INTERVIEW: By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

Last week, New Caledonia was visited by France’s new Overseas Minister, François Buffet, offering a more conciliatory position by Paris.

This week, the territory, torn apart by violent riots, is to receive a Pacific Islands Forum fact-finding mission comprised of four prime ministers.

New Caledonia has been riven with violence and destruction for much of the past five months, resulting in 13 deaths and countless cases of arson.

• READ MORE: Buffet appeals for dialogue as he ends New Caledonia visit
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Islands Business journalist Nic Maclellan is back there for the first time since the rioting began on May 13 and RNZ Pacific asked for his first impressions.

Nic Maclellan: Day by day, things are very calm. It’s been a beautiful weekend, and there were people at the beach in the southern suburbs of Nouméa. People are going about their daily business. And on the surface, you don’t really notice that there’s been months of clashes between Kanak protesters and French security forces.

But every now and then, you stumble across a site that reminds you that this crisis is still, in many ways, unresolved. As you leave Tontouta Airport, the main gateway to the islands, for example, the airport buildings are surrounded by razor wire.

The French High Commission, which has a very high grill, is also topped with razor wire. It’s little things like that that remind you, that despite the removal of barricades which have dotted both Noumea and the main island for months, there are still underlying tensions that are unresolved.

And all of this comes at a time of enormous economic crisis, with key industries like tourism and nickel badly affected by months of dispute. Thousands of people either lost their jobs, or on part-time employment, and uncertainty about what capacity the French government brings from Paris to resolve long standing problems.

Don Wiseman: Well, New Caledonia is looking for a lot of money in grant form. Is it going to get it?

NMac: With, people I’ve spoken to in the last few days and with statements from major political parties, there’s enormous concern that political leaders in France don’t understand the depth of the crisis here; political, cultural, economic. President Macron, after losing the European Parliament elections, then seeing significant problems during the National Assembly elections that he called the snap votes, finds that there’s no governing majority in the French Parliament.

It took 51 days to appoint a new prime minister, another few weeks to appoint a government, and although France’s Overseas Minister Francois Noel Buffet visited last week, made a number of pledges, which were welcomed, there was sharp criticism, particularly from anti-independence leaders, from the so called loyalists, that France hadn’t recognised the enormity of what’s happened, and to translate that into financial commitments.

The Congress of New Caledonia passed a bipartisan, or all party proposal, for significant funding over the next five years, amounting to almost 4 billion euros, a vast sum, but money required to rebuild shattered economic institutions and restore public institutions that were damaged during months of riots and arson, is not there.

France faces, in Metropolitan France, a major fiscal crisis. The current Prime Minister Michel Barnier announced they cut $250 million out of funding for overseas territories. There’s a lot of work going on across the political spectrum, from politicians in New Caledonia, trying to make Paris understand that this is significant.

DW: Does Paris understand what happened in New Caledonia back in the 1980s?

NMac: Some do. I think there’s a real problem, though, that there’s a consistency of French policy that is reluctant to engage with France’s responsibilities as what the United Nations calls it, “administering power of a non-self-governing territory”.

You know, it’s a French colony. The Noumea Accord said that there should be a transition towards a new political status, and that situation is unresolved. Just this morning (Tuesday), I attended the session of the Congress of New Caledonia, which voted in majority that the provincial elections should be delayed until late next year, late 2025.

The aim would be to give time for the French State and both supporters and opponents of independence to meet to talk out a new political statute to replace the 1998 Noumea Accord. However, it’s clear from different perspectives that have been expressed in the Congress that there’s not a meeting of minds about the way forward. And key independence parties in the umbrella coalition, the FLNKS make it clear that they only see a comprehensive agreement possible if there’s a pathway forward towards sovereignty, even with a period of inter-dependence with France and over time to be negotiated.

The loyalists believe that that’s not a priority, that economic reconstruction is the priority, and a talk of sovereignty at this time is inappropriate. So, there’s a long way to go before the French can bring people together around the negotiating table, and that will play out in coming weeks.

DW: The new Overseas Minister seems to have taken a very conciliatory approach. That must be helpful.

NMac: For months and months, the FLNKS said that they were willing to discuss electoral reforms, opening up the voting rolls for the local political institutions to more French nationals, particularly New Caledonian-born citizens, but that it had to be part of a comprehensive, overarching agreement.

The very fact that President Macron tried to force key independence parties, particularly the largest, Union Caledoniénne, to the negotiating table by unilaterally trying to push through changes to these voting rules triggered the crisis that began on the 13th of May.

After five months of terrible destruction of schools, of hospitals, thousands of people, literally leaving New Caledonia, Macron has realised that you can’t push this through by force. As you say, Overseas Minister Buffet had a more conciliatory tone. He reconfirmed that the controversial reforms to the electoral laws have been abandoned. Doesn’t mean they won’t come back up in discussions in the future, but we’re back at square one in many ways, and yet there’s been five months of really terrible conflict between supporters and opponents of independence.

The fact that this is unresolved is shown by the reality that the French High Commissioner has announced that the overnight curfew is extended until early November, that the French police and security forces that have been deployed here, more than 6000 gendarmes, riot squads backed by armoured cars, helicopters and more, will be held until at least the end of the year.

This crisis is unresolved, and I think as Pacific leaders arrive this week, they’ll have to look beyond the surface calm to realise that there are many issues that still have to play out in the months to come.

DW: So with this Forum visit, how free will these people be to move around to make their own assessments?

NMac: I sense that there’s a tension between the government of New Caledonia and the French authorities about the purpose of this visit. In the past, French diplomats have suggested that the Forum is welcome to come, to condemn violence, to address the question of reconstruction and so on.

But I sense a reluctance to address issues around France’s responsibility for decolonisation, at the same time, key members of the delegation, such as Prime Minister Manele of Solomon Islands, Prime Minister Rabuka, have strong contacts through the Melanesian Spearhead Group, with members of the FLNKS and the broader political networks here. To that extent, there’ll be informal as well as formal dialogue. As the Forum members hit the ground after a long delay to their mission.

DW: There have been in the past, Forum groups that have gone to investigate various situations, and they’ve tended to take a very superficial view of everything that’s going on.

NMac: I think there are examples where the Forum missions have been very important. For example, in 2021 at the time of the third referendum on self-determination, the one rushed through by the French State in the middle of the covid pandemic, a delegation led by Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, a former Fiji Foreign Minister, with then Secretary-General of the Forum, Henry Puna, they wrote a very strong report criticising the legitimacy and credibility of that vote, because the vast majority of independence supporters, particularly indigenous Kanaks, didn’t turn out for the vote.

France claims it’s a strong no vote, but the Forum report, which most people haven’t read, actually questions the legitimacy of this politically. The very fact that four prime ministers are coming, not diplomats, not ministers, not just officials, but four prime ministers of Forum member countries, shows that this is an important moment for regional engagement.

Right from the beginning of the crisis, the then chair of the Forum, Mark Brown, who’ll be on the delegation, talked about the need for the Forum to create a neutral space for dialogue, for talanoa, to resolve long standing differences.

The very presence of them, although it hasn’t had much publicity here so far, will be a sign that this is not an internal matter for France, but in fact a matter of regional and international attention.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.