“For us, this is not the third referendum. We consider that in terms of legal and political legitimacy, there are only two referendums, 2018 and 2020. This is the referendum of the French state and its supporters in New Caledonia, not ours “, reacts the president of the congress of New Caledonia Roch Wamytan on Sunday 12 December on franceinfo, after the overwhelming victory of the “no” to the independence of the archipelago (96.49% of the votes).
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Roch Wamytan, historical figure of the Kanak struggle and signatory of the Noumea agreement for the FLNKS, does not rule out asking for a referendum on independence in the coming years and indicates that he has asked for United Nations help. “to refine” his project and “to present a project that holds up” to the current or future French government and to the New Caledonian population. “We will come to discussions with the person who will come out of the polls for the next presidential election. We will wait for the next one. If it is Emmanuel Macron, we will continue to discuss”, he assures.
The separatists do not recognize this third referendum, after those of 2018 and 2020. They had asked Emmanuel Macron to postpone it to September 2022, believing that the health crisis and respect for the traditions of mourning did not allow them to lead a campaign fair. “We did not understand why the President of the Republic did not follow us”, he regrets. The separatists had called on voters not to participate in the ballot.
“Even though we started to prepare from the weekend of August 21-22 to get in battle order, we had 110 days to prepare to win, regrets Roch Wamytan. We were about 10,000 votes to switch. We did 43% in 2018, almost 47% in 2020 for independence. We seriously thought that, since the vote pool was in our favor, we were going to be able to pass. “
The President of the Congress of New Caledonia also wishes to recall that the archipelago is inscribed on the United Nations list of territories to “decolonize”. A FLNKS mission went this week to New York to inform the C24 (UN Special Committee on Decolonization) on the situation in New Caledonia and the non-participation of separatists in the vote on December 12. Roch Wamytan always wishes “slowly take this country to emancipate itself” of France, which he calls a “supervisory government”. “We will continue the work and [l’indépendance] will be done in the years to come. I call the current French government and the one that will be set up soon [après la présidentielle] to continue to accompany the Kanak people and the Caledonian people to their emancipation and perhaps tomorrow to their sovereignty. In any case, that’s our goal “, he concludes.