Independentist associations and voters plead that the health context did not allow the independence voting on 12 December.
Le Monde with AFP
The referendum on the independence of New Caledonia will take place. The Council of State rejected on Tuesday, December 7, the request of a collective of citizens to postpone this election scheduled for 12 December, believing that the health context did not prevent the smooth running of the vote.
“The health protection measures still maintained do not preclude the flow of the referendum campaign”, indicates in its order the court, which had been seized of a request for referee-freedom.
The Council of State has also rejected the argument of the mourning kanak and “customary practices”, judging that “this circumstance can not characterize, by itself, an infringement of a fundamental freedom of a nature to justify “A postponement of the referendum.
The applicants, 146 voters “mostly Kanak” and three associations according to one of their lawyers, had also argued that “up to 2,000 voters” of the municipalities of Belep, the island of pines and Loyalty Islands could not register in the decentralized polling stations in Noumea.
“It does not appear from the instruction that the procedure (…) would have been hampered by the health context,” said the Council of State. He concludes that no circumstance “, in the light of the instruction, is of” nature to justify “a postponement of the consultation of 12 December.
An approach to the United Nations
This third and last election of the decolonization process of the Nouméa Agreement (1998) is shunned by the independentists who called to the boycott. They asked for the postponement because of the COVID-19 epidemic, which “prevents a fair campaign” and warned that they would not recognize the result and challenge it before the United Nations.