WITH days to go before New Caledonia’s provincial elections, it’s hard to judge the support for the 11 competing electoral lists in the Southern Province.
A key feature of these elections is the development of several electoral alliances trying to navigate between the historic pro- and anti-independence parties, with some leaning towards a transition to a form of free association with France. However, the sheer number of lists facing a united conservative bloc all but ensures that many smaller groups will not gain representation in the Southern provincial assembly and national Congress after Sunday’s poll.
To gain a seat, an electoral list must win enough votes to reach a threshold of five per cent of the 152,795 registered voters in the Southern province. It’s a system designed to encourage parties to form coalitions that can win enough support to reach the threshold of around 6.300 votes – a challenging tally for all but the largest blocs in an electoral system without compulsory voting and a strong tradition of abstention.
Given New Caledonia’s south holds the largest population and key industries, the outcome of this week’s election in the region will also affect future negotiations on a new political statute for the French Pacific dependency.
Fights on the Right
The Southern Province has long been a bastion of anti-independence parties, drawing support from the large non-Kanak population.
This week, outgoing provincial president Sonia Backès leads a joint conservative list, including candidates from her own party Les Républicains Calédoniennes, Nicolas Metzdorf’s Générations NC, Gil Brial’s Mouvement Populaire Calédonienne and the Rassemblement-Les Républicains party, under Virginie Ruffenach. This Loyalists-Rassemblement ticket is seeking a majority in the Southern assembly, in the province which includes the capital Noumea and surrounding towns like Paita, Dumbea and Mont Dore.
However, Sonia Backès is a polarising figure. In 2024, on France’s national day July 14, Backès made a major speech arguing that, like “oil and water”, indigenous Kanak cannot mix with non-Kanak. Her Bastille Day speech, coming after two months of violent clashes between Kanak protestors and French security forces, argued that this was due to “insurmountable antagonisms” between the indigenous people and other ethnic communities that have come to New Caledonia during more than 170 years of colonial settlement, migration and indentured labour.
Since the economic devastation of the 2024 crisis, the Southern Province has announced a series of policies – such as reducing subsidies for school lunches and bus fares – that have severely affected poorer families, especially Kanak and islanders.
This week’s provincial elections in the Southern Province see 11 competing electoral lists. Alongside the united conservative list and the two major pro-independence groups UC-FLNKS and UNI, there are a mix of smaller lists that want to block the Right gaining a majority in the Southern provincial assembly, and potentially the national Congress.
Three lists represent the far-Right, including ‘For a French New Caledonia’ under Arnold Lecques; ‘A hope for tomorrow’ led by Pascal Lafleur (son of Jacques Lafleur, the hegemonic anti-independence leader of the 20th century); and ‘France – New Caledonia: one homeland’ under Alain Descombels, the local leader of France’s extreme-Right party Rassemblement national (RN).
Under Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, RN is the largest party in the French National Assembly and is preparing to contest the next French presidential election in May 2027. This week, André Rougé – a leading RN delegate for overseas France – has been visiting New Caledonia, stressing the importance of France’s ongoing administration of the islands and chastising the local conservative parties.
Earlier this year, Rouge condemned the now abandoned Bougival Accord, noting “the signing by the so-called ‘Loyalist’ Right of a text that organises France’s dispossession of the territory constitutes a betrayal. This signature only represents the fierce determination of Loyalist leaders to obtain, whatever the cost and even at the price of independence, the thawing of the ‘frozen’ electoral rolls necessary for their continued tenure in the sinecures of the provinces and assemblies.”
However, the small far-Right groups are unlikely to threaten the dominant Loyalist-Rassemblement bloc in Sunday’s voting, even as they play to an audience in France in the lead up to next year’s presidential elections.
Building a centre
Drawing on New Caledonia’s burgeoning civil society, a number of other groups are running electoral lists to try and create a middle ground between the conservative anti-independence bloc and the historic independence movement FLNKS.
All are opposed to immediate, sovereign independence, but also criticise Sonia Backès and the Loyalists’ conservative policies. While these lists share many common values – and are seeking support from voters in similar sectors – they have failed to unite, and there is a danger that some may not reach the 5 per cent threshold that guarantees a seat.
Lead by Laurent Chatenay and other independent civil society figures, the Faire Pays list is running in all three provinces. Melding well known community leaders with a younger generation of middle-class professionals, the new citizen’s list has limited experience of governance and lacks the machinery of long-established parties. In the Southern Province, the group is led by Robert Kakue and Marie-Madeleine Lequatre, with both looking beyond polling day this Sunday:
“Sorry to the critics, but Faire pays will still be around on (June 29).”
Many of these lists look to the diverse ethnic groups in greater Noumea, including the large Wallisian and Futunan community, the descendants of Vietnamese and Japanese indentured labourers, and smaller groups of long-term residents from Tahiti, Vanuatu and the Caribbean.
Historically, the Polynesian communities in New Caledonia’s Southern Province have backed anti-independence parties, benefitting from the jobs and welfare support provided by the governing conservative majority who control most of the province’s town councils. But since the last provincial elections in May 2019, a younger generation of Wallisians have changed the political landscape through the Eveil océanien party (EO – Pacific awakening), led by Milakulo Tukumuli.
Just two months after its formation, EO contested the May 2019 provincial elections. From a standing start, the party won four seats in the Southern Provincial Assembly and three in the Congress. In the 2019-26 term, these three seats gave EO the role of kingmaker between the evenly divided Loyalist and independence blocs, with Tukumuli, Veylma Falaeo and Vaimu’a Muliava leveraging their limited numbers to win key positions in both the Government and Congress of New Caledonia.
Last year, Tukumuli led his party into negotiations for a new political statute for New Caledonia. With the rejection of the proposed Bougival Accord by the French National; Assembly in April, Tukumuli noted: “The message is simple: without a consensus in New Caledonia, no consensus in France is possible.”
In May, announcing that EO would again run its own electoral list rather than unite with other groups, Tukumuli said: “I don’t think we should let the main political blocs call the shots on New Caledonia’s future, because if that’s still the case after these provincial elections, I’m not sure we’ll be able to break this political deadlock.”
Speaking to journalists in Noumea last week, Tukumuli suggested that his party would continue to navigate between the two major political blocs.
“The Matignon-Oudinot and Noumea political agreements are not only our legacy but also our compass,” he said. “The Noumea Accord states: ‘If there are three No votes, the political partners shall meet to discuss the situation thus created.’ It does not say ‘independence anyway,’ nor ‘France forever’.”
While seeking to broaden its support, EO is well placed to win votes from the large Wallisian and Futunan community, which makes up more than 8 per cent of the electorate.
Given that many of its electoral supporters face significant challenges around housing, jobs and livelihoods, EO has affinities with parties representing the large Kanak population in the South.
Tukumuli describes the revolt in greater Noumea that started on May 13, 2024, as a social rather than political uprising: “When we analyse the hotspots of the uprising, they coincide exactly with those neighbourhoods and squatter settlements that were built and then left to fall into disrepair. In our country, 50 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, so finding a solution to this is the backbone of our provincial program.”
A province for everyone
Another contender in the South is a new list “Une province pour tous, un pays solidaire, un avenir partagé” (A province for everyone, a united country, a shared future). Supported by the Calédonie ensemble (CE) party, the list is headed by Walles Kotra, a veteran Kanak journalist and broadcaster who served for many years as head of France Television.
Nearly twenty years ago, Calédonie ensemble was a hegemonic force in New Caledonian politics, with party president Philippe Gomès winning the presidency of New Caledonia in 2009 and CE holding New Caledonia’s two seats in the French National Assembly. Today, the party is a shadow of past glories, with Gomès and party secretary Philippe Michel banned from running in this week’s elections after convictions for abuse of public office. After falling out with Gomes, key CE politician Philippe Dunoyer has left the party to run under his own banner, ironically named “Nous, Réunis!” (We united).
Instead, CE politicians Annie Qaeze and Jérémie Katidjo Monnier have joined Walles Kotra in a new initiative, along with Georges Naturel, a dissident member of the anti-independence Rassemblement party and one of two New Caledonians in the French Senate in Paris. Coming out of retirement, Kotra symbolises a range of people that want to transcend the division between the FLNKS and Loyalist bloc, hoping to reconcile the quest for decolonisation and the historic attachment to France.
Speaking to Islands Business, Kotra said: “I come from a pro-independence family, I worked with Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene and I have respect for the independence movement – we must take account of what they say. The country was colonised, and we need to decolonise it. But also, for forty years I’ve served France and seen both its negative and positive aspects. Some communities here say they are reassured by the presence of France, and we need to hear their concerns. We need to take account of the two legitimacies.”
Kotra has proposed two key priorities for his team, political and economic.
“Firstly, we’re suffering a very violent economic crisis in New Caledonia, and we have to respond to this crisis,” he said. “The people who are most often affected are islanders – Kanak, Wallisian and others – and other disadvantaged groups. I think every electoral list includes this issue and we must react.”
After the failure of the Bougival process, Kotra has argued for urgent action on a new political agreement to replace the 1998 Noumea Accord.
“This election should push us to find agreement,” he told Islands Business. “For forty years, the two blocs – the independence movement and France – have fought each other. But we say that no one has won and that’s caused lots of damage to the country: 15 dead in 2024, mostly young Kanak, businesses burnt, etc. Ten thousand people lost their jobs, it’s a catastrophe.”
Kotra stressed that the fragility of the Bougival Accord process came from the decision of the FLNKS to oppose the draft text in August 2025, and this should be avoided in any post-election negotiations: “We need everyone involved. Given the political divisions in France, we need a consensus here in New Caledonia. If there’s no consensus here, we’ll get entangled in the politico-politician dramas in France, and if that happens, we’re done for.”
He also criticised the failure of the French government led by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to manage the Bougival process, creating the current impasse.
“The French government blundered and made bad decisions, setting back our national consensus,” he said.
“The only way to deal with mismanagement in France is for us New Caledonians to say what we want. We need to complete the process of decolonisation and create a new period of partnership with France and Europe. That’s what people are calling for.”
On Sunday, as voters head for the polls, these new electoral lists pose an option for the growing number of people who see the need for some form of free association with France, and who are opposed to the conservative policies advocated by the dominant Loyalist bloc in the Southern Province. But will their disunity mean that many votes are wasted, requiring them to coalesce outside the Southern assembly and Congress after the June 28 election?
