Jean-François Carenco, former senior official in Nouméa, went four days to the pebble to meet policies of all stripes and think about the continuation of the independence process, after the last referendum on the self-determination of December 2021.
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He had only one mission: to reconnect the sons from the dialogue. At the end of its
First official trip to New Caledonia, Friday September 16, Jean-François Carenco, Minister Delegate in charge of Overseas, can boast of having accomplished it. “I saw everyone, and everyone wants to see me again. We spoke true,” said the minister, who was accompanied by the overseas advisers of the Elysée, Matignon and Place Beauvau. Appointment was made with loyalists and separatists, in October in Paris, to lay the foundations for a “Committee of Partners of the Future”, whose composition, themes and the agenda are however to be defined .
There was an urgency to appease the situation in New Caledonia, where the progress of the third and last referendum of the Nouméa agreement on December 12, 2021, raised the process of progressive and consensual emancipation in progress for more thirty-four years old. Arguing the outbreak of the Coronavirus epidemic from September 2021, the Kanak separatists had asked, in vain, the postponement of this crucial election, which ended in a overwhelming victory for supporters of maintenance in France (96 , 5 %) but on a background of record abstention (56.1 %).
Although the legal validity of the vote was recognized by the Council of State, the National Liberation Front Kanak Socialist (FLNKS) describes it as “phony referendum and colonial putsch” and filed an appeal to the International Court of justice. Denouncing his partiality, the separatists refused any dialogue with the State, before the presidential and legislative elections, on the development of a future status. This was followed by a series of odd the new government, including two ministerial visits announced and then canceled, which still hardened the positions of the separatists, until the arrival, on September 12, of Jean-François Carenco.
“A good state of mind”
High civil servant in Nouméa in the late 1990s, the enarch kept solid friendships there, particularly in the independence camp, and “a lot of love for its inhabitants”. For four days, the minister, “in intelligent scribe” in his own words, engaged in a listening marathon in the three provinces of the archipelago, going to all institutions, receiving all political trends, the Actors in civil society, students, mayors, religious or community associations. “It is a great meeting (…). There is a good more open state of mind than you might have thought. We will try to push it,” praised Louis Mapou, independence president of the college government, wishing Get out of the “diktat of the calendar”.
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