FOR decades, Paul Neaoutyine of the Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) has led New Caledonia’s Northern Province.
The long serving mayor of the east coast town of Poindimie, the veteran Kanak politician has held the post of provincial president since 1999, when New Caledonians first voted for provincial administrations after the adoption of the Noumea Accord in May 1998.
But now, as voters go to the polls on Sunday, his long administration is under challenge.
The Northern Province is the largest of New Caledonia’s three provinces, with a diverse range of industries – from agriculture and aquaculture to tourism and the mining and smelting of nickel. The province’s 17 communes (municipal councils) are spread over the east and west coasts of the main island of Grande Terre, divided by the central mountain chain that runs through the province.
Most of the population are indigenous Kanak, but there are also citizens of European heritage known as Caldoche – the descendants of the convicts and settlers who arrived during the 19th Century – and people from other ethnic communities who work in the crucial nickel sector.
The Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance (UNI) coalition has long dominated provincial politics in the rural north, with Neaoutyine at the helm. However, UNI’s campaign in the lead up to Sunday’s provincial elections has been disrupted by both personal tragedy and political disputes.
The death last week of Neaoutyine’s wife Georgina has taken the provincial president off the campaign trail, to mourn and address customary obligations.
Other UNI leaders such as Valentine Eurisouké, Joseph Goromido and Nadeige Faivre have joined younger activists to continue campaigning for “un destin commun decolonisé et partagé” (a shared, decolonised, common destiny). But the UNI campaign has also been disrupted by inner-party disputes over the failed Bougival process, an attempt to develop a new political statute to replace the Noumea Accord, the framework agreement that has governed New Caledonia since the turn of the century.
For Sunday’s election, the main challenge to Palika’s dominance comes from the UC-FLNKS list ‘Une Province Solidaire et Dynamique,’ led by Pascal Sawa. Union Calédonienne (UC) is the largest party in the main independence coalition Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), and Sawa is seeking re-election to both the Northern Provincial Assembly and Congress of New Caledonia, hoping for a majority in the north.
Campaigning on the slogan “Your daily life – our priority,” Sawa told Islands Business that the UC-FLNKS campaign has focussed on the day-to-day priorities of rural communities around livelihoods, jobs, improved public services and better governance of the province. But the ongoing debate over the transition to independence also continues to divide the two major contenders.
Electoral competition
In New Caledonia’s Northern Province, five electoral lists are competing for Sunday’s provincial elections.
Alongside the dominant lists from UNI and UC-FLNKS, there is also one anti-independence list, Agissons ensemble pour le Nord, led by Vanessa Wacapo. This united list involving activists from different conservative groups is a rare occurrence in the north, where anti-independence parties have often competed each other in the past. This year, Wacapo hopes a united effort will win a few more seats to add to the large tally expected in the Southern Province, where the Loyalist bloc and Rassemblement party dominate local and provincial politics.
Two smaller lists in the North include the citizen’s coalition Faire Pays led by Maurice Waka-Awa, and Alternative Nord pour un pays souverain, headed by Eugène Menrempon.
Members of the UC-FLNKS list have been campaigning on both coasts of the province for weeks, trying to rally existing supporters while reaching out to younger first-time voters.
“Our program is based on five inter-connected commitments,” Sawa told Islands Business. “We want to revitalise our economy and diversify our key economic sectors; we must ensure that every resident has access to the public services to which they are entitled, wherever they live; on environment, we must connect, enhance and protect every region, and restore culture to its rightful place as the foundation of our resilience; and we will govern collectively, whilst remaining accountable at all times.”
In common with electoral lists across the country, this campaign has been marked by efforts to engage young people and renew New Caledonia’s political class.
“Ours is an inter-generational list,” said UC candidate Maria Waka.
“We have our elders but also many young people on the list. Within Union Calédonienne, we always have this tradition of encouraging our young people to take responsibility but supported by our elders who have experience. This provincial election is important because we need to change things, to bring change at the level of the province and at the Congress.”
Pascal Sawa, aged 44, joked “we don’t let our young out in the wild, but ask them to assume their responsibilities as elected representatives. Each of them already has technical skills and experience that they can contribute.”
For Sawa, “our ambition for the list is to really generate a new dynamic in the province. We recognise the achievements of the provincial president and his team but feel that over the last few years things are fading.”
No surprise that the UNI campaign believes that they’re still best placed to lead the province. Addressing a campaign meeting in the west coast town of Poya, Valentine Eurisouké also highlighted the range of age and experience on the UNI list. She joined other candidates to outline UNI’s commitments on services, health, culture and environment as well as economic renewal.
Number Two on the UNI list, Eurisouké is an experienced politician who served in successive Governments of New Caledonia between 2014 and 2021, then returned to a seat in Congress. She has long been involved in health policy and social services, helping to develop the 2018 Do Kamo national health strategy.
“This election is important because we have to continue the work around the province that we’ve undertaken for many years,” Eurisouké said.
“Our UNI program bears the slogan ‘United in a shared, decolonised common destiny.’ We’ve always promoted the idea of independence in partnership with France and this year we’ve asked voters for support to continue the reform of the Noumea Accord.”
Reviving nickel
Another provincial challenge is to rebuild the main export industry, the mining and smelting of nickel. In recent years New Caledonia’s three nickel smelters – operated by Koniambo Nickel SAS (KNS) in the North and Prony Resources NC and Société Le Nickel in the South – have all cut back operations.
In recent years, all three companies have faced a perfect storm, hit by soaring energy costs, industrial disputes, competition from Chinese firms in Indonesia and fluctuating nickel prices that affected debt, productivity and production. In late 2023, transnational corporation Glencore – a joint venture partner with SMSP in the Northern Province’s Koniambo smelter – announced it would sell its 49 per cent share in KNS, forcing the suspension of mining and smelting operations in February 2024. Then, on May 13, the country erupted into six months of conflict between Kanak protestors and French security forces, setting back attempts to find a new investor.
Glencore agreed to pay for workers’ wages and for the smelter’s furnaces to be kept hot until the end of August that year, but KNS finally shut down its furnaces in September, with the loss of most of its 1,200 employees. Since then, a number of investors have considered purchasing a stake, but without any firm commitment (the Chinese firm Lygend Resources has submitted an offer to SMSP to participate in the Koniambo project – an application yet to be approved).
UNI’s Jean-Marc Voudjo was a former worker with KNS but now works as a teacher. He said that the next provincial administration must ensure the conformation of a new joint venture partner to replace Glencore.
“If we’re talking about a viable economic model, it must involve the re-opening of the northern smelter” he said. “More than 1,000 employees lost their jobs, but there were also all the sub-contractors around the site and all the workers behind them. This has had huge impacts on the VKP zone [the towns of Voh, Kone and Pouembout], affecting a wide range of businesses: from childcare to car hire and other shops. So, UNI wants to support the re-opening of the smelter.”
Throughout the campaign, each list has highlighted the need to diversify the economy, despite the ongoing potential of nickel mining and smelting. Electoral propaganda highlights the way the nickel crisis has spilled over the wider provincial economy, and many lists have pledged to assist other sectors like tourism and agriculture and resolve long-standing problems like the status of the northern port of Nepoui.
Fallout from Bougival
Despite the major focus on livelihoods, jobs and environment, the campaign in the North has also been affected by the fallout by the collapse of the Bougival process (last year’s negotiations to develop a new political statute for the French dependency).
On the campaign trail, UC’s Pascal Sawa diplomatically noted the regular absences of UNI’s Paul Neaoutyine from sessions of the Congress of New Caledonia in Noumea, and the need for the Northern Province leadership to be fully engaged in discussions on a future political status for New Caledonia.
This was a veiled comment on Neaoutyine’s late intervention around the Bougival Accord. UNI politicians played a key role in developing the draft agreement in negotiations with the French State and Loyalist parties. Neaoutyine’s key lieutenants were UNI negotiators, including Jean-Pierre Djaiwe and Alphonse Digoue of Palika, and Victor Tutugoro, president of the Union progréssiste en Mélanésie (UPM).
But as a bill to introduce the new political statute into law came before the French Senate in February, the Palika leader made a rare public intervention, through an interview in the French newspaper Le Monde. The day before the Senate vote, the veteran Kanak politician openly condemned the content of the legislation, arguing that it “marks a break with and a step backwards from the Noumea Accord and closes the door to full sovereignty for New Caledonia.”
Although the Bougival legislation passed the Senate in February, it was later rejected in a 190-107 vote by the French National Assembly in April, even without a formal debate. Since then, the collapse of the lengthy process has caused extensive debate within the UNI parliamentary group. The crisis over the new political statute has also divided grassroots activists, with dissident members of both Palika and UPM establishing a new group Unité du Peuple en Kanaky (UPK).
Last month, at an extraordinary congress at Voh, Palika suspended its participation in the Bougival process. For these provincial elections, a pro-independence list ‘Alternative Nord pour un pays souverain’ has brought together members of the UPK, the Parti Travailliste (Labour Party) and Dynamique Unitaire Sud (DUS), all critical of UNI’s stand on both local governance and political direction.
A more telling blow to UNI’s campaign in the north is the absence of the key Bougival negotiators Jean-Pierre Djaiwe and Victor Tutugoro from their electoral list, with other longstanding Palika activists also deciding not to contest the poll.
UNI’s Joseph Goromido acknowledged the tough times facing the current provincial administration.
“We’ve been in office for seven years from 2019 to today, going through periods such as COVID and the crisis in 2024,” he said.
“Now we’re coming to the end of the Noumea Accord, which was signed by Paul [Neaoutyine], Roch [Wamytan], Victor [Tutugoro] and Charley [Pidjot], and then went through three referendums.
“Then there were the discussions that led to BEO [the Bougival Accord and subsequent Elysée Oudinot addendum]. This process should have led to a new Accord, but this was rejected by a motion at the French National Assembly. So today, there’s no BEO and all must be discussed again about the transition towards full sovereignty, as we propose through a shared and decolonised common destiny.”
“After the elections, we must all talk again,” Goromido said, “but within this idea of a decolonised partnership. That’s why these elections are important. We must put a team in place that is strong enough to negotiate with the French State, but also to continue the work here at provincial level that we have undertaken for 30 years.”
