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Opinion on the thawing of the electoral body
Hello everyone,
The APROFED association is getting back to you this week after three months of riots, following a request from some of its readers and supporters who would like to know our position on the issue of the thawing of the electoral body, which was the source of the May 13th uprising.
As mentioned in one of our articles on our site, entitled: the freezing of the electoral body: the test of a 3rd way (see The freezing of the electoral body: the test of a 3rd way – APROFED ), we recall in this article that the freezing of the electoral body had been imagined by the independentists not in order to exclude certain populations as many think but rather to offer New Caledonia an alternative to the only 2 modes of decolonization offered until now by history, notably French, considered brutal, that is to say either by arms or the pure and simple withdrawal without transition of the colonizing State which could be perceived by the local populations as an abandonment.
This is why the association believes that it would be appropriate to continue along this path and thus maintain the freeze on the electoral body.
It is worth recalling here that Naisseline, president of the Association of Young Caledonians in Paris (ACJP) in 1968, launched with other non-Kanak Caledonians such as Caillard and Chivot, a new newspaper entitled Canaque Homme Libre (CHL) in which they recalled that they were autonomists and that the term Kanaque was no longer for them a pejorative term reserved for a race, but for all Caledonians who loved freedom, whatever race they belonged to (CHL, n°1, Feb. 1969)
The association believes that it would have been wise for the loyalists, in return for maintaining this freeze, to request that the next self-determination vote be held within a generation , in 30 years, in 2053 for example, the date of the bicentenary of the taking of possession of New Caledonia by France, thus leaving time in this period to continue the development of the territory within the framework of a common destiny.
The association, however, wishes to react to certain speeches heard from loyalists in favour of thawing the electoral body, in particular the one asserting that “democracy corresponded to one man = one vote”, which should be qualified in light of French history.
Indeed, as anthropologist Stephanie Graff points out, the principle of one man, one vote, which is the result of all democracy, was put in place by the State in New Caledonia against the colonised people and their desire for independence , who, rendered a minority in the face of mass immigration organised by the State, could not therefore hope to obtain their freedom through the ballot box. The immigration orchestrated by the State in New Caledonia during the Nickel boom also constitutes a direct violation of a UN resolution which prohibits the systemic influx of foreign immigrants into colonial territories, which risks disrupting the cultural, political and social integrity of peoples under colonial domination (cf. D.Chappell, The Kanak awakening, The rise of nationalism in New Caledonia, UNC-Madrépores, 2017, p.133).
It is also worth remembering that while French men have had the right to vote since 1848, women only obtained it in 1944 , almost a century later. For your information, in New Zealand, women were able to vote from 1893 and in 1933 the first female MP was elected.
Besides this “democratic” delay in women’s right to vote, what can be said about the 110 million individuals of the French Empire considered, as under the Ancien Régime, which had been abolished, as simple subjects and not as citizens , yet residing within the nation that claimed to be the homeland of human and citizen rights. If France indeed considered their territories as French, its inhabitants apparently did not have this same privilege. As a reminder, the French empire in the 19th century extended over nearly 13 million km², or around thirty current countries for a population of between 100 and 150 million inhabitants.
This distinction is very well analyzed by David Roudaut , in his thesis in 2013 relating to the deputies of the departments of Algeria under the 4th Republic. We learn in particular that although the majority in their territory (9 million inhabitants) , the Algerians could not have a number of deputies greater than the French settled in Algeria (1 million) and that the French administration rigged the elections in order to have Muslim deputies rather in favor of France (cf. The deputies of the departments of Algeria under the IVth Republic – DUMAS – University Repository of Memoirs After Support (cnrs.fr) ). The words of J.MOCH, former minister of Léon Blum, years later, illustrate well the French thought, who said he was “ hostile to giving the same rights to the black leaders and to the French representatives ” . (cf. AGERON, French decolonization, p.71 )
Thus, the so-called democratic discourse of one man, one vote, turns out to be more than biased in light of French history .
The association is also surprised to hear speeches from loyalists and mainland French citizens living in New Caledonia aiming to justify their right to vote by the fact that they pay taxes, even though they were still demonstrating in the streets not long ago in order to avoid paying for the tax reform aimed at restoring the CAFAT social accounts for the RUAMM, sending back the image, as in 1972, of the metropolitan mocking the “Caledonian personality”, coming to New Caledonia to earn money quickly and then leave;few of them being sensitive to local issues (see CHAPPELL David, The Kanak awakening, The rise of nationalism in New Caledonia, UNC-Madrépores, 2013, p.138).
Furthermore, it is clearly stated in the Noumea Peace Agreement that the right to vote in provincial elections or elections intended to decide on the future status of the territory will be restricted to long-term residents of the territory, thus creating local citizenship (see CHAPPELL David, The Kanak awakening, The rise of nationalism in New Caledonia, UNC-Madrépores, 2013, p.240). Even though the UC and the USTKE argued in 2003 that local citizenship and restricted voting rights were not always resolved. (see Chappell David, The Kanak awakening, The rise of nationalism in New Caledonia, UNC-Madrépores, 2013, p.243). Yet in 2007, in France, both the socialists, the communists, the UDF and most members of the UMP supported the freezing of the electoral body, as did the European Court of Human Rights, the French Council of Ministers and the French Parliament, excluding by this restriction 10% of local voters and 20% of Nouméans (see Chappell David, The Kanak awakening, The rise of nationalism in New Caledonia, UNC-Madrépores, 2013, p.245).
Wishing you a good read and reminding you that federalism turns out to be the only solution.
The APROFED association