Noumea, France | AFP | Sunday 07/14/2024 – The president of the Southern Province and leader of the Loyalists, Sonia Backès, pleaded Sunday for a separation of the Caledonian provinces, judging, in a particularly virulent speech towards the independentists, that the “common destiny has failed”.
In this speech broadcast live on social networks on the occasion of July 14, the former Secretary of State considered that “the project of an institutionally united New Caledonia based on living together, with each other, is over.”
While New Caledonia has been plagued for two months by violence linked to a reform of the electoral body rejected by the independence supporters, “we all note today that the ideal of a Caledonian people has been rejected by a majority part of the independence-supporting population,” she said.
“Our political opponents advocate a specific identity, where the first people that they represent in the majority impose their rules above those of others,” also denounced Ms. Backès, for whom descendants of Europeans and the Kanak population do not share the same values.
“Just as oil and water do not mix, I note with regret that the Kanak world and the Western world, despite more than 170 years of living together, have antagonisms that are still insurmountable,” she said.
“Whether it is their way of living in society, through the place given to women for example. Whether it is also their political systems, feudal for some and democratic for others,” asserted Ms Backès.
However, “when two forces oppose each other and two camps are convinced that they are legitimately defending their values, they find themselves faced with a choice. That of confronting each other until the death of one of the two or of separating to live better,” she summarized.
“Thus, the empowerment of the provinces can represent an opportunity to build several distinct but complementary entities, where each of the peoples will finally be able to flourish according to their own aspirations,” continued the loyalist leader, who hopes that each province “recovers the fiscal competence that will allow them to build the society expected by their population.”
The Noumea Accord signed in 1998 provides that, even if the results of the self-determination referendums were different from one province to another, “one part of New Caledonia will not be able to achieve full sovereignty alone or maintain different links with France alone”.
New Caledonia is divided into three provinces, the largest in terms of population being the Southern Province, ruled by the Loyalists.
The Northern Province and the Islands Province are governed by the independentists.
