By Nic Maclellan
After months of delay, New Caledonia finally has a new leader. Louis Mapou was elected as President of New Caledonia on 8 July, the first time in nearly 40 years that a Kanak independence leader will head the government of the French Pacific dependency.
After French President Francois Mitterrand was elected in 1981, he moved to reform systems of government in New Caledonia. As head of the Territorial Council, French High Commissioner Christian Nucci appointed independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou as his Vice President in June 1982. The charismatic Kanak leader quickly formed a coalition government between the Independence Front and the centrist party FNSC. This progressive coalition faced massive opposition from anti-independence settlers and lasted just two years, before New Caledonia descended into armed conflict in late 1984.
Describing his election as “an honour and a privilege”, President Mapou harked back to the reforming tradition of the Tjibaou coalition four decades ago: “We must carry a heavy heritage, that of our figurehead Jean-Marie Tjibaou.”
The Tjibaou government attempted rapid reforms to New Caledonia’s colonial economy: introducing family allowances; boosting tourism through the creation of the international airline Aircalin; integration of Kanak languages into teaching; and tackling inflation and economic turmoil at the end of the 1970s nickel boom.
It will be much harder to advance a progressive agenda today. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and US-China geopolitical tensions, President Mapou leads a multi-party government where half the members oppose his economic and political program. Beyond this, the French government has unilaterally announced that New Caledonia’s third referendum on self-determination under the Noumea Accord will be held in just five months’ time.
Compared to the divided regional relations of the 1980s – an era of nuclear testing and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior – France has improved relations with Forum Island Countries and forged strategic partnerships with Australia and New Zealand. Interesting times ahead for the new President, who will participate in his first Pacific Islands Forum in coming weeks.
Political action
Mapou was born in November 1958 in Unia, a Kanak tribal reserve near the town of Yate, on the south-eastern coast of New Caledonia’s main island. As a young activist, Louis Mapou was a supporter of Groupe 1878, one of the grassroots organisations that made up the pro-independence Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) in 1976.
Mapou’s older brother Raphael is a former Mayor of Yate and a central figure in Rhéébù Nùù (“eye of the land” in the language of the customary region of Djubea-Kapumë). The Rhéébù Nùù association has mobilised landowners in the south to campaign around the Goro nickel smelter, with tense and sometimes violent struggles over environmental protection, jobs and opportunities for local subcontractors.
Like many Kanak leaders of his generation, Louis Mapou went to university in France, studying human geography in Nantes. He drew on this research as director general of the Agence de développement rural et d’aménagement foncier (ADRAF) between 1998 and 2005. This agency has played a crucial role in land reform, purchasing rural properties from Caldoche farmers and ceding public lands to customary landowners. Kanak tribal reserves – created by colonial authorities and missions in the 19th century – hold more than 175,000 hectares of land, but another 120,000 hectares of productive land have been returned to customary landholding since the late 1970s.
Mapou has also played a significant role in New Caledonia’s nickel industry, serving as an administrator of ERAMET between 2005 and 2014 (bolstered by a strategic investment from the French government, ERAMET is the parent company of Société le Nickel, the oldest mining and smelting corporation in New Caledonia). Mapou has served on the executive board of Koniambo Nickel and the Northern Province’s development and investment agency SOFINOR.
Today, as a leading member of Palika in the Southern province, he heads the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance (UNI) group in New Caledonia’s Congress, alongside the other pro-independence parliamentary group, UC-FLNKS and Nationalists.
Political jousting
Under the provisions of the 1998 Noumea Accord, New Caledonia’s Congress elects 11 members of a multi-party government, with seats determined by the size of parliamentary groups in the legislature. These 11 politicians in turn choose a new President and Vice President from amongst their members.
Mapou’s election to the top job came after months of delay, following the collapse of the government led by President Thierry Santa last February. In April, independence parties won six of eleven seats in the government – the first majority for independence supporters since the multi-party, collegial executive was created in 1999.
However as the Congress chose new government members from competing parliamentary groups, anti-independence tacticians planted a poison pill. A member of the Loyalist bloc voted for Louis Mapou’s UNI list instead of their own candidate. This extra vote, and another from the left-wing Parti Travailliste, gave UNI three seats in the new government instead of two. The UC-FLNKS list led by businessman Samuel Hnepeune got three seats, rather than the four they were expecting.
The Right’s anonymous vote for UNI served a double purpose. Even with an FLNKS majority in government, the 3-3 split between UC and UNI exacerbated longstanding differences, requiring extensive debate over who would take the presidency. It was also payback to Eveil océanien (EO), whose candidate Vaimu’a Muliava was fourth on the UC list and missed out. EO is a new Wallisian party that has adroitly deployed its three votes in the Congress, alternating its support behind the Loyalists and the independence movement. While it backed President Santa as President in 2019, EO joined the UC-FLNKS parliamentary group in 2020, voting for UC leader Roch Wamytan as Congress speaker. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
The choice of relative newcomer Samuel Hnepeune to head the UC list aimed to send a positive signal to the business community and ordinary New Caledonians. Hnepeune’s business background, however, ruffled many feathers across the independence movement, who felt that the presidency should go to a committed activist.
Bringing in a fresh face seemed like a good idea after years of musical chairs between elite politicians. Many voters are anxious about jobs after the disruption caused by Cyclone Lucas, the coronavirus pandemic, and successive elections and referendums on self-determination since 2018. But as a former president of the employers’ federation MEDEF-NC, Hnepeune won little favour with the Parti Travailliste, the trade union confederation USTKE and even some members of his own party.
For this reason, Thierry Santa continued as caretaker President from February until July, while UNI and UC tried to forge a compromise over the top job, the allocation of government portfolios and positions in the provincial assemblies and Congress. After Mapou’s election, Samuel Hnepeune resigned from the government, to be replaced by the next person on the UC list – Vaimu’a Muliava of Eveil océanien, who voted for Thierry Santa as President in the last government!
As Islands Business goes to press, there is further manoeuvring for the choice of President (speaker) of the Congress, currently held by UC’s Roch Wamytan. With Virginie Ruffenach of the Rassemblement-Les Républicains party nominating for the job, Wamytan may lose crucial EO votes if the Wallisian party seeks to balance the allocation of leadership across different political institutions. However bitter brawls in the anti-independence camp – between the Avenir en Confiance coalition and Philippe Gomes’ Calédonie ensemble party – means that Wamytan may still have the numbers to return to office if the Right cannot unify around a candidate.
Down to work
After weeks of uncertainty, President Mapou now says it’s time to get on with the job. “This is the responsibility of any government,” he said. “We want to use this time; we want to get to work.”
Despite New Caledonia’s relative success in controlling the spread of coronavirus, Mapou wants to push ahead with vaccination programs and economic responses to the pandemic. A key priority will be addressing social inequality and the loss of hope amongst young Kanak and islanders who have borne the brunt of the current economic downturn. Another challenge will be reprioritising the annual budget, introduced in May by the French High Commissioner while the elected government was in caretaker mode. Given the months since the collapse of the Santa government, there is a need for some hard financial decisions, such as reforming the RUAMM medical pension scheme.
Beyond these domestic priorities, President Mapou must also lead New Caledonia towards a third referendum on self-determination under the Noumea Accord.
France’s Overseas Minister Sébastien Lecornu hosted a roundtable in Paris between 25 May and 3 June to discuss the consequences of a Yes or No vote on the question of independence and sovereignty. But rather than forge a consensus about the timing of the next referendum, Lecornu unilaterally announced the poll would be held on 12 December 2021. He made clear that the decision to proceed this year was taken by the French government: “I would like to point out that this date is not the subject of a consensus….It’s not an agreement. It’s an initiative that we are taking within the strict framework of the powers of the French State.”
With the second referendum held just nine months ago, calling another vote in December has angered independence leaders, who had proposed that the third poll take place in September or October next year. Anti-independence leaders pushed for the earlier date, believing they can stall the momentum towards independence highlighted by the increasing ‘Yes’ vote in the November 2018 and October 2020 polls. The debate over timing is also driven by domestic French politics: Emmanuel Macron will face off against the extreme right’s Marine Le Pen in next April’s French presidential election.
Louis Mapou and other UNI representatives boycotted the Paris roundtable. At the time, he said that the rushed timetable imposed by the French state is promoting deep anger among grassroots independence supporters. Soon after his election as President, Mapou reaffirmed this concern: “This date is not good at all. I don’t know what we’re rushing into.”
From Tahiti, Oscar Temaru of the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party welcomed Mapou’s election, saying “he’s a very intelligent guy and I wish him all the best.”
Reflecting on his own election as a pro-independence President of French Polynesia in 2004, Temaru recalled how France reacted to his victory: then Overseas Minister Brigitte Girardin delayed the transfer of hundreds of millions of euros from Paris to Papeete, after threatening to “turn off the taps” of state funding. With just five months until the next vote in New Caledonia, Temaru worries that the French State will play hardball again: “It will be a very tough time from now until the day of the next referendum. They have to be very, very, very careful.”
President Mapou says he is up to the challenge: “I know a lot of people think we will have a hard time, but the key word in our commitment will be to work for the house of New Caledonia.”
