit his pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party.

The chairs of the board of the association which runs Radio Tefana, Heinui Le Caill and Vito Maamaatuaiahutapu, had also been given suspended jail sentences of one and three months, respectively.

• READ MORE: The Radio Tefana affair – Oscar Temaru wins appeal
• Other Radio Tefana reports

Radio Tefana was fined US$1 million (NZ$1.6 million).

The acquittal comes after a repeatedly delayed trial went ahead in the Appeal Court in March.

The radio station had regularly opposed France’s nuclear weapons tests in the region, but the defence said no recording had been produced to prove it was propaganda.

The defence said the French state lied to the local population about the weapons tests for 50 years.

The Tavini party said the real reason for his conviction was that in the eyes of France, Temaru “committed treason” by taking French presidents to the International Criminal Court over the tests.

Tavini Huira’atira, led by Temaru, decisively won the recent election for a new 57-member Territorial Assembly, gaining 44.3 percent of the vote.

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

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has invited the United Nations Decolonisation Committee members to visit New Caledonia.

Controlled by France since 1853, New Caledonia was returned to the UN decolonisation list as prolonged political violence threatened in 1986 — 39 years after France had withdrawn it and its other major Pacific colony from the 19th century, French Polynesia, from the list.

France says it has complied with the UN decolonisation process and regularly exchanged with the UN about New Caledonia.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Walter Zweifel talks about Tahiti’s recent election

During a visit to the United States last week, Darmanin stopped at the UN in New York to discuss the aftermath of the three referendums on independence which France organised in New Caledonia between 2018 and 2021.

Darmanin, who as Interior Minister is also responsible for France’s overseas possessions, said he had a constructive exchange, without elaborating.

He said, however, he wondered how “to trigger this right to self-determination on the scale of one or two generations”.

Darmanin also told the committee that after the referendums, France was trying to negotiate with both the pro- and anti-independence camps to formulate a future status for New Caledonia.

What next for New Caledonia?
The outcome of the referendum process as outlined in the 1998 Noumea Accord is in dispute, with the pro-independence parties claiming the rejection of independence is illegitimate because of the low turn-out of the colonised Kanak people in the last vote.

France had gone ahead with the third referendum despite a plea by pro-independence parties to postpone it because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population.

The pro-independence side refuses to recognise the result, saying that the referendum was not in the spirit of the 1998 Noumea Accord and the UN resolutions on the territory’s decolonisation.

It said the path of dialogue had been broken by the stubbornness of the French government, which was unable to reconcile its geostrategic interests in the Pacific with its obligation to decolonise New Caledonia.

The pro-independence camp has been lobbying for support to get the referendum outcome annulled.

However, a legal challenge in Paris last year by the customary Kanak Senate was unsuccessful while a further challenge of the referendum result filed with the International Court of Justice is pending.

New PIF chair taking ‘neutral’ position
This month, the Pacific Islands Forum said it would “not intrude” into New Caledonia’s affairs although a subgroup, the Melanesian Spearhead Group, had earlier backed calls for the UN to declare the result null and void.

Asked for the Forum’s view, its chair, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, said the “Forum respects the due process of each country”.

“It is not the Forum’s role to intrude into the domestic matters of countries as they determine their independence or their dependence on other countries,” Brown said.

The pro-independence side has refused to engage with the anti-independence side in discussions about any new statute. Instead, it has insisted on having bilateral talks with only the French government on a timetable to conclude the decolonisation process and restore New Caledonia’s sovereignty.

In March, Darmanin visited New Caledonia for talks with a cross-section of society, and last month New Caledonia’s political leaders were in Paris for more discussions.

None of these meetings have yielded a consensus on a way forward.

Audition cet après-midi à l’@ONU_fr par le C24, comité des Nations Unies en charge des sujets de décolonisation, afin de faire le point sur la Nouvelle-Calédonie.
Merci à la présidente du comité et aux pays membres pour cet échange riche et constructif. Au nom du Gouvernement,… pic.twitter.com/Ya5BY1k9Kc

— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) May 19, 2023

Next week, Darmanin is due back in Noumea in a renewed effort to advance discussions on New Caledonia’s future status.

The anti-independence parties want Paris to honour the referendum result and move towards reintegration of New Caledonia into France by abolishing the restricted rolls created with the Noumea Accord.

The push received support last week from the deputy leader of France’s Republicans François Xavier Bellamy who visited Noumea.

He said his side would support changes to the French constitution to allow for the rolls to be opened up — a move firmly resisted by the pro-independence side.

French Polynesia marks 10th reinscription anniversary

The ruling pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party in French Polynesia marked the 10th anniversary of the territory’s reinscription in Faa’a where the party founder and leader Oscar Temaru is mayor.

His decades-long campaign succeeded in 2013 when the UN General Assembly approved a resolution — sponsored by Solomon Islands — and re-inscribed French Polynesia on the world body’s decolonisation list.

The decision, which came in the dying days of the last government led by Temaru, was vehemently criticised by the Tahitian government, which succeeded his, as well as France, which labelled the UN decision an “interference”.

While France has refused to attend any UN discussion on French Polynesia, the pro-autonomy government of the past decade regularly sent delegates to the annual gathering in New York.

Marking the anniversary this year, Tavini’s youngest assembly member Tematai Le Gayic told Tahiti Nui TV he was disappointed that the “French state agrees to negotiate when there is bloodshed”, referring to New Caledonia’s unrest of the 1980s.

“But when it’s with respect of law and democracy, France denies the process,” he added.

The opposition Tapura’s Tepuaraurii Teriitahi said that it would be good “if France accepted once and for all, to avoid any controversy, that UN observers could come to French Polynesia”.

While viewing independence as a long-term goal, the newly elected President Moetai Brotherson has been critical of France shunning the UN process, having described it as a “bad look”.

At the event in Faa’a, Brotherson said they went to ask the UN “to give us the possibility of choice, with a neutral arbiter”.

He said it was then up to his party to awaken consciences so that an overwhelming majority would vote for independence, which he said was not an end in itself but an essential step to building a nation.

“We don’t want a 50 percent-plus-one-vote victory,” he said.

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

Mā’ohi Nui and the Pacific region has witnessed a historical moment at the Territorial Assembly when Oscar Temaru, leader of the pro-independence party Tavini Huira’atira, sat briefly in the most important chair of the chamber.

He presided over the election of the new Speaker (president) of the House.

This honour was his as the eldest member of the Territorial Assembly at the age of 78.

• READ MORE: Tahiti’s pro-independence ‘blue wave’ back at helm with decisive win
• Moetai Brotherson elected as new President of French Polynesia
• Other Tahiti election reports

In his return to the Assembly, he was put in the highest seat of the House from which he had been axed as a member of Parliament in 2018 by a French court which convicted him of a “conflict of interest” in the Radio Tefana affair.

A sweet revenge for the once persona non grata politician in front of the High Commissioner representative of the French administration, along with the two pro-French senators —  and the entire autonomist political platform.

Another no less significant moment that took place when the ballots for the electing the Speaker were counted, 41 were for the only pro-independence candidate, Antony Geros, against 16 who abstained.

This might have come as a surprise to the autonomist alliance of édouard Fritch-Gaston Flosse to see the three non-aligned autonomist members of the assembly give their votes instead of abstaining.

Working with new administration
However, those non-aligned autonomist members have publicly announced that they would work with the new administration.

The other point about the three non-aligned members is the hope of being offered a ministerial position for one of their group, an answer will come when the newly elected President of the territory presents his cabinet in five days.

In his opening speech, Speaker Geros reminded the House about historical facts over the many political battles and strife that Tavini had had to endure — mostly instigated by the French state.

He also said that the past 10 years had been a “journey in the desert” for the new local government.

When asked whether he was worried that his speech against the French administration could send the “wrong signal” to Paris, he said the young new Tavini members of the Assembly needed to know how they got to where they were and the sacrifices that were made by the forefathers of the independence party.

They needed to know the past of their party to understand the future of the country.

It has also been a happy reunion for Roch Wamytan, president of New Caledonia’s Congress and pro-independence leader, who came in person to congratulate and support his old friend Temaru for what he has achieved.

Brotherson’s new administration
Moetai Brotherson was elected president of Mā’ohi Nui with 38 votes ahead of the outgoing president Édouard Fritch (16 votes), and Nicole Sanquer from the non-aligned party — and the first woman to seek the presidency — (three votes) and Benoit Kautai from Flosse’s party, who quickly withdrew his name.

The majority premium won by the Tavini settled the outcome as already predicted.

Any member of the Assembly can stand as a presidential candidate and present their programme. Undoubtedly the autonomist candidates will reiterate their allegiance to the French Republic.

Moetai Brotherson will make his speech and continue to form his cabinet. He has already given the names of some of the members of his cabinet and the following names could be added to his new cabinet.

He promised gender parity in his government with a hint of more women which he can still achieve. He is adding another woman, Manarii Galenon, who is likely to be Minister for Solidarity, Housing and Urban Development.

The Budget and Finance minister would be Tevaiti Pomare which is an interesting choice as he is known to be an A here ia Porinetia supporter.

Some negotiations must have been held between Tavini and the A here ia Porinetia.
The last name that we are hearing of is Cedric Mercadal as Health Minister.

Most of the new ministers are of high calibre in terms of academic achievement but might be rather light on their political engagement and experience.

President Brotherson will need to find two more women to reach gender parity and stay under the number of 10 ministers that he announced previously.

Although he has five days to form his government, all the ministers should be known by Monday.

Priorities for new government
The biggest challenge for this government and Tavini Huira’atira party as a whole will be to work with the French administration whose financial help to the country is around 200 billion Pacific francs (NZ$3 billion) a year.

Despite the long and historically skewed relationship between the independence party and the French state, open discussions with other potential investors, especially China, should not put any strain between the new local and the French administrations.

It has become increasingly necessary for this new government to be close to all the mayors of Mā’ohi Nui which is what the French administration had already put in place around 30 years ago.

This relationship between municipalities and the French state has allowed the latter to have a direct communication with the representatives of the populations, be their only intermediary, and to set up agreements of inter-dependence between the parties involved.

The new government will try to seek this close relationship, particularly with the mayors of the Marquesas archipelago since it is planning to use those islands as an essential lever to boost tourism.

The Marquesas archipelago is only a three-hour flight to Hawai’i, which welcomes 8 million tourists a year, and the new government believes that by offering the Marquesas as a new tourist destination it will boost both the local and the whole of Mā’ohi Nui’s economies.

Managing to bring in 3 percent of this new market in search of authenticity would be a substantial financial addition and would more than double the number of tourists visiting the territory yearly to around 300,000.

Infrastructure objective
In anticipation of this, building the necessary infrastructure — such as airport, wharves, parks, hotels — to welcome this potential tourist mass could only be achieved by working with the mayors.

On the other hand, the more pressing matter for this government will be to visit and help the town of Te’ahupo’o, located on the west coast of the main island of Tahiti, that was hit by torrential rain and flooding 10 days ago.

It left about 60 households desperate to find somewhere to live.

Te’ahupo’o is also the town where the 2024 Paris Olympic Games surfing competition will take place.

Tackling urban delinquency and homelessness around the capital Pape’ete is also part of the new administration’s programme which ties up with the warm welcome that Ma’ohi Nui wants to offer visiting tourists.

The last word is for Oscar Temaru about concerns that the independence party might face a repeat of 2004 and the “politics of intimidation”.

He says the French administration is witnessing an increase in popularity of Tavini Huira’atira and will think twice about trying to “shut the taps”.

Paris is also aware that all the political institutions in Ma’ohi Nui — the Assembly and the government — and in France (the three deputies seated in France’s National Assembly) have independence members to represent the people.

It is Temaru’s wish to also win the senatorial elections in order to strengthen his claim to self-determination.

His only worry is whether Paris might change the constitution during their governance. But at the moment, Ma’ohi Nui is allowing “the young people to govern this country”.

Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

French Polynesia’s presidential candidate Moetai Brotherson has named four ministers in his proposed government, and confirmed he will vacate his seat in the French National Assembly.

He named two men and two women as ministers in a 10-member government expected to be made up mainly of women — a day after his pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party won 38 of the new assembly’s 57 seats in the territorial elections.

The assembly is all but certain to make him the president once it meets later this month.

• READ MORE: Historic pro-independence party poll victory in French Polynesia – video
• Tahiti’s pro-independence ‘blue wave’ back at helm with decisive win
• Tahiti’s pro-independence party tops vote — another winning streak?
• Other Tahiti election reports

He said 29-year-old Jordy Chan, who has a top position in the port of Pape’ete, would become the Works Minister and the party’s secretary-general, Vannina Crolas, would be the Public Service Minister.

He said the cost of government would decrease, vowing that nobody would earn US$23,000 a month, which he said was paid to the outgoing chief-of-staff at the presidency.

Brotherson said Mereana Reid Arbelot had confirmed she would succeed him in the French National Assembly.

She was listed as his substitute when he was re-elected last year but after getting a top job in civil aviation, she was initially reluctant to quit for the parliamentary job in Paris.

Temaru hails victory

Tavini Huira’atira founder Oscar Temaru, who topped the Tavini list despite not seeking another term as president, hailed the victory, saying his party would serve everybody.

“The Ma’ohi people today are aware of their right to sovereignty. They’re aware that they have the right of ownership over all the resources of the country. They’ve been cheated for years, but that time is over,” he said.

The Tapura leader and outgoing president Édouard Fritch said that despite the Tavini victory, a majority of French Polynesians favoured autonomy.

“Polynesia would enter into the next five years at a difficult moment,” he said.

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

A pro-independence party has decisively won elections in French Polynesia, marking a historic shift in one of France’s Pacific territories.

Veteran politician Oscar Temaru’s Tavini Huira’atira party has secured an outright majority, putting future relations with France on the negotiating table along with its ambitions in the Pacific region.

SBS News reportage with some footage from TNTV, NC La 1ere and TV5MONDE.

• READ MORE: Tahiti’s pro-independence ‘blue wave’ back at helm with decisive win
• Tahiti’s pro-independence party tops vote — another winning streak?
• Other Tahiti election reports

Thanks to producers Marcus Megalokonomos and Francesca De Nuccio.

Stefan Armbruster is SBS World News’ Brisbane-based Pacific correspondent. Republished with permission.

Mā’ohi Nui’s blue wave of the pro-independence Tavini Huir’atira has won its bet — to be back in the helm of the country alone with this convincing victory.

With such a decisive result, the 57 parliamentary seats in the Territorial Assembly will be distributed as follow: 38 seats (including the majority premium of 19 seats) will be allocated to Oscar Temaru’s Tavini while the autonomist alliance of Tapura-Amuitahira’a will collect 16 seats and the last 3 seats go to A here ia Porinetia.

The second and final round had a participation of nearly 70 percent, higher than the 2018 elections which was around 67 percent. Tavini Huira’atira led its closest challenger by more than 8000 votes in the provisional results.

• READ MORE: Tahiti’s pro-independence party tops vote — another winning streak?
• Other Tahiti election reports

This win is a political tour de force with noticeable achievements that need to be mentioned.

Firstly, the Tavini Huira’atira has run alone in a voting system intentionally designed for an autonomist victory, and even the last-minute alliance between sworn enemies — the outgoing President Édouard Fritch and former President Gaston Flosse did not sway the electorate this time.

This comfortable majority of 38 seats will put an end to the political “nomadism” that saw previous parliamentarians cross the floor to join the opposition, triggering endless votes of no confidence.

This was the case in 2004 when the Tavini Huira’atira was in power with a coalition partner.

Opposition scaremongering
Secondly, Tavini Huira’atira has communicated during its campaign that the binary political argument instigated by the main opposing party that independence equals poverty while autonomy means more finance from France is pure scaremongering.

By staying away from that argument, Tavini Huira’atira was able to concentrate on its main message — to give back to the Mā’ohi people ownership of their land and the natural resources.

Thirdly, Tavini Huira’atira has well understood that this election was about coming first, whether by 1 vote or 1000 votes and organising relentless electoral campaigns throughout Mā’ohi Nui has paid dividends.

Once more Oscar Temaru, despite his age (78), has spearheaded those political meetings and rallies like he did during those antinuclear protests some 50 years ago.

Along with those political engagements, putting Moetai Brotherson forward as the new president has ensured the transition to a younger generation to run the country, but most of all a political figure with no condemnation, a quality upon which the Tavini has run its campaign.

In his final speech from his town hall of Faa’a, Oscar Temaru thanked all the trusted constituents who have shown their support for the past 50 years.

He also said that the good old days were over, signaling to the French administration that the dialogue would be under new terms as equal partners.

Many non-voters
There were more than 210,000 registered voters but only 144,000 actual votes which still shows a high rate of the population did not vote.

Le grand perdant de cette élection est donc le Tapura. Après presque deux mandats, Edouard Fritch retrouvera les bancs de l’Assemblée de la Polynésie. Le groupe est réduit de plus de la moitié. La stratégie de réconciliation avec Gaston… Tahiti Polynesie https://t.co/q4s14GilkM pic.twitter.com/2RCcNvAfox

— polynesiela1ere (@Polynesiela1ere) May 2, 2023

Where did it go wrong for the autonomist parties?

As expected, a dejected Tapura-Amuitahira’a party and an ex-president-to-be Édouard Fritch said that this defeat was the price that the autonomist platform was paying for not being united and de facto handing the victory to the independence party.

He acknowledged himself that his alliance with Flosse could have given him around 42 percent of the ballots, but in the end the strategy did not work and they only got 38.5 percent.

Fritch bitterly acknowledged that the population — who he insists are a majority of autonomists — would carry the image of an independent country because Tavini would be in power at the Territorial Assembly.

He said that the future of this country was not independence; it needed to remain with their trusted partner within the French Republic.

His disappointment is without doubt aimed at the other autonomist party of A Here ia Porinetia, which decided to run alone and rejected any alliance with Fritch and Flosse.

Opened the door
Tavini can thank the two leaders of A here ia Porinetia, Nicole Sanquer and Nuihau Laurey, for opening the door to victory and running the country.

The new challenges for Fritch and Flosse will be to rebuild the autonomist platform and be an opposition party that will defeat the independence party in the next elections because Mā’ohi Nui is not ready to be independent.

A mea culpa for unpopular measures and actions that the outgoing government had carried out, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, did not feature as reasons for this defeat.

On the contrary, Fritch doubled down, insisting that the independence party had “lied” to the people regarding their ultimate objective — “get rid of France”.

As for Édouard Fritch’s ally, Gaston Flosse, when interviewed regarding the autonomist defeat, he branded the soon-to-be president Moetai Brotherson “a liar” along with Oscar Temaru, and the next president of the Assembly Antony Geros.

The situation prompted the interviewer to cut short the interview.

The newly created and alternative autonomist platform, A here ia Porinetia, has acknowledged their voters totalled around 25,000 and they will have three representatives in the Territorial Assembly.

Constructive, watchful opposition
They want to be a constructive and watchful opposition that will hold the new local government accountable. Nuihau Laurey has rejected an offer made by Moetai Brotherson to work in his government.

French Overseas Minister Gerald Darmanin has congratulated Oscar Temaru and Moetai Brotherson for their victory and stressed that “the Polynesians have voted for change and the French government is acknowledging this democratic choice”.

Here are the likely next steps following this election:

May 1 is Labour Day in Ma’ohi Nui but the official results of the election will be presented in a round press by the representative of the High Commissioner that will spell out the names of those who will sit in the Assembly from all three parties.

On the May 11 all the Assembly representatives will take their seats as members of Parliament. They will first elect a new president of the Territorial Assembly who is most likely to be Antony Geros, the mayor of Paea, a district that voted overwhelmingly blue.

The autonomist party might present a candidate from their ranks to stand against Antony Geros but this is very unlikely to happen as the opposition party do not have the numbers.

Following the election of the Assembly president (Speaker in the Westminster system), the next most important election to take place will be that of the new President of the territory.

Good for democracy
In this presidential election, Édouard Fritch will likely present himself as the candidate to stand against Moetai Brotherson as it is good for democracy and decorum to have two opposing candidates.

The new President will be elected and will already have formed his new government. He will present the new ministers of his local administration to the public.

It is customary to present the new cabinet either at the actual Presidential Palace in Tarahoi or wherever the new president decides to take residence.

In 2004, Oscar Temaru refused to take residence in the Presidential Palace which he described as an “opulent house made for a dictator” and it was not the house of the people.

Moetai Brotherson has already given some names for his new government and is keen to keep the equality of gender parity but hinted at more women. He also mentioned being interested in taking on the Ministry of New Technologies.

Other likely posts:

• Eliane Tevahitua will be Vice-President and who could inherit the Culture and Heritage ministry;
• Vannina Ateo, who was general secretary for Tavini, will inherit the Civil Service ministry;
• Rony Teriipaia, an academic and expert in the Tahitian language,  will be Education Minister; and
• Jordy Chan, who has an engineering background, will be Minister for Big Works and Equipment.

A lot of work awaits this new administration, but the Tavini team seems ready to run the country alone.

Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party has won the election for a new 57-member Territorial Assembly, paving the way for Moetai Brotherson to become president.

Unofficial final results show the party led by its founder Oscar Temaru won 44.3 percent, thereby repeating its win in the first round of voting two weeks ago.

The pro-autonomy coalition list formed 12 days ago between the ruling Tapura Huira’atira and the opposition Amuitahiraa came second with 38.5 percent while another autonomist party A Here Ia Porinetia secured 17.2 percent.

• READ MORE: Other Mā’ohi Nui reports

As the list winning most votes, the Tavini gets 19 of the 57 seats as a bonus, securing a total of 38 seats.

The Tapura-led list won 16 seats and A Here Ia Porinetia three.

The Tavini victory ends the 10-year dominance of the Assembly by the Tapura.

The new Assembly, which has been elected for a five-year term, is expected to meet in the next two weeks to elect a new assembly president and then a territorial President.

Majority of women
The Tavini candidate for the presidency Moetai Brotherson said he is likely to appoint a majority of women when he forms his government after confirming that Eliane Tevahitua will be the vice-president.

Temaru topped the Tavini list but decided before the election not to seek another term as president.

The Tapura leader and outgoing president Édouard Fritch said despite the Tavini victory, a majority of French Polynesians favour autonomy.

The Amuitahiraa leader, Gaston Flosse, said his coalition, which joined the Tapura for the second round, did not “lose” the election and denounced Temaru as a liar.

During the campaign, Fritch and Flosse warned of chaos should the Tavini come first.

Brotherson said the election results show people were not fooled, knowing that independence would not happen next week.

As president, Brotherson said he would represent all the people and seek a dialogue with France as a partner on the basis of mutual respect.

France refuses over UN
French Polynesia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 2013 but France has to date refused to acknowledge the UN decision and refuses to engage in a UN supervised process.

Observers said the Tapura lost support over displeasure with the government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, Fritch and former vice-president Tearii Alpha were both fined for flouting covid rules they put in place.

Alpha, who was vice-president at the time, invited 300 people, including all cabinet members, to his wedding at the height of restrictions.

In what was a surprise last year, the Tavini candidates beat the Tapura candidates to win all three of French Polynesia’s seats in the French National Assembly.

The last pro-independence politician to hold the presidency was Temaru who held the post for a fifth time between 2011 and 2013.

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

As the ballots were counted after the first day of voting in Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia territorial election first round, the “blue wave” of the pro-independence party Tavini Huira’atira led by Oscar Temaru topped the seven party lists competing.

Tavini was followed by the pro-French incumbent governing party Tapura Huira’atira of Édouard Fritch and the surprise alternative group led by a former finance minister under Fritch, Nuihau Laurey.

As for the other autonomist-leaning political parties who did not reach the 12.5 percent threshold required to enter the second round, they would probably encourage their followers to vote for autonomy.

• READ MORE: Temaru’s pro-independence party wins round one of French Polynesia’s elections
• Other Tahitian elections reports

In this first round, 56 percent of the population voted for the members of the Parliament, who will then elect the territory’s President.

This first result has come as no surprise to Oscar Temaru, giving him and his party a two-week campaign to entice the other 44 percent who did not vote in the first round to choose “blue” on April 30.

Undemocratic voting system
When I interviewed Oscar Temaru before the elections, he repeated to me that it should be one vote, one person and that’s the way democracy should work.

However, because France decides on the voting system, it also decides on the allocation of bonus seats (33 percent) for the party that wins most votes in the 57-seat chamber.

This extra bonus seat ploy appeared in 2004 under Gaston Flosse under the pretence of achieving political stability.

This strategy only favours big parties and is likely to keep the same party in power for a long time.

It is part of France’s responsibility to decide the type of vote, to dictate when to vote and how to organise the voting system.

The 33 percent bonus seats was geared to favour the autonomist parties but had the opposite effect in 2004 — despite all predictions — and put the UPLD (union for Democracy, which included Tavini) in power.

Temaru is hoping for a repeat of 2004. By the end of the second round on April 30, we will have the answer on who is going to govern Mā’ohi Nui for the next five years.

Temaru’s winning strategy
Riding on the back of their win at the last French national elections that saw all three seats allocated to Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia in the French Parliament won by pro-independence representatives, Temaru says it was a historic surprise for the French administration and for his people in Tahiti.

He knows that if he uses the same strategy for the territorial elections, he has a good chance of winning.

His approach is to concentrate on what he calls the “disillusioned youth”.

By applying the same approach, he is pitting youth against age because he noticed that the young people weren’t interested in the election because they were not given a voice.

When Oscar Temaru talks about young people, he means 18 to 35 years old — those who the governing administration do not see as potential voters and who rely on their “old guard” approach.

Temaru also talks about how the return of the Tahitian language during political meetings and rallies has had a huge influence on the Tahitian population that still represents about 75 percent of the electorate.

By giving the stage to young, committed and fluent speakers of both Tahitian and French, a whole new communication gap appears.

Fluent bilingual speakers
The pro-independence party offers a space for fluent bilingual speakers compared to the other sides’ representatives who are only fluent in French and speak hardly any Tahitian.

Temaru sees communication in politics as the winning formula.

If you control communication, you are in luck. That is what he did in the last elections in the capital city of Pape’ete for the first time and it was an important victory.

Temaru has also played on the generation gap that exists between the various candidates who are presenting themselves.

He cited veteran politician Gaston Flosse as the main example, emphasising that the future of the Mā’ohi people belongs to the young generation.

When Flosse presented himself in the last elections, he was 91 years old and the youngest lawmaker in the whole of the French Republic from Tavini was only 21 years old. There is a difference of more than three generations between these two candidates.

‘Disrespectful behaviour’
According to Oscar Temaru, the polls show that a huge number of people are against the Fritch government because of:

• The “appalling handling “of the covid pandemic;
• the intervention of the French government in the local health system;
• the scandal of the wedding of the year when a vice-president broke the covid isolation rules — Tahiti’s ‘wedding of the year’ turns into political row over covid hypocrisy | Asia Pacific Report;
• the disrespectful behaviour of President Fritch against the opposition in parliamentary debates; and an unpopular new social tax that has penalised the poor even more.

People now look to the idea of independence as an alternative. Winning these elections would give the Tavini a historic majority in both the Territorial Parliament and the French National Assembly as the only representatives of Mā’ohi Nui would be pro-independence.

Oscar Temaru sees both victories as a stronger mandate enabling Mā’ohi Nui to go to the United Nations and discuss the issue of independence.

He says that every time he talks about Mā’ohi Nui as an independent country, the representatives for France stand up and leave — they don’t want to discuss it.

President Édouard Fritch would go to the UN and say that the population supported their attachment to the French state.

So, this is why it’s really critical for Oscar Temaru to win these elections and change many things in this country.

Internal discords at the Tavini
Is there a tug war between factions of the Tavini Huira’atira after one of the party’s pillars, Eliane Tevaitua, was replaced by a newcomer?

“No. Everybody understands that we have to work together – the older generation and new generation, we need to mix them up,” Temaru says.

“The young generation understands that they need the experience of people who know what is going on. It’s very easy to make them quickly operational because they are smart young people and very interested in politics.”

When the long serving Tavini Huira’atira member of the Territorial Assembly was replaced, the online Tahiti Infos ran an article claiming that Tavini’s general secretary Vannina Ateo had offered her resignation to Oscar Temaru.

However, Ateo said she had never offered her resignation and this was a campaign of disinformation.

Tavini’s vision
Oscar Temaru: “If we win the territorial elections, we will be able to tell France, let’s sit around the table and talk about the future of our country in the presence of the UN as a referee.

“We will put on the table everything that concerns the people of this country. Let’s talk together step by step about agreements of cooperation in the different areas for the future.

“The UN will be the referee between us and France regarding those agreements.
“For us this will not be a repeat of the Noumea Accords because I am one of those who knew what happened exactly to the New Caledonia issue.

“In 1986 after the resolution was adopted by the UN to put New Caledonia on the list of countries to decolonise, there was no talk about going to Paris and meeting with the right-wing Jacques Lafleur.

“It was a decision taken by Jean-Marie Tjibaou and we knew after that the freemason people were the ones who worked behind the scenes to organise that meeting in Paris.

“So, it took more than 30 years from 1986 to 2008. And from 2008 until today the Noumea Accord has become a stalemate.

“We don’t want that kind of accord because while the Noumea Accord was being discussed, at the same time we have had a statute of autonomy which started in 1977 and is now 46 years.

“So, after the autonomy — call it as you like, autonomy management, autonomy intern, self-governance — no we don’t want any of those new titles for our country.

““We will not go through the nearly 40 years of negotiations that New Caledonia went through. For us the UN will fix the date for the referendum so maximum, let’s say 10 years.

“We want to put the economy of this country on the right track, to educate our people — that’s the main point, how to change the mindset of our people and that is a hard job.

“It won’t an easy discussion so we will need top people to go to the UN to talk to the French, because they don’t want to lose their stronghold on this country that is as huge and as big as Europe, with all the resources.

“So that’s why the French administration don’t want to lose it.

“Thanks to the UN for having adopted the last two resolutions in 2020 and 2021 which tell the French to respect our sovereign right and our rights on every resource on this country.

“If France loses this part of Ma’ohi Nui, it will lose everything and Noumea will follow suite when their turn comes again.”

In response to the last question, about Oscar Temaru himself — what is going to happen to him, he says “we will wait and see what God decides, aye!”

At the age of nearly 80, he still has the fighting spirit and he hopes that in five years’ time he will still be here.

“Maybe there will be a new leader for this country. I don’t know, but at the moment I am still fighting.”

Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party has come out on top in the first round of the territorial elections.

The party, led by Oscar Temaru won almost 35 percent of the votes, beating the ruling Tapura Huiraatira party of Édouard Fritch, which obtained 30 percent.

The recently formed A Here Ia Porinetia was the only other party to clear the 12.5 percent threshold to make it to the run-off round in two weeks.

• READ MORE: Other Tahitian elections reports

The other four lists are eliminated, including Amuitahiraa O Te Nunaa Maohi, which is the renamed Tahoeraa Huiraatira party founded by veteran politician Gaston Flosse.

For the first time, the Tavini came first in several large towns in Tahiti and dominated in Moorea.

With 35 percent of the votes, it substantially improved its first-round result from the elections in 2018 when it won 20 percent.

The results show a sharp drop in support for the Tapura, which in the first round in 2018 won 43 percent of the votes.

Tahoeraa plummeted
The Tahoeraa, which then won 29 percent, plummeted to less than 12 percent and will no longer be in the assembly.

The party had dominated French Polynesian politics for decades but was gradually weakened by internal rifts after Flosse was forced to relinquish power over corruption convictions in 2014.

Expulsions and defections led to the formation of a slew of new parties, most notably the Tapura.

Observers said the Tavini gains this year could in part be attributed to its campaign to repeal a recently adopted additional tax.

They also said there was displeasure with the government’s response to the pandemic.

Last year, Fritch and former vice-president Tearii Alpha had both been fined for flouting covid-19 rules they put in place.

Alpha invited 300 people, including all cabinet members, to his wedding at the height of restrictions.

Leaders’ inconsistency
The leaders’ inconsistency prompted the resignation of Tourism Minister Nicole Bouteau, who formed a new party together with a former vice-president, Teva Rohfritsch.

While they failed to get their party to the second round, another former vice-president Nuihau Laurey led the A Here Ia Porinetia to win enough votes to contest the runoff round.

In a reaction on election night, Fritch said he still believed most voters preferred autonomy over independence.

Also on election night, Tavini’s Tematai Le Gayic said the territorial elections were not to be viewed as some sort of independence referendum.

Observers said Tavini might get the support of those who voted for eliminated parties opposed to Tapura and retake power.

In what was a surprise last year, the Tavini candidates beat the Tapura candidates to win all three of French Polynesia’s seats in the French National Assembly.

Fritch described that outcome as “catastrophic”, given the dominance of the Tapura in the Territorial Assembly.

A Here Ia Porinetia also hopes to get support from voters of the eliminated lists.

Renewal campaign
Laurey and party founder Nicole Sanquer have been campaigning for a renewal of the territory’s leadership.

The party proposed a maximum of two terms for elected officials to prevent people entering office for life.

In the second round, on April 30, the list winning most votes will get a third of all seats as a bonus, which assures it securing an absolute majority.

The remaining two thirds of the seats will then be distributed according to the lists’ relative strength.

The system was reintroduced by France in 2011 after nearly a decade of political instability.

In 2018, the Tapura won less than half of the votes but because of the bonus clause it obtained two thirds of the 57 seats.

While Fritch has said he will seek re-election as president in May, Tavini’s Oscar Temaru will not contest the top job despite heading the Tavini list.

The party has said it will nominate as its candidate Moetai Brotherson, who is a member of both the French Polynesian Assembly and the French National Assembly.

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

About 3000 activists of French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party met for six hours at the weekend with the executives insisting that they were “united’ after a recent upheaval over leadership.

The party also presented a “renewed” slate of 73 candidates for next month’s territorial elections which includes many new and younger faces in the lineup for the ballot on April 16 and 30.

Party chair Oscar Temaru got the ball rolling at Motu Ovini in Faa’a on Saturday. Appearing tired, he nevertheless remained on the stage for the entire congress along with the other party executives.

• READ MORE: Other Tahiti politics reports

Antony Géros, the party’s number two, delivered a long-awaited speech after the recent party rift over the candidacy of Moetai Brotherson for the territorial presidency if the party wins the elections.

“It created a stir in the party because the Tony-Moetai divide started to be felt. And it was necessary to sort that out,” he explained after his speech.

Calling for “union”, “unity” and even respect for the new vision of “rising youth ” within the party, Géros ruled out any hint of a possible challenge to Brotherson’s candidacy.

A call for unity was also echoed in the two speeches by young deputies Tematai Le Gayic and Steve Chailloux in the French National Assembly, both once again impressive in their mastery of public speaking.

Tributes by Brotherson
The third and leading deputy Brotherson, emphasised respect and gave tributes to the “elders” of Tavini huiraatira.

“It’s something to walk in the footsteps of these giants,” he said, before also paying tribute to the man who was his chief-of-staff between 2011 and 2013 — Antony Géros.

There were obviously wounds to be patched up.

Temaru, five times a former president of French Polynesia, will lead the candidates list for section 3 (Faa’a, Punaauia).

Géros, mayor of Paea, will lead section 2 (Mahina, Hitia’a o te Ra, Taiarapu East and West, Teva i Uta, Papara and Paea).

Deputy Brotherson heads of the Leeward Islands section.

Section 1 (Papeete, Pirae, Arue, Moorea) will be led by the young deputy Temata’i Le Gayic.

Elections treated as ‘referendum’
RNZ Pacific reports that Temaru had said last December that he would treat the elections as if they would be an independence referendum.

He said that if his party won the election by a large margin, he questioned the point in holding a vote on independence from France.

Temaru said in the case of such a victory he would visit neighbouring Pacific countries and the United Nations to secure support for French Polynesia’s sovereignty.

He said Kosovo and Vanuatu became independent countries without a referendum.

In the last territorial election in 2018, the Tavini won less than 20 percent of the seats, but in the French National Assembly election in June, it secured all three of French Polynesia’s seats in the run-off round.

Brotherson has questioned Temaru’s stance, saying a local election should not be “mixed up” with a decolonisation process under the auspices of the United Nations.

In 2013, the UN General Assembly re-inscribed the French territory on its decolonisation list, but Paris has rejected the decision and keeps boycotting the annual decolonisation committee’s debate on French Polynesia.

While France has partially cooperated with the UN on the decolonisation of New Caledonia, the French government has ignored calls by the Tavini to invite the UN to assess the territory’s situation.

Republished from Tahiti-Infos and RNZ Pacific with permission.

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has accused the environment minister of defamation over seabed mining.

Last week, Environment Minister Heremoana Maamaatuaiahutapu claimed Temaru’s party Tavini Huiraatira did not support an assembly vote on a seabed mining moratorium because Temaru had signed a mining contract with China when he was president.

Temaru denied this, saying it had never been a policy of Tavini Huiraatira party to “sell off the country or its soul”.

• READ MORE: Other Oscar Temaru reports

The moratorium called for a block on any activity until more is known as there had to be evaluations to understand the risks seabed mining posed to the environment.

Temaru said his party did not support the assembly’s moratorium text because it did not tie mining rights to decolonisation.

The Tavini wants the moratorium linked to a 2016 UN resolution which urges the administering power to guarantee the permanent sovereignty of the people of French Polynesia over its natural resources, including marine resources and submarine minerals.

While Temaru’s party wants to formalise recognition of the property rights of French Polynesia, France considers the exclusive economic zone of French Polynesia to be a French national asset.

Huge economic zone
French Polynesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is more than 4.7 million sq km and accounts for almost half of the water surface under French jurisdiction.

Temaru said the UN process called on France to respect the territory’s right to sovereignty over all resources, including those at sea.

He said under French law, the state could claim French Polynesia’s resources if they were declared of strategic value.

Paris believes it has the rights to the territory’s seabed and continental shelves, which are thought to be rich in rare earths.

Three years ago, France submitted a claim to extend the continental shelves in French Polynesia by almost a quarter of a million sq km.

The submission had been made in New York at the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in the presence of Maamaatuaiahutapu.

Obligations to indigenous
In 2019, a lawyer of the group Blue Ocean Law Julian Aguon said that while France had designs to exploit seabed resources it also had fiduciary obligations as by law the indigenous people had permanent sovereignty over natural resources.

He said France was a party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which were binding treaties.

Aguon said a precedent was set by the International Court of Justice when it ruled in favour of Nauru which challenged Australia for breaching trusteeship obligations over phosphate mining.

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

Delegates from French Polynesia have flown to New York for the annual meeting of the UN Decolonisation Committee.

The veteran pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru is heading his team while the French Polynesian government has sent the Equipment Minister Rene Temeharo as its spokesperson.

The territory was reinscribed on the list on non-self-governing territories in 2013, but France refuses to accept the inscription and engage in any UN-supervised process.

He said French Polynesia was not a colony as it had a democratically elected territorial government.

France has not responded to calls to hold a referendum on independence.

The other main French territory in the Pacific, Kanaky New Caledonia, has been on the UN Decolonisation List since 1986, which France has recognised.

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

Two radio stations linked to the French Pacific’s decolonisation movements want to co-operate to lift the use of indigenous languages.

The heads of Radio Tefana in French Polynesia and Radio Djiido in New Caledonia said this was in line with the United Nations declaring the next 10 years as the decade of vernacular languages.

Tahiti Nui TV quoted a member of Radio Djiido, Kengy Wiwale-Hauata, saying New Caledonia had 30 local languages and they were all honoured on the radio every day.

• READ MORE: Temaru hits back over probe in pro-independence Radio Tefana case

The two stations plan to expand co-operation in the region, considering partnerships with Wallis and Futuna, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji.

The two stations were set up in the 1980s when the pro-independence movements were led by Oscar Temaru and the late Jean-Marie Tjibaou respectively. Both broadcast on the frequency 97.4FM.

Radio Tefana is threatened with closure because of a US$1 million fine imposed three years ago when Temaru, mayor of Faa’a and a former President of French Polynesia, was handed a suspended prison sentence over the station’s funding arrangement.

The conviction has been appealed but a hearing of the case has been deferred for a fifth time until next year.

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

French Polynesia’s President Édouard Fritch has described the election of three candidates of the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party to the French National Assembly as “catastrophic”.

They won all three seats in a run-off against candidates of his ruling Tapura Huiraatira party, which holds two-thirds of all seats in French Polynesia’s Assembly.

He said French Polynesia was in the middle of an economic crisis, making him wonder how he could work when the three were part of the opposition to President Émmanuel Macron’s bloc.

Fritch said Tavini’s independence plan lacks a roadmap and only offers something nebulous.

He said after the first round of the election, all the opposition forces turned against the Tapura, accusing the unsuccessful candidates of the other parties of hypocrisy.

Fritch should resign, says Temaru
French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru said after last weekend’s election defeat of the government candidates that President Fritch should resign.

Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira party won French Polynesia’s three seats in the French National Assembly, defeating the three candidates of the ruling Tapura Huiraatira.

Temaru said in view of this result it would only be fair if he quit.

He said the weekend victory was a “historic moment” that should resonate beyond French Polynesia and showed that the Māohi people wanted to be recognised for who they were.

Temaru said, however, that in the current situation French Polynesia had neither the institutions nor the means to solve its problems, but with independence, it would have them.

He said for French President Émmanuel Macron, the election result in Tahiti would be a “cold shower”.

He also said independence would not be achieved tomorrow but at a time when people wanted it.

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

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader and mayor of Faa’a, Oscar Temaru, says double standards are at play in probing him over the payment of his legal defence.

Temaru commented on being held for six hours last week for questioning over the Faa’a Council’s decision to pay his legal bill in a 2019 court case, which is still under appeal.

The prosecution claimed the payment amounted to an abuse of public funds and that Temaru should have paid for the expense with his own money.

• READ MORE: The judgment of Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru – a neocolonial sense of déjà-vu – Ena Manuireva
• Other Oscar Temaru reports

A lawyer acting for Temaru said the council was obliged to cover the mayor’s bill, describing last week’s brief detention of Temaru as a bid to tarnish him.

Temaru said such cover had for example been extended to the former chief-of-staff of Nicolas Sarkozy, Claude Gueant.

As part of the probe, the prosecutor in 2020 ordered the seizure of Temaru’s US$100,000 personal savings — a move being challenged by Temaru.

The probe drew criticism as his defence team risked court action for accepting funds that the prosecutor claimed were unduly allotted to Temaru’s benefit.

Prosecutor’s move challenged
One lawyer, David Koubbi, raised the prosecutor’s move with a 22-member agency which rules on professional ethics.

In the 2019 court case, Temaru and two others were given suspended prison sentences and fines in the criminal court in Pape’ete.

They were convicted for exercising undue influence over funding arrangements for a community station, Radio Tefana, which supports Temaru’s pro-independence political party Tavini Huiraatira.

In what was his first conviction, Temaru was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and a US$50,000 fine.

The current and former chairs of the board of the association which runs Radio Tefana, Heinui Le Caill and Vito Maamaatuaiahutapu, had also been given suspended jail sentences of one and three months, respectively.

Radio Tefana was fined US$1 million.

Maamaatuaiahutapu said it would have been easier to blow up the station with dynamite instead of having a trial.

US$1m fine five times radio’s budget
Le Caill said the station’s US$1 million fine was five times its budget, meaning the station was unable to pay and would have to close.

At the time of the trial, Temaru said if he had to be convicted, he should be jailed for life.

After sentencing, Temaru said he was being punished because in the eyes of France he “committed treason” by taking French presidents to the International Criminal Court over nuclear weapons tests.

The case was appealed two years ago but has been deferred four times and is now due to be heard on August 29.

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

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader and mayor of Faa’a, Oscar Temaru, has been held for questioning over the funding of his defence in a 2019 trial.

Tahiti-infos reports that he and deputy mayor Robert Maker were questioned for six hours.

This comes amid an investigation into alleged abuse of public funds because the Faa’a Council had paid for Temaru’s defence.

• READ MORE: The judgment of Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru – a neocolonial sense of déjà-vu — Ena Manuireva
• Other Oscar Temaru reports

He had been convicted of exerting undue influence and was given a suspended prison sentence as well as a US$50,000 fine.

The conviction will be appealed and is due to be heard in court in August.

As part of the probe into the defence spending in 2020, the prosecution ordered the seizure of Temaru’s personal savings of US$100,000.

The investigation is now under the control of a special trans-regional jurisdiction in Paris specialising in financial fraud, since the start of 2022, due to the complexity of the case.

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.

Several thousand people in French Polynesia have joined a march demanding France own up to the damage caused by its nuclear weapons tests.

The rally yesterday was organised by nuclear veterans group and the pro-independence opposition to mark the day in 1974 when fallout from the Centaur atmospheric nuclear test covered all of French Polynesia.

The protest under the banner Mā’ohi Lives Matter came a week before French President Emmanuel Macron is due for his delayed first official visit to the territory.

• READ MORE: The Auckland event on Sunday mirroring the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete
• NZ nuclear-free activists, campaigners join Tahiti’s Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally
• Temaru calls for massive turnout for Mā’ohi Lives Matter nuclear-free rally
• Mā’ohi Nui’s search for nuclear justice – the French ‘reset’ button still to be reset
• France denies cover-up over deadly nucear tests
• Macron hosts French ‘truth and justice’ Pacific nuclear test legacy talks
• A round table on nuclear power to determine relations between France and Polynesia
• French nuclear tests: ‘I bury people nearly every day, what was our sin?’
• French nuclear tests legacy and Disclose revelations

A pro-independence parliamentarian, Moetai Brotherson, said that over the years the French tests had contributed to the death of thousands of people yet France refused to apologise for that.

France has ruled out an apology and its government told a roundtable on the nuclear legacy in Paris earlier this month that it never told lies about the testing programme.

The pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru said France had denied the reality for decades, adding that he fought against France’s lies which he likened to terrorism.

In 2018, Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira Party and the dominant Māohi Protestant Church alleged that the weapons testing amounted to a crime against humanity and referred all living French presidents to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

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

Over the past 50 years, France has continued to deny the tragedies of nuclear testing in French Occupied Polynesia by propagating the theory of “clean nuclear tests”. Video: Youngsolwara Pacific

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

Moana activists, campaigners, scholars, researchers and Green MPs gathered today in a show of solidarity for Tahiti’s Ma’ohi Lives Matter rally at Auckland University of Technology and vowed to work towards independence for the French-occupied Pacific territory.

A live feed from the Tahitian capital of Pape’ete was screened and simultaneous events happened across the Pacific, such as in Fiji.

Many of the Auckland participants were stalwarts from the early days of the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement from the 1970s and 1980s and declared their support for pro-independence Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru.

• READ MORE: The Auckland event on Sunday mirroring the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete
• Nine takeaways from the Mā’ohi Lives Matter solidarity rally in NZ
• Thousands rally in Tahiti in protest over nuclear weapons legacy
• Temaru calls for massive turnout for Mā’ohi Lives Matter nuclear-free rally
• Mā’ohi Nui’s search for nuclear justice – the French ‘reset’ button still to be reset
• France denies cover-up over deadly nucear tests
• Macron hosts French ‘truth and justice’ Pacific nuclear test legacy talks
• A round table on nuclear power to determine relations between France and Polynesia
• French nuclear tests: ‘I bury people nearly every day, what was our sin?’
• French nuclear tests legacy and Disclose revelations

Many speakers protested that Tahitians were still awaiting compensation for the legacy of health problems and the devastation of Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls during 30 years of testing and 193 nuclear blasts, both atmospheric and underground.

The speakers said it was appalling that serious attempts for compensation and a state apology had not happened in the two decades since the tests ended in 1996.

However, reports from Paris at the weekend hinted that the French Polynesian President had indicated that France had for the first time conceded it should compensate Tahiti’s social security agency CPS for the medical costs caused by the tests.

The agency had repeatedly said that since 1995 it had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from cancer as the result of radiation from the tests.

Dancers at the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete, Tahiti, today. Video clip from the live feed: David Robie/APR

French PM’s letter
Tahiti’s territorial President Édouard Fritch said he received a letter from French Prime Minister Jean Castex, in which he admitted that the demand for a re-imbursement of the outlays was legitimate.

Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, a former leader of the NFIP movement, asked the forum what could be done by people from Aotearoa New Zealand to give support for Mā’ohi Nui (Tahiti) now.

Ena Manuireva, one of the rally organisers and a doctoral researcher into the nuclear tests at AUT, gave an explanation of the current situation and made suggestions for action.

He said it was important to demonstrate solidarity around the Pacific region and to show Paris that there were wider reactions.

Another organiser, Tony Fala, also gave suggestions of how to support the kaupapa of Temaru and the Tahitian activists.

Participants honoured the passing of two great Moana wāhine leaders who had died recently recently passed away — Polynesian Panther Miriama Rauhihi-Ness and Hawai’ian academic Dr Haunani-Kay Trask, both fellow NFIP activists of Halkyard-Harawira.

“We wish to acknowledge all tangata whenua and Kānaka Maoli who are present here today,” said Fala.

Deep-sea mining
Greenpeace campaigner James Hita, coordinator of the project against deep-sea mining, also spoke of the environmental challenge facing the region after a recent move by the Nauru government to activate “fast-tracking”.

Environmental journalist, author and academic Dr David Robie denounced the “decades of lies, bluster and cover-ups” by French authorities, saying recent allegations published by the book Toxique and investigative website The Moruroa Files were a “game changer” forcing action from Paris.

Green MPs Teanu Tuiono and Golriz Ghahraman were also among the speakers, and the rally’s MC was Samoan minister and community activist Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua.

The rally participants acknowledged the connection between indigenous struggles in Mā’ohi Nui, Aotearoa, Australia, Hawai’i, Kanaky New Caledonia, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Rapa Nui, Solomons, Vanuatu, West Papua, and the rest of Moana.

They also spoke out in support of the Māori struggles on Aotea Island, Ihumatāo (Auckland), Putiki (Waiheke Island), and Shelly Bay (Wellington).

In Suva, Fiji, the Pacific Council of Churches issued a statement of solidarity with “our Mā’ohi sisters and brothers to call out France for the atrocities committed through its nuclear tests in Māohi Nui (French-occupied Polynesia)”. It said:

“For 30 years, from 1966 and 1996, Mā’ohi Nui was the scene of crimes committed by the French state against our people: 193 nuclear shots carried out in the bowels of our earth, and in the most total lie, with the propaganda of own trials lasting more than 50 years.”

Fifteen days after Tahiti Nui’s anti-nuclear protest on July 2, the Tavini Huiraatira party has organised a march Mā’ohi Lives Matter this weekend with support from the Mā’ohi Protestant Church, Association 193 and Moruroa e Tatou.

Former territorial president of Tahiti and pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has called for an “unprecedented mobilisation” of the population.

It was after the unrest caused by the publication of the book Toxic (Toxique) last March that the anti-nuclear protest was set for July 17.

• READ MORE: The Auckland event on Sunday mirroring the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete
• Mā’ohi Nui’s search for nuclear justice – the French ‘reset’ button still to be reset
• France denies cover-up over deadly nucear tests
• Macron hosts French ‘truth and justice’ Pacific nuclear test legacy talks
• A round table on nuclear power to determine relations between France and Polynesia
• French nuclear tests: ‘I bury people nearly every day, what was our sin?’
• French nuclear tests legacy and Disclose revelations

The event on Saturday (Tahiti time) is also being mirrored in Auckland at AUT University on Sunday in a Mai te Paura Ātōmī i te Tiāmara’a (From Bomb contamination to self determination) rally being organised by Les Tahitiens de NZ.

The date was chosen to mark the controversial French atmospheric nuclear test Centaur on 17 July 1974.

This was a failed test, complicated by a dreadful weather forecast, that would have blown the radioactive cloud across French Polynesia to the main island of Tahiti Nui.

According to estimates given by the journalist authors of the book Toxic, this would have exposed up to 110,000 Polynesians to radioactive fallout.

Famous JFK speech
In the days running up to the protest, it is by the historic words extracted from the famous John Fitzgerald Kennedy speech that Oscar Temaru wanted to attract popular support: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

“It is a call for a general mobilisation,” Temaru explained.

“I can’t tell how many we will be. But I can tell you that there will be thousands of people.”

And Temaru, leader of the Tavini, added: “I will be satisfied only if we have 50,000 people.”

The bar is set very high.

Fifteen days after the July 2 march that marked this year’s 55th anniversary of the first nuclear test, and a week before the official visit of President Emmanuel Macron to French Polynesia, the collective called Fait Nucléaire en Polynésie (Nuclear Fact in French Polynesia) wanted to strike hard.

At the beginning of the month, the Moruroa e Tatou association managed to gather between 2000 to 3000 protesters in Pape’ete, thanks largely to the support of the l’Église Protestante Mā’ohi (Mā’ohi Protestant Church), which provided most of the protesters.

If its representatives were not at the press conference given last Tuesday at the Tavini headquarters to promote the protest of July 17, the religious organisation is still part of the organising collective.

Richard Tuheiava tried to explain the absence of the church leaders by asking the press: “You seem to doubt the involvement of the Mā’ohi Protestant Church? Don’t worry…”

Grievances and complaints
Two points of gathering are planned for Saturday morning from 6am in Tahiti. One is the carpark of the former Mamao hospital, for protesters coming from the east coast, and the other, the Tipaerui sports stadium for those coming from the west coast.

The two marches for the protest called Mā’ohi Lives Matter will start walking at 9am toward the main place of Tarahoi which will be the focal point for the event.

There a speech is planned to remind the objective of the protest. At midday after one minute silence in homage to the sick and former Polynesian veterans who died due to the nuclear tests, a section will be dedicated to a statement by victims who survived.

Video recordings made for this occasion will be shown on a big screen to carry the message of the sick Polynesians and international sympathisers who could not physically make it to the protest.

Among them will be Hilda Lini, sister of the late Walter Lini, the father of independence of Vanuatu.

Some diplomats from the Pacific are also on the card, recognised by the United Nations along with representatives of non-government organisations which sit at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

“Partners from well-known Pacific institutions, partners of the UN and active individuals in the Pacific region who know the fight of the Tavini on the nuclear issues,” added Michel Villar, foreign affairs councillor for the pro-independence party.

Crime against humanity lawsuit
The other main issue for this protest on Saturday –- and not the least –- is tied to the lawsuit alleging a crime against humanity pressed by independent Polynesians before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, an action that has now stalled.

Since last March, anti-nuclear activists have set up a network of recommendations for those recognised as victims and compensated to file a complaint in The Hague over the shortcomings of the the so-called Morin Law and community meetings have since been organised.

These complaints are likely to reinforce the statement made by Oscar Temaru before the ICJ in October 2018, as explained by Michel Villar last March.

“People have been trained to take statements. It’s already running full speed,” said Temaru.

“I am very satisfied with the last meetings that we have had.”

On Saturday, a host of complaints would help the pro-independence and anti-nuclear causes.

At least to boost communication of their story of suffering on the international stage.

• France conducted 193 nuclear tests from 1966 to 1996 at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia, including 41 atmospheric tests until 1974 that exposed the local population, site workers and French soldiers to high levels of radiation.

Translated for Asia Pacific Report by Ena Manuireva, one of the organisers of the Mai te Paura Ātōmī i te Tiāmara’a (From Bomb contamination to self determination) rally at WF603, Auckland University of Technology at 12noon on Sunday, July 18.

On 27 May 2021, a significant event took place in Rwanda where French President Emmanuel Macron asked for forgiveness from the people of Rwanda after admitting for the first time that France bore a “terrible responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the 1994 genocide.

This is how President Macron’s wording appeared in The Guardian:

“France played its part and bears the political responsibility for the events in Rwanda. France is obligated to face history and admit that it caused suffering to the Rwandan people by allowing itself lengthy silences at the truth exam …”

On the other hand, the French government assumes no liability for the genocide and ecocide perpetrated in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia)- the “crown jewel” of France’s overseas territories.

• READ MORE: Macron hosts French ‘truth and justice’ Pacific nuclear test legacy talks
• Other French nuclear tests reports

The French administration is living in denial concerning its responsibility to the Ma’ohi Nui people vis-a-vis the impact of nuclear tests in the region.

Former French President Hollande said in 2016 that: “I recognise that the nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996 in French Polynesia have had an environmental impact, causing health consequences.”

Further, Hollande added that the issue of compensation for health consequences would be examined — but that statement fell flat as a series of empty promises. That speech has no political or compensatory weight since every five years the reset button is activated during the French presidential elections.

Promises turn stale
Promises made by politicians usually turn stale unless they are seeking another electoral mandate.

France projects an image of itself as a responsible nation in the world at large — but France has treated the issues concerning Rwanda and Ma’ohi Nui differently.

The Rwanda population received a confession of guilt whereas the Ma’ohi Nui populations have received a slap in the face.

Mā’ohi Nui is still waiting an admission of guilt from the French administration — especially after the publication of the investigative book Toxic that discredited all the French governments’ discourse concerning “safe and clean” nuclear tests.

The French government refuses to tell the truth concerning the harm successive administrations have committed upon Ma’ohi Nui.

Ma’ohi Nui standing up in protest
The release of the book Toxic has injected a renewed energy among civil and political groups in Mā’ohi Nui who are reminding the French state that discussions concerning accountability are long overdue. The book focused on the degree to which the radioactive fallout from an atmospheric nuclear test named Centaur contaminated nearly the entirety of the Mā’ohi Nui Islands.

France has used the local Ma’ohi Nui population as guinea pigs to advance its national ambition of becoming a nuclear power while ignoring the rights of the local population and their environment.

Marches in commemoration of the more than 100,000 Ma’ohi Nui people affected by the radioactive cloud from the Centaur explosion will take place in the streets of Pape’ete in Tahiti, on July 17 — the very date when Centaur exploded in 1974.

Marches in Pape’ete are also a response to the stand taken by French President Macron. The French leader has organised a meeting this week when, once more, discussions concerning the modality of potential compensation are taking place along with new rules to be drafted for victims of radioactivity.

However, instead of holding the meeting in Mā’ohi Nui, where most of the contamination has occurred, the meeting is being held in the colonial capital of Paris. Locating the meeting in Paris appears to be yet another way for the French administration to try to control the narrative surrounding the Centaur blast.

Faa’a mayor Oscar Temaru, a former French Polynedsia territorial president, is under no illusion that most of the participants attending the Paris meeting will be pro-French, including Tahiti’s current government which has responded positively to the invitation.

The main anti-nuclear Mā’ohi parties have rejected the invitation from Paris for France’s lack of transparency concerning process, and because these parties believe France’s capital is an inappropriate venue for discussing the horrendous nuclear tests that took place in Mā’ohi Nui.

Total transparency
Temaru says that the way to demonstrate total transparency would be to call upon a neutral arbitrator such as the United Nations to mediate between the French government and Mā’ohi Nui representatives.

Temaru asks for this despite knowing well that the French practise a policy of the “empty chair” at the UN. The International Court of Justice in the Hague would be another appropriate place to discuss decolonisation: especially since Macron said in 2017 that colonisation was a crime against humanity.

According to Temaru, pro-French representatives of the local Tahitian government are trying to undermine the resolution of 2013 that reinscribed French Polynesia onto the UN list of non-self-governing territories. These Tahitian representatives are asking for the 2013 resolution to be overturned: that is very unlikely to happen.

In consequence, Oscar Temaru and his people are organising a day of action for July 17 in Pape’ete, Tahiti. They will march in commemoration of the day the 1974 Centaur nuclear test was initiated — for reparation for damage caused to the Ma’ohi Nui environment and people as a result of nuclear testing, and for the decolonisation of Ma’ohi Nui.

Temaru has invited Moana peoples to stand beside him in solidarity. Nuclear capability is the colonial weapon par excellence and this issue cannot be separated from indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination.

Organisers in Aotearoa have responded to Temaru’s call and have organised a rally to take place in Auckland on July 18 at the same time as protests occur in Tahiti.

Organising the diaspora around Ma’ohi Nui protest
Members of the Tahitian community living in Auckland will add their voices and feet to support their countrymen/women in Tahiti and rally in a show of solidarity on Sunday, July 18. This rally acknowledges that Ma’ohi Nui communities have fought for redress from France over the nuclear issue for long decades.

Rally organisers seek the active support of communities and civil society groups committed to the rights of the Ma’ohi Nui people in their fight against colonialism and neo-colonialism. The Auckland gathering recognises the suffering of other smaller communities in the Pacific in the face of ecological and political colonialism.

The action for Ma’ohi Nui in Auckland will be a cross-generational endeavour aiming to bring together young activists with more experienced ones-so that the new generation can work alongside those who have gone before.

Organisers recognise they stand upon the shoulders of Māori, Pacific, and Pakeha giants who have fought for nuclear justice for Moana peoples in years gone by. The consequences of nuclear testing in the Pacific are intergenerational.

This rally seeks to bring together all the Pacific people (and all other supporters) who live by the Moana-Nui-a-Hiva. Nuclear testing, climate change, and deep-sea mining all imperil our ocean. We must respond to these threats collectively as peoples of the “Sea of Islands”.

The Ma’ohi Nui peoples’ struggle for their rights concerning nuclear issues is an Oceanic issue.

The rally will send a strong message to the French administration that people will not rest until there are concrete efforts made by the French colonial power in Mā’ohi Nui to:

• Recognise responsibility for the 30 years of nuclear testing
• Compensate the whole of Mā’ohi Nui who have carried the sanitary cost of contamination
• Repatriate the unstable nuclear waste buried under the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa
• Clean up both atolls
• Start the process of de-colonisation as stated in the 2013 resolution of the UN Charter

Auckland rally plans
The Auckland rally for Mā’ohi Nui has two components. Firstly, we will gather in the “Elizabeth Yates” room at the Ellen Melville Centre to watch live video of the Tahitian day of action in Pape’ete. Oscar Temaru will address his people in Tahiti and those gathered in Auckland.

Secondly, we will go to nearby Bernard Freyberg Square where there will be poems, songs, and speeches given in honour of Mā’ohi Nui and her struggle for reparations and decolonisation.

In this work, organisers are guided by the wisdom of assassinated Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou:

“The Pacific, with its ocean and its islands, is a gift of the gods to the peoples of Oceania, past and present. The ocean, the islands, the air and the light, the fish, the birds, the plants and mankind together comprise the Life which is our supreme heritage as Pacific people. Everyone is responsible for his own fulfilment.”

“This responsibility is becoming more and more difficult to exercise as the dangers assume ever greater dimensions:

• The danger of denial of the indigenous peoples and their heritage;
• The danger of denial of the greatest dignity of all: control of one’s
life and destiny;
• The danger of blind industrialisation smothering the earth with
tar and concrete;
• The danger of tentacular multinationals which suck the substance;
of our countries to nourish other bellies and other minds…; and
• the danger of nuclear weapons.”

Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevian originally from the south of “French” Polynesia who has lived in New Zealand for many years and is currently a doctoral studies candidate in Te Ara Poutama at Auckland University of Technology. According to family genealogies, Tony Fala has ancestors from multiple Moana islands including Aotearoa, Samoa, Tokelau, and Tonga. He is an activist, volunteer community worker, and volunteer project researcher and writer completing a small Moana academic, activist, and community education project. Both Manuireva and Fala contribute articles for Asia Pacific Report. They are organising the Auckland solidarity rally.

Speakers TBA:
18 July 2021 rally programme TBA.
Rally on Facebook Events page, Mai te Paura Atomi, i te Tiamara’a/ From Bomb Contamination to self- determination.

Organisers:
Ena Manuireva (Ma’ohi Nui lead organiser). Email: jmanuireva@gmail.com Cellphone: 02102575958
Tony Fala (support organiser). Email: tony_fala@yahoo.com Cellphone: 0220129381

While a Paris roundtable about the legacy of nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks. Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific. Walter Zweifel reports.

A high-level roundtable on France’s nuclear legacy in French Polynesia is being held in Paris this week, aimed at “turning the page” on the aftermath of the weapons tests.

Between 1966 to 1996, France carried out 193 tests in the South Pacific, yet 25 years later there are still outstanding claims for compensation and the test sites remain no-go zones monitored by France.

The two-day Paris meeting was called by the French president Emmanuel Macron in April shortly after a new study about a 1974 atmospheric weapons test caused another wave of outcry.

• READ MORE: Other reports on The Moruroa Files revelations
• French nuclear testing in Polynesia

Analysing declassified French documents, the study Toxique by the news website Disclose concluded that the fallout affected the entire population and not only the immediate testing zone around Moruroa as the public had been led to believe.

Macron’s initiative to put the recent history on the table has been welcomed by French Polynesia’s president Edouard Fritch, but has been dismissed by the opposition, nuclear veteran groups and the dominant Maohi Protestant Church, which will stay away, saying the delegation from Tahiti lacks credibility and legitimacy.

For Fritch, the problems thrown up by the nuclear test era have been discussed with French politicians for the past 25 years but he says it is Macron who at last wants to deal with this “pebble in the shoe” in the relationship with Tahiti.

This harks back to Macron’s 2017 presidential election campaign when his team promised Tahitians that Paris would assume key responsibility for health care and to pay in full for the medical costs incurred by those suffering from radiation-induced illnesses.

Tests’ impact on health, environment
Fritch told media that the upcoming talks should bring ‘truth and justice’, with an agenda looking at the tests’ impact on health and the environment, and the financial costs.

The Tahitian delegation also wants France to acknowledge its nuclear legacy in the constitution.

Fritch said he would “ask the President of the Republic to give us a precise timetable and above all to send us competent people in the matters that will be discussed”.

Accompanying Fritch is a representative of the Territorial Assembly and the territory’s members of the French legislature, such as Lana Tetuanui, as well as employer and union delegates.

Among the French participants will be the health minister but the defence minister is not certain to attend.

French Polynesia’s former president Gaston Flosse, who for decades defended France’s testing regime, was not invited.

Reflecting the simmering dissonance in Tahiti, the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party of Oscar Temaru rejected the invitation to Paris outright, labelling the planned talks a sham.

Temaru said any such talks should not be held in the capital of the colonising power, but rather in New York under the auspices of the United Nations.

While France refuses to acknowledge the 2013 UN decision to reinscribe French Polynesia on the decolonisation list, Temaru insists that “the right of peoples to self-determination is a sacred right, and there is no mixing the sacred and the vile, that is money. Our people are not for sale, Mā’ohi Nui is not for sale.”

The main nuclear test veterans organisation, Moruroa e tatou, decided to boycott the talks.

Its leader Hiro Tefaarere said that after 50 years of people suffering from the test legacy, those going to Paris put money at the forefront of their demands and not ethics.

He said Fritch would not have joined the roundtable had not it been for the release of Toxique which identified the French state’s “secrecy, lies and negligence”.

‘Crime against humanity’
Rejecting the French invitation, the Māohi Protestant Church, which is the main denomination in Tahiti, has in turn invited Macron to attend its synod when he is expected to visit Tahiti in the next few weeks.

The head of the church, Francois Pihaatae, said that by going to Paris, they would have the “wool pulled over their eyes”, but once Macron was in Tahiti the presence of the local people would create a counterweight.

The church has been critical of the French state, saying it proceeded with the tests in full knowledge of the impact of nuclear testing since before 1963.

Both the church and Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira Party alleged that this amounted to a crime against humanity.

Three years ago, they announced that they had taken their case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), but it is not known if the court has accepted jurisdiction for their complaint.

Paris roundly rejected the claims, condemning what it called the misuse of the court’s international jurisdiction for local political purposes.

The French High Commissioner Rene Bidal said at the time the definition of a crime against humanity centred on the Nuremburg trials after the Second World War and referred to killings, exterminations, and deportations.

Soon after making his charge, Temaru was forced out of office over an election campaign irregularity, which his Tavini Huiraatira party said was orchestrated by France to “politically assassinate” him in retribution for the ICC case.

Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were clean and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

Over a decade, it proved to be a source of frustration because most claimants, who suffered from any of the 23 recognised types of cancer, failed with their applications.

This prompted a loosening of the eligibility criteria and then again a tightening, leaving it still open for further amendments.

French Polynesia’s social security agency CPS has repeatedly called on the French state to reimburse it for the medical costs caused by its tests.

It said that since 1995 it had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from cancer as the result of radiation.

Temaru said the money was a debt, pointing out that if a crime was committed it was not up to the victims to have to pay.

Risks around Moruroa
The question of the tests’ lasting intergenerational effects remains unanswered.

In 2018, a study was planned after the former head of child psychiatry in Tahiti, Dr Christian Sueur, reported pervasive developmental disorders in zones close to the Moruroa weapons test site.

The findings — reported in the Le Parisien newspaper — caused an uproar in Tahiti and Fritch accused Dr Sueur of causing panic.

The psychiatrist had reported that a quarter of children he treated for pervasive developmental disorders had intellectual disabilities or deformities which he attributed to genetic mutations.

However, three years on a study by a geneticist is yet to be commissioned.

Calls for a clean-up of the Moruroa test site continue.

Although France stopped its weapons tests in 1996, it has refused to return the excised atoll to French Polynesia and declared it a no-go zone.

The Tavini’s Moetai Brotherson, who is also a member of the French National Assembly, said France might lack either the technology or the financial means to remove radioactive sediments.

He also said the cracks on Moruroa were a concern which might explain why France’s biggest investment in the region is the US$100 million Telsite monitoring system against a possible tsunami.

There are fears the atoll could collapse as result of the more than 140 underground nuclear blasts.

Plans for a memorial to be built in Pape’ete have had lacklustre support from those who keep mistrusting France.

While the roundtable is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks.

Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific.

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

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru says high-level talks on France’s nuclear legacy due in Paris this month should be held at the United Nations in New York instead.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the meeting in response to a report which accused France of misleading the public about the fallout after a 1974 atmospheric weapons test.

Temaru said such a meeting should not be held in the capital of the colonising power, describing it as a sham.

• READ MORE: French nuclear tests in the Pacific
• Tahitian researcher says France must pay up

He warned those attending that the French Polynesian people and its resources were not for sale.

While French Polynesia’s delegation is being finalised, the leading politicians of the late testing era, Temaru and Gaston Flosse, will not be present.

In the lead-up to the talks, the French social security agency CPS again called on the French state to reimburse it for the medical costs caused by its tests.

It said since 1995 it had 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.

Temaru said the money was a debt, pointing out that if a crime was committed it was not up to the victims to have to pay.

Between 1966 and 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear weapons tests in French Polynesia.

The test sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls remain excised from French Polynesia and are French military no-go zones.

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

It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80.

The local territorial government was indeed saddened about the loss and sent its condolences to the grieving family and relatives.

The opening of Mā’ohi Nui’s borders two months earlier on July 15 by the French High Commissioner, Dominique Sorain, in consultation with Tahiti’s President Edouard Fritch – who promptly agreed due to economic reasons – has led to today’s covid-19 pandemic crisis.

• READ MORE: Other articles about the covid-19 pandemic impact on Mā’ohi Nui
• Tahiti’s covid-19 death tally rises to 122 – 17,000 plus cases

The latest figures at the time of writing show 124 covid-19 deaths, 40 people in hospital (including 19 patients on ventilators), and 80 new cases, making it a total of more than 17,400.

About 17,500 vaccine doses were available last week on January 7 for more than 8000 people but, unfortunately, one expects more deaths before the injection programme is rolled out.

These are sobering figures when entering January 2021 on the Gregorian calendar – and equally the Tahitian chart speaks of the Pleiades constellation, or Matari’i i Ni’a, foretelling abundance that extends from November to May.

Sadly, for the mourning families the only season of abundance appears to be the losses of the most vulnerable in our society – our elders.

It is also quite revealing that information about covid-19 cases are on a drip-feed from the Ministry of Health, with its minister doctor Jacques Raynal comparing covid-19 from the beginning to a mere flu.

And sometimes he was at pains to explain the differences between “cured” and “convalescing” patients.

It is clear that the local government, along with the highest representative of the French government, were unprepared and remained ill-equipped with this pandemic, a déjà-vu situation.

The spectre of Jacques Chirac and nuclear past
The most populated islands of the Society archipelago (Tahiti and Moorea) have been under curfew from December 14 to January 15, 2021, and that might be extended.

The only hospital centre of French Polynesia is at Ta’aone in Tahiti and that caters for the covid-19 patients. It has done so to the best of the hospital staff’s abilities. The same hospital complex is now at the centre of another dispute between pro-independent member of the Parliament Eliane Tevahitua and Health Minister Raynal, who sent an open invitation to the members of the hospital board (Tevahitua being a member), confirming in a ministerial letter that the name of the hospital would become Jacques Chirac, named after the late former French president.

For good measure, the family of President Chirac gave their approval and are honoured by such a gesture.

It is believed that the trade-off is that the Jacques Chirac Square in the capital Pape’ete (a name given to it by former Tahitian president Gaston Flosse) will be renamed “Tahua Tumarama” which in the indigenous language Mā’ohi means the “stage of rising light” (resembling the aftermath of a nuclear bomb).

The naming of the Chirac square was more than 20 years ago, which was in itself very controversial at the time, due to the fact that a plaque was erected not far from that very square to commemorate the people who had died (and are still dying) from the 30-year French nuclear testing programme started on 2 July 1966.

President Chirac resumed the suspended nuclear testing from September 1995 to May 1996.

Some historical information about the Jacques Chirac hospital complex should be shared. It was a former military base reserved for French military personal and kitted with bungalows.

The hospital opened in 1966 for the Centre of Experimentation of the Pacific (CEP) where the majority of French military were based before or after their missions to Fangataufa, Hao, Mangareva and Moruroa.

As children, we used to enjoy Ta’aone since the maritime military base gave onto a beautiful beach where we sunbathed and surfed, a popular place with the local population.

Those memories seem to send us back to the nuclear testing period some two generations ago and it might be fitting that such a hospital complex should carry the name of one of the French presidents.

What is more telling – or unfortunate – is the fact that the name Jacques Chirac appears to carry the signs of death whether related to the square next to the monument dedicated to those who died from the nuclear testing, or to this new hospital where people are being cared for but where unfortunately 124 people have so far died from covid-19, and many more from diseases related to nuclear fallout.

The reply of independent parliamentarian and Oscar Temaru
Back to the request of joining the local government in naming the hospital, pro-independence parliamentarian Tevahitua’s response to such an invitation did not fail to tell the health minister and the local government of the independent party Tavini Huira’atira’s (and her) “deep disappointment and disapproval” of such a neo-colonialist stand “to the detriment of the indigenous Polynesian people”.

“While the Mā’ohi people are trying to regain their own history and at a time when your government is promoting the use of the Mā’ohi languages in public space, it would have been more judicious to name the hospital Tiurai, an indigenous traditional tahu’a (doctor) who dedicated his life to caring and healing people’s pain for free”.

Ironically, Tiurai died from the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.

In the same vein through my latest communication with Oscar Temaru, the leader of the independence party Tavini Huira’atira, has shown how his approach to local toponymy favoured illustrious and respected Mā’ohi figures who deserved to be honoured by the people, instead of the name of some coloniser.

While at the helm of the country as president (on and off from 2004 to 2009), Temaru changed the name of one of the most important avenues of the capital Pape’ete from Avenue Bruat (the first French governor) to Avenue Pouvana’a a O’opa after the famous indeopendence leader. A judicious political move as this historical avenue is considered to be the heart of the political and administrative arena.

This was a move that evidently did not please the French authorities, although naming rights is a competence held by the local government.

Not without irony
It is not without some irony that Temaru declared that there are some Tahitian politicians who are more French than the French and who reluctantly adhered to the new name.

According to Temaru, it is more “the mentality of our own people that he has been trying to change from the very beginning of his struggle against the French colonial power”.

Unfortunately, today a pro-France local government has turned the clock back and are perpetuating the neo-colonialism agenda.

It would have been more appropriate to maintain the original name of the hospital as Ta’aone, which means the rolling of the sand.

Most of the hospitals in Pape’ete and its neighbouring districts carry a colonial name (Chirac, Prince, Malardé and Cardella) apart, from a psychiatric hospital with an indigenous name of Vaiami and a clinic called Paofai.

It might give us an idea of how we, the indigenous people are been perceived and how, while we name buildings by their geographical location, colonisers are obsessed with seeing names of illustrious figures on temporary edifices in an effort to give them permanence and relevancy.

Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevian originally from the south of “French” Polynesia who has lived in New Zealand for many years and is currently a doctoral studies candidate in Te Ara Poutama at Auckland University of Technology. He contributes articles for Asia Pacific Report.

Temaru requested this postponed date to enable him to prepare his defence against this press freedom case that involves:

• A judgment for the closure and a fine of NZ$1.25 million against the pro-independent Radio Tefana, the “voice for accountability” by the local and French governments;
• Seizure of nearly NZ$150,000 from Temaru’s personal account while the trial was still pending, “trampling on the presumption of innocence”;
• Location of the trial in New Caledonia during covid-19 lockdown where Temaru will not be able to travel to, restricting freedom of movement;
• A heavy financial strain on Temaru in preparing his defence team from Tahiti and being forced to campaign for public financial help.

READ MORE: The judgment of Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru – a neocolonial sense of déjà-vu
More Oscar Temaru articles

Facing up to injustice
Solidarity must stand in the face of injustice. From the annexation of Mā’ohi Nui in 1843 to the 30-year period of nuclear testing in the Pacific, followed by the mismanagement of covid-19, the Mā’ohi Nui people continue to endure French colonialism and imperialism.

Temaru’s struggle is the Mā’ohi Nui people’s struggle for freedom.

A solidarity campaign is being launched which includes:

• Organisers speaking on the issues of nuclear testing and climate change in Mā’ohi Nui and activist communities in Auckland in 2021;
• Plans for a Mā’ohi Nui education day at Auckland University of Technology’s marae in Auckland in early 2021 in close consultation with Oscar Temaru; and
• Temaru being invited to speak via Zoom from his base in Pape’ete and he will engage in a short talanoa with activists and students.

Invited to the gathering
Members of the Tahitian and Kanak communities living in Auckland will be invited to the gathering.

Invitations will be sent to academics, activists, journalists, Pacific community members, and students to debate the following topics:
• The Mā’ohi Nui road to independence as a key theme in the education day;
• The continuing legacy of nuclear testing upon the health of the Ma’ohi Nui people today;
• Climate Change in Mā’ohi Nui; and
• The indigenous response to covid 19 in Ma’ohi Nui today.

The organisers hope that a Mā’ohi Nui solidarity network in support of Temaru and the people in the five archipelagos of French Polynesia will emerge organically out of the education day.

This contemporary organising work proceeds is based on the understanding that other Moana communities have acted in solidarity with Oscar Temaru and his people since the 1970s.

Established bonds
Tangata whenua activists in Aotearoa established bonds of whakawhanaungatanga (making connections) with Oscar Temaru and the Mā’ohi Nui people since the 1970s.

So did Pacific peoples in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement who forged strong bonds of friendship and solidarity with Temaru and the Mā’ohi Nui people.

The late Jean-Marie Tjibaou of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) in New Caledonia worked closely with Temaru and the Ma’ohi Nui people in the struggle for independence.

The modest solidarity work evolving in Auckland today follows in the wake of earlier generations of Pakeha and Moana activists who fought for the health, wellbeing, and independence of the Mā’ohi Nui people and their long-serving fighter Oscar Temaru.

The co-authors, Ena Manuireva and Tony Fala, are doctoral candidates and researchers at Auckland University of Technology and are organisers of the solidarity groups. They can be contacted here for more information.

The court case in New Caledonia brought by French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru against the French prosecutor over the Faa’a community station Radio Tefana has been deferred for a second time.

Last month, it was deferred until yesterday but it has now been rescheduled for November 25.

In June, Temaru had sought a preliminary ruling in Tahiti claiming state prosecutor Herve Leroy had violated the assumption that he was innocent.

• READ MORE: The judgment of Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru – a neocolonial sense of déjà-vu

However, the court in Pape’ete found it could not deal with the case impartially and ordered it to be moved to New Caledonia.

Temaru said the prosecutor had asserted that he was convicted of a crime although the trial process had not been concluded because the appeal was still pending.

Temaru had appealed a suspended six-month prison sentence given last year for exercising undue influence over funding arrangements for the community station Radio Tefana.

In June, Leroy ordered the seizure of US$100,000 from Temaru’s savings account before obtaining an authorisation by a judge as part of a new investigation into alleged abuse of public funds.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

The unfolding in French Polynesia of the latest judiciary entanglements of pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru versus the French administration is being closely followed by members of the Tahitian community in Tahiti and in Aotearoa New Zealand.

There are undeniable similarities between Temaru’s upcoming trial on November 4 in Nouméa after many deferrals, and the expedient trial of Te metua – Pouvana’a a O’opa, the leading figure of the Ma’ohi people, 60 years ago.

Pouvana’a was accused of plotting to burn down Tahiti’s capital Pape’ete, but trumped up charges were made against him because of his fight for an independent Ma’ohi nation.

• READ MORE: 35 years on, Oscar Temaru guest in Rainbow Warrior rewind
• French nuclear tests: ‘I bury people nearly every day, what was our sin?’
• Tahiti’s Temaru challenges court over French judicial ethics

Exiled for 23 years to France after a mockery of a judgment, he was allowed back in Tahiti in 1968 after being pardoned.

Temaru’s judgment has all the makings of a déjà-vu. History is kind enough to remind us about the many disagreements and annoyances caused by Temaru to the French administration spanning more than 50 years:

• Temaru was arrested and jailed for protesting against the nuclear tests in Moruroa
• France’s military intervention in the French Polynesia presidential elections won by Temaru in 2004 for fear of social unrest
• Temaru put French Polynesia back on the UN decolonisation list in 2013, denouncing France’s non-commitment to decolonisation – the politics of the “empty chair” (1)

A string of anti-French actions that have displeased the Paris establishment and, to some extent, the local autonomist government.

So, what has been the straw that broke the camel’s back and why is this new trial so different that the French judicial machine felt justified in seizing money from Temaru’s personal bank account?

Background to the Radio Tefana affair
In June 2020, French prosecutor Herve Leroy seized NZ$145,000 from Temaru’s personal bank account after the former territorial president and current mayor of Faa’a was convicted of exercising undue influence because the court ruled that community Radio Tefana benefited his own pro-independence political party.

According to many lawyers in Tahiti and in France (the CNB – National Council of the Bar), this action suggested that Temaru had already been pre-judged of having “committed a crime” and the presumption of innocence was simply discarded by prosecutor Leroy.

This trial can only be understood as a retaliation against Temaru’s decision in 2018 to take France’s living presidents to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity over the nuclear weapons tests between 1966 and 1996. This was clearly the last straw for the French political establishment.

Questions related to why the French judiciary could not perform its duty on Tahitian soil but prioritised first the High Council for the Judiciary in France before deciding to send the case to Kanaky New Caledonia remains enigmatic to say the least.

There is overwhelming support for Temaru from the local Tahitian population – from the religious, the social, the political even judicial corners.

As mayor of the most populated district in French Polynesia, he refuses to be intimidated and from our personal communication, he has vowed to take the fight to the highest authority nationally or internationally.

In Nouméa, “our brothers and sisters Kanak”, as he calls them, are ready to welcome us and they will be a tremendous support during the trial – both indigenous people are fighting for their independence from France.

According to a close family member, Temaru is holding on for a trial expected to last 3 days (November 4-7) and has carried out a hunger strike and fasting since his six month suspended sentence and a fine of NZ$66,000 for this affair in 2019 (2) – despite his age at 76.

His fast was also to teach the population a new way of fighting obesity and all the various diseases that it causes. He is not advocating violence and unrest, but he is fighting legally through the courts.

Temaru’s hopes about this trial
At a time when the media is being muzzled and reporters are being silenced worldwide, the voice of the pro-independence community Radio Tefana remains the only and last media platform calling for accountability from both the local Tahitian and French governments.

The hope for Temaru is for a not guilty verdict and for the court to allow the radio to perform its duty of providing public information, especially during this period of covid-19 that has heavily hit his airport town of Faa’a and the capital Pape’ete.

But Temaru questions French justice and will not back down even if it means requesting a meeting with New Zealand’s newly re-elected Prime Minister Jacinda Arden to assist a decolonisation programme that France has so far failed to discuss.

It is also at the back of Temaru’s mind that the decision to move the trial outside of Tahiti was designed and planned by the French judicial authorities to put yet another spanner in the works.

Financially, Temaru will need to meet the cost of an attorney to represent him; Temaru will not be physically able to be present at his own trial as New Caledonia is covid-19 free and has suspended all commercial flights until March 2021.

Popular sympathy might be less in New Caledonia with a bigger French proportion of the population (27 percent) than in French Polynesia (10 percent).

According to Temaru, France has not ceased “to put him on trial” and whatever the outcome this time, France will stick to the same agenda – and so will Temaru.

His fight for independence for the nuna’a Ma’ohi (Ma’ohi people) is a lifelong battle as he celebrates his birthday in Tahiti.

The last fighter of an era
The Tahitian pro-independence leader might be one of the last iconic figures of his generation who sits beside other political leaders, friends and sympathisers alive – or not – of the same era such as Jean-Marie Tjibaou (Kanaky New Caledonia), Walter Lini (Vanuatu), Henry Puna (Cook Islands).

Regardless of the verdict after the judgment, Temaru will be remembered as the force who will still stand up strong like Pouvana’a a O’opa against French neo-colonialism six decades ago.

Ena Manuireva is an Auckland University of Technology academic and PhD candidate who is from Mangareva, one of the French Polynesian islands most affected by the French nuclear tests for three decades until they ended in 1996. He wrote this article especially for the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report.

Notes:
1. France is never at its UN seat when the question of decolonising French Polynesia is on the agenda.
2. In 2019, the current territorial President Édouard Fritch was convicted and condemned for the same amount for arranging for the town administration of Pirae, where he was mayor, to pay for the water supply to the upmarket Erima neighbourhood, where longtime President Gaston Flosse lived.

The Pacific Conference of Churches has called for justice in Mā’ohi (French Polynesia) and for Oscar Temaru, the activist mayor of Fa’aa and former territorial president.

In a message read at a protest march in Pape’ete at the weekend, PCC general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan called on France not to ignore Mā’ohi’s re-inscription to the United Nations Decolonisation list.

“Today, we note with concern that France has failed to hear the cry of the people and the voice of the United Nations,” Reverend Bhagwan said.

READ MORE: Oscar Temaru’s challenge over colonlai justice

“This refusal makes a mockery of France’s national motto – Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).”

Reverend Bhagwan said the recent arrest of “freedom fighter” Oscar Temaru appeared to be linked to his role in bringing about the re-inscription of Mā’ohi at the UN.

Mā’ohi was reinscripted seven years ago to the UN Decolonisation List after strong international advocacy aided by the PCC. The full PCC statement said:

PCC statement
“Justice For Mā’ohi , Justice for Temaru

“As the people of Mā’ohi (French Polynesia) remember the seventh year of their reinscription on the United Nations decolonisation list, the Pacific Conference of Churches calls on France to act with justice.

“France has ignored the wishes of the Mā’ohi people and the United Nations for their inalienable right to hold an act of self-determination.

“Seven years ago, the Pacific churches supported the Etaretia Porotetani Mā’ohi (Mā’ohi Protestant Church) in the process of re-inscription and has joined the EPM as a petitioner at both the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24) as well as the UN Special Political and Decolonisation Committee (Fourth Committee).

“Today, we note with concern that France has failed to hear the cry of the people and the voice of the United Nations. This refusal makes a mockery of France’s national motto – Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).

“The Pacific churches also call on France to allow the people of Mā’ohi a voice on their political future by holding a referendum, similar to the political process in Kanaky (New Caledonia).’

“The recent arrest of freedom fighter, Oscar Temaru, appears to be linked to his role in bringing about the re-inscription of Mā’ohi at the UN.

“Temaru is in court over allegations on the misuse of public funds in Fa’aa where he is mayor. The courts have also ordered the seizure of US$100,000 of Temaru’s savings.

“The courts must never be used as a tool for political expediency or revenge against opponents. Our courts must act impartially as instruments of a legal system which is fair and just, not prejudiced and oppressive.

“We call for Temaru to be treated justly. We remind France that it has yet to bring about just reparation for the thousands of people – including French civilians and service personnel – crippled and debilitated by the fallout from nuclear tests at Fangataufa and Moruroa.

“And we call on the people of the Pacific to pray for the Mā’ohi church and justice for all in the region who face tyranny and injustice from their leaders.

“In the name of Christ and in the service of a just, peaceful and free Pacific.”

Reverend James S, Bhagwan
General Secretary
Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC)
Suva, Fiji

A Paris-based lawyer acting for French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has taken his client’s treatment in the case in Tahiti to France’s High Council for the Judiciary.

David Koubbi raised the actions of the prosecutor in Pape’ete against the Fa’aa mayor with the 22-member agency which rules on professional ethics.

Two weeks ago, the prosecutor Herve Leroy ordered the seizure of US$100,000 from Temaru’s savings account before obtaining an authorisation by a judge as part of a new investigation into alleged abuse of public funds.

READ MORE: Tahiti’s Temaru marks decolonisation listing

Leroy intervened over Temaru’s court conviction for exerting undue influence last year but Temaru said the case was still on appeal and therefore his presumption of innocence was violated.

The new probe launched by Leroy this year asserts Temaru misspent public funds because the Fa’aa municipal council had decided to fund his defence, including the cost to hire Koubbi.

The lawyers face the risk of court action against them for accepting funds which the prosecutor claims the council unduly allotted to Temaru’s benefit.

Koubbi told the public broadcaster in Tahiti that he also took up this case with the ombudsman, also known as the defender of rights.

Preliminary ruling sought
Yesterday, Temaru sought a preliminary ruling from the court in Tahiti over Leroy’s actions.

However, Leroy was not there and his lawyer secured a deferral of the hearing until next Monday, June 22.

Temaru, who at the beginning of last week started a hunger strike in protest at the French judiciary, suspended the action on Friday in view of yesterday’s scheduled court hearing.

It is unclear if the case will be heard in Pape’ete after the head of the court said she might not be able to rule because the prosecutor was part of the same judicial organisation in Tahiti.

One of his supporters, French Polynesian and French parliamentarian Moetai Brotherson, questioned the suggestion to move the case to France, saying it would be unclear who would pay for Temaru and his lawyers to go to France.

He said if there were a transfer, New Caledonia should be considered because, unlike France, it was covid-19 free.

Yesterday, Temaru also signed an appeal against the judge’s order seizing his money.

Political ‘punishment’ case
Koubbi restated that the case against Temaru was political and punishment for him succeeding in having restored French Polynesia onto the UN decolonisation list in 2013.

He also cited the 2018 move by Temaru to take France’s living presidents to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity over the nuclear weapons tests between 1966 and 1996.

Last year, Temaru was given a suspended prison sentence for exerting undue influence after the court found that the Fa’aa council funding of a pro-independence community station, Radio Tefana, profited his political party.

However, Koubbi said the prosecution had failed to provide an example of the station being partisan.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has suspended his hunger strike launched five days ago in protest at the French judiciary.

Temaru, mayor of the largest municipality Faa’a and a former territorial president, made the announcement outside the courts in Pape’ete where he and his supporters gathered every day this week.

He said he would resume his hunger strike on Monday when he expects the prosecutor Herve Leroy to appear in court following a complaint lodged by his lawyers.

READ MORE: Temaru takes French prosecutor to court

Last week, Leroy seized US$100,000 from Temaru’s private account and had a judge afterwards approve the action, saying the funds were taken so that they could not be spent.

In response, Temaru’s lawyers have taken legal action against Leroy, arguing that as prosecutor he failed to honour Temaru’s presumption of innocence because there was no final verdict in the case, over which the money was seized.

Temaru said he thus demanded US$100,000 in damages, which is the equivalent sum taken last week.

Last year, Temaru, who is the veteran mayor of Faa’a holding office since 1983, was convicted for exerting undue influence over the funding of a community radio station by the Faa’a council.

According to Leroy, the money seized was what the Faa’a municipal council spent on Temaru’s defence and which Leroy said was an abuse of public funds.

Apart from challenging Leroy in court, Temaru is appealing to the judicial authorities seeking to reverse the judge’s formal order to seize his money.

The judge had said taking the mayor’s savings was not a disproportionate move.

However, Temaru’s backers said the action was unprecedented as the 75-year-old politician was treated as if he was a drug dealer who posed a flight risk.

They also said it amounted to colonial justice because none of the pro-French politicians facing court and with a record of corruption convictions had their savings seized.

The president of French Polynesia is awaiting an appeal court ruling after being convicted a year ago for abusing public funds of the town of Pirae.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

French Polynesia’s pro-independence opposition has continued to attack the French government and judiciary for removing its leader Oscar Temaru from the Territorial Assembly.

After last week’s French court ruling that he had breached election campaign rules, Temaru was today absent from the Assembly debate for the first time in 32 years.

The Tavini Huiraatira party’s Antony Geros accused the judiciary of being manipulated by the government in Paris which he said acted to punish Temaru for taking all living French presidents to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

READ MORE: French Polynesian party lashes out at France over court ruling

The legal action alleges that by ordering nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific, the presidents committed a crime against humanity.

Geros also raised last week’s decision of the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, which quashed the 1959 conviction of the pro-independence leader Pouvanaa a Oopa who had been jailed for eight years.

Geros said only an independent judiciary could help the families hit by the consequences of the nuclear tests.

A total of 193 nuclear tests were detonated at the French Polynesian atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa over three decades between 1966 and 1996.

Temaru also visited New Caledonia earlier this month advocating support for the Kanak campaign for independence.

Temaru’s seat has now gone to the Tavini’s Cecile Mercier.

New Caledonia faces a vote on independence this Sunday under the provisions of the 1988 Matignon and 1998 Noumea accords after unrest and demands for independence in the 1980s.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

In a show of support for the Kanak independence movement, Maohi leader Oscar Manutahi Temaru has joined the campaign trail in New Caledonia, urging voters to support a Yes vote in the country’s referendum on self-determination next month.

Temaru is a former President of French Polynesia and long-time leader of the Maohi independence movement Tavini Huiraatira no Te Ao Maohi. He was joined in New Caledonia by Moetai Brotherson, an elected member of the local Assembly in Tahiti and one of French Polynesia’s representatives in the French National Assembly in Paris.

In New Caledonia, the Tahitian delegates faced a punishing schedule of speaking engagements around the country in the lead up to the referendum vote on November 4.

READ MORE: Special reports on New Caledonia/Kanaky by Dr Lee Duffield

Brotherson was welcomed at a public meeting at the University of New Caledonia in Noumea, and then travelled to the rural towns of Foha (La Foa), Waa Wi Lûû (Houailou) and Pwäräiriwa (Ponerihouen).

Speaking at community meetings in each location, he highlighted the longstanding support of Tavini Huiraatira for the Kanak struggle, and called on people to mobilise for the referendum on self-determination.

At a festival in the east coast town of Ponerihouen, Oscar Temaru said he had travelled to New Caledonia to support the independence movement Front de Liberation National Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS).

“I am here to support them – to show that the international community is here to watch what will happen in New Caledonia,” he said. “We are sure that the accession of New Caledonia to independence and sovereignty will also mean self-determination for our country Maohi Nui.”

Long history
The Maohi independence leader highlighted the long history that links independence movements across the French-speaking Pacific, from Vanuatu to Kanaky-New Caledonia and Maohi Nui-French Polynesia.

In 1977, there were significant challenges to French colonialism across the region. Under the leadership of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, New Caledonia’s main political party Union Calédonienne adopted a position in favour of independence from France instead of autonomy.

In the Anglo-French condominium of New Hebrides, Father Walter Lini joined other leaders to launch a boycott of the 1977 elections, transforming the New Hebrides National Party into the Vanua’aku Pati and ultimately serving as the first Prime Minister of independent Vanuatu.

In 1977, Oscar Temaru also established the Front de Libération de Polynésie (FLP – Polynesian Liberation Front) in Tahiti. The following year, he travelled to the United Nations in New York for the first time, to call for the right to self-determination and an end to nuclear testing on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

“For more than 40 years, we’ve been fighting together to get our independence back,” Temaru said. “Over all those years, so many things have happened: the former leaders of the FLNKS got killed, they’ve had the Matignon Accords and the Noumea Accord. But on November 4, they have the right to decide to decide their future.”

Oscar Temaru highlighted the importance of international scrutiny of the self-determination process, and welcomed the arrival of a United Nations mission to monitor the vote.

While the French government has supported its involvement in recent years, the UN’s role has been contested over many decades.

Refused authority
From 1947, soon after the United Nations was created, France refused to accept UN authority over decolonisation and the right to self-determination. New Caledonia was only reinscribed on the UN list of non-self-governing territories in December 1986, as members of the Pacific Islands Forum supported the FLNKS to successfully lobby for UN General Assembly resolution 41/41.

It took another 27 years for French Polynesia to be similarly re-inscribed with the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation. In 2013, a UN General Assembly resolution on French Polynesia, sponsored by Solomon Islands, Nauru and Tuvalu, was adopted by the 193-member body without a vote.

Moetai Brotherson told a public meeting in La Foa that the FLNKS had achieved more recognition than the Maohi independence movement.

“You’re a bit ahead of us on the path to independence, so we’re watching what is happening with great attention,” he said. “Oscar Temaru was in New York with Jean-Marie Tjibaou in 1986 when New Caledonia was re-inscribed on the list of non-self-governing territories at the United Nations.

“Our re-inscription, however, only came in 2013. You have advanced along the path. You have made agreements with the French State, you have welcome UN special missions, all of this leading to the decision on November 4. But for us, we’re not there yet.”

He noted fundamental legal differences between the three French Pacific dependencies, which all hold a different constitutional status within the French Republic. The 1998 Noumea Accord is entrenched as a sui generis section within the French Constitution, unlike French Polynesia’s 2004 autonomy statute and the 1961 statute for Wallis and Futuna.

The Noumea Accord creates a clear, legally binding pathway for up to three referendums on self‐determination in New Caledonia. In contrast, French Polynesia has no such path to a referendum.

Constitutional difference
Moetai Brotherson explained: ”There is a difference between the constitutional situation of our two countries. Today, Kanaky-New Caledonia is the only territory of the French Republic to have a specific section in the Constitution.

“You, the Kanak people are the only ‘people’, apart from the French people, recognised in the French Constitution. Apart from that reference, there are no overseas peoples, just ‘populations’.

“You’ve achieved this higher level within the laws of the French Republic,” he said. “For us in Maohi Nui – or French Polynesia as they call it – we only have a population, not a people. This is unacceptable for us.”

For Oscar Temaru, international monitoring of November’s referendum is vital, given France’s ongoing refusal to organise a decolonisation process in his own country.

“Re-inscription in 2013 was very important,” he said. “The resolution that has been adopted by the UN General Assembly was very clear. It reminds the administering power of the right of the Maohi people to self-determination, our right to all our resources of our country and also calls for France to answer to the international community on thirty years of nuclear testing.”

However, Brotherson stressed that the French government refuses to acknowledge any role for the United Nations over self-determination in French Polynesia, failing to meet its obligations as an administering power. Each year, under Article 73e of the UN Charter, colonial powers are required to submit information to the United Nations relating to economic, social and political conditions in their territories.

In recent years, France has formally submitted information about New Caledonia, but refused to submit similar information on French Polynesia.

‘Schizophrenic situation’
Brotherson noted: “We’re in this schizophrenic situation where France has two territories listed at the United Nations. In the case of New Caledonia, France collaborates completely with the United Nations. But in our case, they’re in denial about our re-inscription.

“Every time we’re at the UN Decolonisation Committee, the French representative is in the room when the question of New Caledonia is raised, but as soon as they announce discussion of the question of French Polynesia, he leaves.”

In June 2017, Brotherson defeated Patrick Howell of the governing party Tapura Huiraatira, in the election for French Polynesia’s third constituency in the French National Assembly. Today, as a member of the Republican Democratic Left parliamentary group, Brotherson serves on the French parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission and overseas delegation.

New Caledonia is currently represented in the French National Assembly by Philippe Gomes and Philippe Dunoyer of the anti-independence Calédonie ensemble party. Brotherson told the FLNKS meeting in Ponerihouen: “When I arrived in Paris, I was saddened to see that there were no Kanak brothers in the National Assembly.

“If in coming times, there are still no Kanak deputies in the Parliament, you will still have a voice there. To ensure that your message will be heard in Paris, you can count on me.”

He pledged support for the Kanak people in the French Parliament in the aftermath of November’s referendum: “I hope that – if there is a Yes vote – the current loyalist deputies in the National Assembly will have the intelligence to serve as dignified representatives of the New Caledonian nation that will be born from this referendum.

“But if that’s not the case, I reiterate my commitment – with the approval of your leaders – to act as a spokesperson for your cause within the French parliament.”

Campaigning for Yes
On October 20, more than 2000 people gathered at the major FLNKS festival in Ponerihouen, which marked the end of referendum campaigning in the Kanak customary region of Ajie-Aro. They were joined by the leaders of three major independence parties – Daniel Goa of Union Calédonienne (UC), Paul Neaoutyine of the Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) and Victor Tutugoro of Union Progressiste Mélanesienne (UPM).

Temaru and Brotherson joined FLNKS representatives and two Corsican independence activists, Francois Benedetti and Alain Mosconi, for a roundtable on sovereignty and decolonisation.

Just as Scotland is debating independence from the United Kingdom and Catalan nationalists want independence for their region in Spain, there is a strong autonomist movement in Corsica. In a significant breakthrough in December last year, Gilles Simeoni led the nationalist alliance Pè a Corsica to victory in the Corsican Assembly, uniting the autonomist party Femu a Corsica and the pro-independence Corsica Libera.

Three months before travelling to New Caledonia for his first visit last May, French President Emmanuel Macron also visited the French-controlled Mediterranean island. Macron, however, refused the nationalists’ longstanding call to recognise Corsican as an official language.

Congratulating the work of the Academy of Kanak Languages (ALK) and the teaching of local indigenous languages in New Caledonian schools, Corsica Libera’s Alain Mosconi noted: “For decades, the French government has hindered the use of dialects, of patois, regional languages and our language in Corsica.

“They’ve promoted French as the official language. This is a lamentable situation. That’s why we call for our national rights and support the Kanak right to nationhood.”

Tavini Huiraatira’s Moetai Brotherson highlighted the common cause of independence movements across the Pacific.

‘We share many things’
“We share many things – we share the same colonial power and the same colonial history,” he said.

“At a time of resistance to colonial rule in Maohi Nui, the resisters were exiled here to New Caledonia. The high chiefs on Raiatea resisted annexation for many years in the Leeward Islands, but were sent here as exiles.

“At the same time, many of your resisters were exiled to the Marquesas Islands, in our homeland.

“Today, colonisation is symbolised by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few – always the same few – and by a totally inequitable distribution of that wealth. In both our countries, there is wealth enough, but it’s concentrated in a few hands, That’s the challenge of decolonisation, sovereignty and independence.”

Polynesians from Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia make up 10 per cent of the population of New Caledonia, so Brotherson called on the Kanak people to mobilise for a Yes vote, but to maintain their welcome for people from other lands.

“The Yes must be an inclusive Yes, not one that excludes people, not a Yes that turns people against each other,” he said. “On November 5, everyone must have their place in Kanaky-New Caledonia. You have a chance that we don’t – to have your say about the future through this referendum. You must seize this moment.”

Nic Maclellan is a journalist and researcher specialising in Pacific island affairs. This article was first published in Islands Business.

• Decolonisation in New Caledonia – who decides the future?
• USTKE fights for Kanak rights in defiance of ‘dishonest’ referendum

In the elections held in French Polynesia over the weekend, the ruling party of President Edouard Fritch scored a decisive victory and will return to power with an expanded majority.

Neal Conan of Hawai’i Public Radio reports:

After a campaign where corruption emerged as a major issue, the party with no fewer than nine candidates convicted of corruption won easily.

President Edouard Fritch – a two-time convict – and his Tapura Huiraatira won just under 50 percent of the vote.

The rival Tāhōʻēraʻa Huiraʻatira received about 30 percent, while the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira got 20 percent. Turnout was 67 percent.

French Polynesia’s election law automatically awards 19 seats in the National Legislature to the party that comes first, which guarantees the winners a ruling majority. The legislature then elects one of its own as President.

Former President Gaston Flosse was barred from running because of his corruption convictions, but still campaigned as the leader of the Tāhōʻēraʻa and tried to label President Fritch as unacceptably corrupt and indifferent to high unemployment.

‘Thieves and colonialists’
Veteran independence advocate Oscar Temaru described both Fritch and Flosse as “thieves and colonialists”, but his pro-independence party will again be relegated to third place in the legislature.

At present, hopes to revive the independence movement in French Polynesia rest on the referendum to be held in New Caledonia on November 4.

But two opinion polls released six months ahead of that referendum show strong majorities opposed to independence from France.

President Emmanuel Macron on France visited the territory last week to bolster pro-French sentiments.

• Other Tahitian reports