352 the contemporary pacifi c • 21:2 (2009) Group 3, Terms of Reference. Manuscript destiny.” But politics in this small, in author’s files. multiethnic society of only a quarter Prasad, Jonathon. 2009. The Good, the million people continued to be con- Bad and the Faithful: The Response by tentious and complex, as seen in the Indian Religious Groups. In Fraenkel, municipal elections in March, ongoing Firth, and Lal 2009, 209–233. party splintering, and the approach rbf, Reserve Bank of Fiji. Quarterly of provincial elections in May 2009, Review. Suva. http://www.reservebank which will elect a Congress empow- .gov.fj ered to discuss an independence referendum. Despite a sharp drop in Vesikula, Ratu Meli, and Adi Finau Tabakaucoro. 2008. Why the sdl Party nickel prices over the year because of Needs to Change its Approach and the world economic slump, mining Its Leadership for Fiji to Go Forward. expansion continued, though the Goro Manuscript in author’s files. metal processing plant project in the South remained controversial. Labor Williams, George, Graham Leung, Anthony J Regan, and Jon Fraenkel. 2008. unions were active, but more aggres- Courts and Coups in Fiji: The 2008 High sive police interventions limited their Court Judgment in Qarase v Bainimarama. strike actions. France still provided State, Society and Governance in Melane- massive fi nancial aid to the territory— sia Discussion Paper 2008/10. Canberra: more than us$2 billion annually—and Research School of Pacific and Asian planned further France-Pacifi c sum- Studies, The Australian National Univer- mits, while also using New Caledo- sity. http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers / nia’s new associate membership in the melanesia/discussion_papers /08_10 Pacifi c Islands Forum to help spread _williams.pdf French infl uence in the region. Since 2004, ad hoc cooperation has grown between the centrist loyalists of Avenir Ensemble (ae, Future Together) New Caledonia and the pro-independence parties. New Caledonia is gaining more Both groups support government control over its own affairs, due to intervention in social and economic negotiated accords that promised it planning more than the conserva- economic “rebalancing” and evolv- tives, who criticized the new trend as ing autonomy. Paris has continued to “socialism” or “state capitalism.” But delegate more powers of self-govern- ae leader Philippe Gomès, president ment to the country, and 2008 was a of the populous Southern Province, year to refl ect on the anniversaries of called it “economic will” to master the peacemaking Matignon-Oudinot strategic resources and labeled the Accords of 1988 and the Noumea conservative free trade vision “Ameri- Accord of 1998 (the latter of which can style ultra-liberalism” (NC, 26 Sept has come to constitute a sort of 2008). Because of the infl ated cost of interim constitution). Kanak cultural living (food prices are twice as high identity made further advances in local as in France and local housing costs institutions, as did symbols associated equal those of Paris), the ae-led Con- with the agreed pursuit of a “common gress imposed price and rent controls pol i t ical reviews • melanesia 353 last year, and this year its formula the Kanak militants who had killed limited rent increases by half, while four gendarmes and taken hostages it continued to build more affordable to protest against Pons’s proposed lodging with French aid (NC, 18 Jan, regressive statute for New Caledonia 5 July 2008). Congress has lowered (which would have reduced the pow- income taxes on the middle class as ers of Kanak-ruled provinces instead well as inheritance taxes; has pur- of promoting self-rule). Pierre Frogier chased majority ownership of Enercal of the loyalist Rassemblement pour la (New Caledonia’s primary power pro- Calédonie dans la République (rpcr) ducer and supplier); and has actively objected to what he saw as bias in the negotiated the transfer of responsibil- made-for-television fi lm and published ity for secondary education—which a letter to “young people” in the terri- France took over in 1967—back to tory in which he blamed the Front de New Caledonia. It is working on plans Libération Nationale Kanak et Social- to coordinate economic development iste (flnks) for the violence. He also among the three provinces and to argued that there were victims in both regulate the mining industry, rather camps during the 1980s “events,” than leave the latter to the “anarchic not only in Hienghene (where eleven and quasi-wild” style of the past (NC, Kanak were ambushed in 1984) and 13 Aug 2008). The South has started Ouvea (where nineteen Kanak were economic activity zones in cooperation killed). He said that the famous hand- with indigenous customary leaders to shake between loyalist Jacques Lafl eur provide jobs in tribal reserves, and its and Kanak independence leader Jean- vast Gouaro Deva ecotourism project Marie Tjibaou in 1988 constituted near Bourail has combined provincial, a moment that young people should private, and customary input in a plan emulate by reaching out to each other to develop 24,000 acres by the sea “without forgetting anything in this (NC, 8 Aug 2008). By June 2008, the past” (NC, 17 May 2008). Colloquia centrists were proposing to territorial- refl ecting on the two anniversaries ize ownership of the Société le Nickel were held in Paris and Noumea and (sln), the country’s largest mining were attended by scholars and par- company and employer. ticipants in both accords, on 26 June, From April through June various the date the 1988 Matignon Accord commemorations of the peace accords was reached. Former Premier Michel were held, including ceremonies on Rocard, who had successfully brought Ouvea to mourn the violence that Tjibaou and Lafl eur together to had taken place there in 1988. That negotiate, spoke in Paris and Noumea tragedy was portrayed in a fi lm by about his refl ections, even suggesting Mehdi Lallaoui, which was broadcast that in the post–cold war world of on television. In an interview, former increasing globalization and regional- Premier Bernard Pons called the ism, now-autonomous New Caledo- Ouvea hostage crisis and the deaths of nia “is already independent.” “The twenty-fi ve people “one of the saddest concept no longer has meaning,” he moments of my life.” Yet he defended opined, since France has ceded some actions taken by French troops against of its once-sovereign powers to the 354 the contemporary pacifi c • 21:2 (2009) European Union (NC, 27 May 2008). to “purge” the independence ques- Yet French voters rejected the pro- tion and ensure that New Caledonia posed EU constitution in 2005, and remains “in” France. Territorial Presi- many have agitated against further dent Harold Martin proposed instead immigration. France also retains UN a consensual negotiation before 2014 Security Council veto power and has to remove “doubt” about the future its own nuclear weapons, hinting that (NC, 5 Jan, 6 June 2008). it regards the concept of independence Ever since Edgar Pisani’s futile as meaningful. proposal of independence-in-associa- Two rival visions of plausible tion in 1985, which Tjibaou regarded outcomes for New Caledonia’s “com- as a real “opening” in constructive mon destiny”—the goal set out in the dialogue, the trend among some inde- Noumea Accord in 1998 and written pendence supporters has been to speak into the French constitution the fol- of “sovereignty in association with lowing year—have emerged in recent France” as a possible compromise, but discourses as a possible referendum usually as a step toward full indepen- on independence approaches in 2014. dence. In June, Victor Tutugoro of the Metropolitan French and local loyal- flnks said he did not mind Rocard’s ists often speak of federalism, since blithe comments about the obsoles- New Caledonia’s three provinces each cence of independence, admitting (as have a signifi cant degree of autonomy Tjibaou had twenty years earlier) that and the territory itself (as an “over- countries are not completely inde- seas collectivity”) is gaining increasing pendent today, but that, nevertheless, autonomy from France. Legal scholar sovereignty “is the ability to choose Jean-Yves Faberon views this “double one’s own interdependencies.” He federalism” (internal and external) said, “The demand for independence as a “guarantee against intolerances” stops on the day it succeeds,” imply- because each province can develop ing a maximalist approach, and he in its own way, while France remains added that the flnks was prepared to an “impartial arbiter” between the go to the United Nations, the Melane- immigrant and indigenous groups. He sian Spearhead, and the Non-Aligned presented his analysis at the Paris col- Movement for support, as it had done loquium on the accords organized by in 1986 to lobby for New Caledonia Jean-Marc Regnault (TPM, June 2008). to be put back on the UN decoloni- The current French high commissioner zation list (NC, 17 June 2008). Paul (Yves Dassonville), the former premier Neaoutyine, president of the North, (Rocard), and loyalist political lead- has said, “independence is not nego- ers also tout this federal arrangement, tiable, it’s a right like breathing,” and sometimes pointing to the troubles in those who claim that globalization neighboring anglophone Melanesian has negated it are engaging in “sub- countries, and the interdependence terfuge” (Neaoutyine 2006, 94). In created by globalization, as sound response to grandiose statements at reasons to drop the “outdated” idea the Paris colloquium that New Cale- of independence. Frogier even pro- donia had already reached a state of posed holding the referendum in 2014 independence (except for the powers pol i t ical reviews • melanesia 355 reserved for France, namely military, balance in the country, both of which, public order, the courts, money, and he said, were important to “us who foreign affairs), Neaoutyine suggested want to become independent” (NC, 18 that the speakers needed to decolonize Feb 2008).