After five referrals and nine years of procedure, the appeal trial of the former president of Polynesia opens on Monday before the Papeete Court of Appeal for “illegal taking of interest”. He is accused of having had a politically close radio financed by his town hall and intends to make the audience a political platform.
by Franck Johannès (Special Envoy to Papeete (Polynesia))
The case might seem very slim if all of French Polynesia did not rush on the eve of the appeal trial of Oscar Manutahi Temaru, the old 78 -year -old independence leader, who intends to make it a political platform. “We ask ourselves the question of whether Mr. President Temaru did well to file a complaint for crime against humanity [against France, in 2018], because that’s it, the object of the approach of the State “, assured, on February 22, Antony Géros, the vice-president of Tavini Huiraatira, his party.
Oscar Temaru, mayor of Faaa for forty years, is accused of having financed, on public funds, a small municipal radio, Radio Tefana, which would have promoted. The case has been dragging for almost nine years, the former president of French Polynesia was sentenced in 2019 to six months suspended prison sentence and a strong fine; The appeal trial, which was postponed five times, finally undertakes, after a thousand judicial adventures, Monday, February 27, less than two months from the territorial elections, on April 16 and 30. The separatists denounce the relentlessness of the Papeete prosecutor. The case, over time, has been enriched with multiple ramifications.
At the start, Papeete prosecutor Hervé Leroy opened an investigation on May 12, 2014 against Oscar Temaru for “illegal taking of interest”, after a control of the Territorial Chamber of Accounts, five years earlier. The mayor of Faaa, the largest commune in Polynesia, is criticized for giving a room and having equipped the radio Te Reo O Tefana, which is intended to be a “votes of the people” independentist and anti -nuclear, of which he was honorary president. The town hall regularly subsidized it for a total, between 2010 and 2017, of 66.5 million Pacific francs (CFP) per year (561,000 euros).
“An odious survey”
For the prosecution, Radio Tefana “was a certain propaganda tool for the political interests of Oscar Temaru” and promoted his political party, the Tavini Huiraatira no te Ao Maohi, “Serve the people”. However, this had not struck the Superior Audiovisual Council, responsible for respecting pluralism on the air, which has renewed the authorization to issue every five years. This is the first business.
In February 2019, the FAAA municipal council, on the initiative of the first deputy, decided to grant “functional protection” to its mayor, that is to say to take charge of its costs of Lawyer, as it is his right if the fault of the elected official is not detachable from his functions. The former secretary general of the Elysée, Claude Guéant, and the chief of staff of Nicolas Sarkozy, Emmanuelle Mignon, thus benefited from the Elysée polls in the case. The High Commissioner of Papeete, in charge of legality control, has not seen Malice, and the Council voted a provision of 12 million CFPs for the defense of Temaru and its assistants.
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