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206 Chapter 7 Kanaky New Caledonia? Negotiation is a continuation of the struggle in another form. It is the necessary outcome of every battle....[But] independence is a right that is not negotiable. It’s a right like breathing. Paul Néaoutyine, L’indépendance au présent: Identité Kanak et destin commun (2006, 56, 94) The Caledonian method is the method of dialogue, of consensus, and of mutual acceptance. One knows well in New Caledonia that majority rule is a dead end. Jean-Yves Faberon, Comparer la Corse et la Nouvelle-Calédonie? (2001, 74) The strong stand taken by Kanak leaders in the 1980s had brought official recognition for the indigenous identity and political control of two out of three provinces. Unlike other countries in culturally diverse Melanesia, the FLNKS confrontation with France and the settlers had “created a nation where one had never existed before,” that is, Kanaky (Connell 1988a, 243). Yet the French military firepower inflicted on Ouvea, reminiscent of the unpunished ambush by settlers at Hienghène in 1984, showed that armed struggle could not succeed by itself, but rather as a prelude to dialogue. The real tragedy was that the RPCR had rejected the attempt to reach consensus at Nainville in 1983, which led to bloodshed before the same actors returned to the negotiating table at Matignon in 1988. The Ouvea sacrifices helped push the metropolitan political pendulum to the left again, where it had been in 1956 (during loi cadre autonomy) and 1981 (during Mitterrand ’s first presidency). French leaders had often called for “real multiethnic dialogue” (Dijoud Plan 1979), in order to create a “just balance between the different communities” so they could “live together” (Lemoine, NC, 11 July 1983) and forge a “common destiny” (Chirac, ADSJL 1986). But the new settler majority remained a challenge. The Matignon Accord promised French-subsidized economic rebalancing among the three provinces. That money also risked seducing Kanak leaders with “bourgeois” pay and housing, but their new patronage systems might rival that of the oligarchic RPCR. The Kanak people could not realistically become independent alone, even by UN standards, which required Kanaky New Caledonia? 207 the entire population to decide, hence the ideas of “double legitimacy” and “victims of history.” Another consensus would be negotiated in the Noumea Accord of 1998, but the FLNKS and labor unions had to keep up the pressure in order to move forward. Could another political center emerge, as in the 1982–1984 FNSC, to help the country build a future together peacefully ? Might New Caledonia become a Pacific-centered country after all, perhaps even a hybrid nation called Kanaky New Caledonia? Decolonization without Independence? The Matignon-Oudinot Accords drew positive responses internationally because France was changing its “antiterrorist” stance and pursuing dialogue with the FLNKS (Dornoy-Vurobaravu 1994). Kanak-ruled provinces would receive 75 percent of development aid and most of the civil service posts from the “400 cadres” mid-career training program, while the Agence de Développement Rural et d’Aménagement Foncier (ADRAF) would buy land and redistribute it mostly to Kanak. The indigenous identity was now enshrined in eight culture areas with representatives in the Consultative Customary Council (today the Customary Senate) that addressed custom and land matters. Louis Kotra Uregei of the USTKE said, “In Kanaky, we have just signed an accord with our colonizers. This accord is a victory for us [but] a necessary compromise, which allows us to continue our struggle on a different plane” (Connell 1988b, 20). But would economic “rebalancing ” prepare people for self-rule or turn them into dependent loyalists? Was it all just “a brilliant cosmetic change” (Connell 1988b, 25) that in practice restored power to the settler oligarchy? In elections, pro-independence parties would win in most interior communes, but those were smaller than Noumea and other loyalist bastions, and the RPCR at first monopolized representation in Paris (with two deputies and one senator). It was in the provincial assembly elections, which proportionally shape the territorial congress and its executive cabinet, that a political center would reemerge to promote dialogue. In March 1989, the FLNKS did better in municipal elections than the FI had in 1983, winning majorities in twenty of thirty-two communes, though rivalry arose between the UC and Palika. In the South, particularly in greater Noumea, loyalists reigned, with few pro-independence voices apart from labor unions because Kanak migrants tended to vote in their home villages instead of where they worked. The UC president...

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