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Reminder of the association’s project
Hello everyone,
The APROFED association is coming back to you this week, taking advantage of a new phase of discussions on the institutional future of the country opened by the Minister of Overseas Territories to remind you of our project through two graphs .
As Léa Havard, lecturer in public law at the University of New Caledonia, points out in an article in Nouvelles Calédoniennes, dated March 27, (see What status for the New Caledonia of tomorrow? | Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes ), two solutions seem to be available to the territory: that of a little more than the Noumea agreement but less than total independence , via a federated State , or that of an associated State or partnership with France which, via the transfer of sovereign powers in particular , (New Caledonia) would be in a relationship of equals between two sovereign States which choose to be closely linked .
Although the associated State does not necessarily rhyme with independence and can sometimes be assimilated to the federated State when sovereign powers such as defense, currency, nationality, diplomacy are not recovered by the new State, it would seem that this vision is not that of the independentists nor of the Oceanian Awakening having advocated on several occasions, being against the federated State, and seeing the solution of “independence-association” applied , surprising us by the same for several reasons that we have already mentioned in different articles namely that:
– this solution proposed in the 1980s by the former prefect E. Pisani had been rejected by both non-independence supporters and the independence supporters themselves,
– France would not repeat for a second time the humiliating experience of the associated State, attempted with Algeria , which once independent and completely sovereign renounced the association with France,
– this solution, as Léa Havard mentions in her thesis on the associated State, consists of the former colonizing powers wanting to retain control over the formerly colonized territory, which has become an associated State,
The association is all the more surprised by this choice from another time made by the independence supporters and the Oceanian Awakening today insofar as:
– in the 1980s, when the independence activists wanted to draft the first constitution of Kanaky, they started with the idea of a federated state,
– the May 2024 insurrection led them to regret seeing 40 years of work building the country go up in smoke; 40 years placed under the aegis of the Matignon and Noumea agreements which established an organization of administrative functioning and development of the territory of the federal type, expressly and literally mentioned as such in the texts,
– the choice of an associated state is contradictory to that of a thawing of the electoral body. The Oceanian Awakening, however, wishes for both.
The association is surprised that these parties also want to choose a state associated with the French state. As Melanesians and Oceanians, one might have thought that they would choose to associate with their neighbors in the region, which is why we are campaigning under our solution number two.
Thus, as illustrated in the graph below, only the option of a federated state is possible with France . It would seem that this is the status that the Minister for Overseas Territories has just presented. Any other choice, such as an associated state, must be considered with other partners.
The association thus recalls that in the framework of a project in partnership with France, only the federal option prevails and that it is therefore a question of finalizing what was started in the 1980s and continued in the 1990s through the different agreements.
In this respect, within the framework of the new 2025 agreement that we have named Kalédony, it is appropriate for us:
– to recover the last skills of articles 23 and 27 of the ADN ,
– to go further than the simple legislative authorizations and specialties granted by the State to overseas communities by recovering so-called internal legislative sovereignty , allowing the territory that these country laws are no longer subject to control and modification on the part of the French State, in the areas and for the powers specific to it, this in particular thanks to the recovery of the “competence of competence” which would be ratified in a local Constitution or fundamental law as in New Zealand or Germany,
– to finally apply a Kaledonian citizenship, by 2028, allowing positive discrimination in favor of the local population , by creating 4 categories of population: natives for at least 3 generations (first people and victims of history), Kaledonian hearts residing for at least 30 years in the territory or less in return for a citizenship test, French people who have recently arrived in the territory and then foreigners.
– to generalize federal status, by 2035, to the other overseas communities which will end up de facto requesting the same status, which they are already doing, then begin discussions with the region’s neighbors with a view to possible independence in 2053, in order to associate with them through a federal or Commonwealth type structure . This solution is also conceivable for the other overseas communities with their respective neighbors, which they are already requesting from the French State.
We wish you a good read and remind you that federalism is the only solution to reconcile unity in diversity.
The APROFED association