December 12, 2021, voters in New Caledonia are called to vote for the island’s third independence referendum under the Noumea Accords. The separatists are calling for a boycott of the ballot but as in 2018 and 2020, again, the no wins with 96.5% of the vote. A null and void result for Roch Wamytan. Figure of the Kanak struggle and president of the Congress of New Caledonia. “The problem is that this referendum which we do not recognize sends the two parties back to back. In fact, we claim the low turnout. Those who are opposed to independence will claim the result.” calm Roch Wamytan.
On the day of the vote, Roch Wamytan was not in New Caledonia, but thousands of kilometers away, in New York. He went to denounce the maintenance of the referendum at the UN. The separatists demand a postponement to respect the Kanak mourning of the Covid dead. A false argument for the loyalists. They are preparing to participate in the committee of signatories of the Nouméa agreement in Paris in September, at the invitation of the government. Not the separatists.
On the Caillou, it’s always the same political stalemate. “New Caledonia is divided into two blocks. It is absolutely out of the question that a referendum be imposed on us which would only follow the dictates of our political adversaries who want them to end the process of political emancipation.” States Roch Wamytan. “One of the points of the Nouméa agreement, point number 5, says very clearly that if at the end of the third referendum it is still the no that wins, the signatories will have to examine the situation thus created. And in all cases, the French State recognizes the vocation of New Caledonia to be fully emancipated”he adds.
“The independence of New Caledonia is inevitable, it will happen one day or another.
Roch Wamytanon franceinfo
“We have to organize it because it is completely impossible or unacceptable for us to consider that we can agree to a statute which would definitely lock us into the French position. Even the French Constitution in its preamble provides for the possibility for the overseas territories to gain independence”, recalls Roch Wamytan.
The Kanak separatists intend to continue their work at the UN level, so that the question of New Caledonia is addressed each year, “until the moment when a future referendum will be organized so that the New Caledonian population, Kanak, can express themselves and can become free. For us, this is the meaning of history”, said Rock Wamytan. “We cannot accept that France continues after a period when it tried to decolonize us and tries to recolonize us. We are going to organize ourselves and use all the means at our disposal to oppose this”, confess Roch Wamytan.
After announcing that he would travel to New Caledonia, Gérald Darmanin invited the members of the committee of signatories to come to Paris in September. The loyalists have already made it known that they will come. Not on the agenda of the separatists for the moment. “Generally, what happens in the three committees of the signatories. There is always a call, a contact established by the Minister of Overseas or another minister concerned who offers us a date either in Paris and in Nouméa following our discussions and then we are sent an invitation. This is by tweet. Here, we do not really know the tweet. So far, I do not know if I am invited to participate in this committee of signatories while I’m the president of Congress and above all a signatory to the agreement. So we’re going to see what’s going on at the moment, we’ve been getting phone calls from different ministers. We’re trying to find out exactly what they want since for the moment, we don’t know exactly what they want. We are still entitled to a little more respect”, cincludes Roch Wamytan.
The separatists say they have filed an appeal with the International Criminal Court in The Hague on the legitimacy of the referendum under the international right of peoples to self-determination. At a summit in mid-July, the Pacific Islands Forum, which notably includes Australia and New Zealand, questioned the legitimacy of the third referendum. A postponement of the poll could have prevented political polarization, according to the regional organization.