The mayor of Poya has had the gendarmerie on the phone again in recent days. A story of a car burnt on the heights of the village and two others narrowly saved from the flames by a neighbor who was able to scare the small band away. With New Caledonia’s third self-determination referendum, on December 12, Evelyne Goro Atu quickly asked herself the question: wouldn’t that be political? No link: according to the first elements, “this is nothing more than bullshit of kids”, do we reassure those around the municipality.
>> DIRECT. Referendum in New Caledonia: follow the results and reactions of the third and final consultation on independence
If everyone wants to dispel the doubt, it is because the municipality of some 3,300 inhabitants is a miniature version of the electoral situation which today divides the archipelago, with a northern part favorable to independence, and a southern part mainly for the maintenance in the French Republic. In this bush commune, which can be reached from Nouméa after 220 kilometers on RT1, the “yes” to independence won in the two previous polls, 59.5% in 2018, then 62% in 2020. Evelyne Goro Atu reflects aloud: “If there was a bullying issue in connection with the pre-ballot vote? Not heard of it. A tag, a hook, anonymous letters? No, no, none of that. It’s quiet here “, she points out from her brand new office at the town hall, under the eye of Emmanuel Macron, whose portrait hangs on the back wall.
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The question is less naive than it seems. In the 1980s, Poya was also shaken by what are called here the “events”, these month of violence between separatists and loyalists. Dams, houses burned down, gendarmes as reinforcements … “It was terrifying, sums up the mayor, who was 24 at the time, in her words. I grew up in one of the tribes. We were afraid all the time, night and day. I’ll tell you, no one, absolutely no one, wants this to happen again. ”
A nod to history: it is in the town hall that it occupies today that the various protagonists met on November 28, 1985 to sign a memorandum of understanding. The minutes of the meeting read: “After a very broad debate dominated by common sense and understanding”, both camps agree to “guarantee total freedom of movement for all and an end to all kinds of abuses …”.
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Like her predecessors installed before her at the town hall of Poya, this painful past, and not so distant, dictates “a good part” municipal action. “It is something which guides you in the choices to be made. The general interest must count even more”, for example found Yasmina Metzdorf, loyalist mayor of the municipality from 2014 to 2021.
A year and a half after having taken charge of its first files, Evelyne Goro Atu, who was elected under the FLNKS label (independentist), experiences this in turn: “He need more cohesion, we still sometimes live too side by side and not enough face to face. I always have in the back of my mind the idea that communities need to meet, talk to each other, mingle, and that this must not end “, She continues, glancing at a small group sitting in the grass.
“Because there is the day of the vote, December 12. But after, there is the 13, the 14, the weeks which follow, the months which follow, the years which follow. The ‘living together’, it is is now and after. “
Evelyne Goro Atu, mayor of Poyato franceinfo
For example, it has set up a new meeting: that of the large markets. “It’s open to everyone and it’s set as long as possible in advance so that as many people as possible can come.”
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Within the Gohapin tribe, 700 inhabitants hidden in the hills thirty minutes by car from the village, the coordinator Denis Meandu Poveu also rolls up his sleeves to “break the isolation as best we can”. Him “go down” on average twice a week, for an appointment with the doctor, errands to be made, medicines to be taken at the pharmacy. But sometimes, too, he comes the way “just like that”, “to greet people”. “Showing yourself is a way of existing”, he said, leaning against a wooden Kanake sculpture, Kanaky flag in sight.
Crossed on the side of the road, Willy Goro Moto, who lives in a neighboring tribe, tells us that he has “good Caldoch friends” at the bottom of the town. “They also cultivate yam fields, they also go crab fishing. Just like us, what.I sometimes take their advice, when I am a Kanak and it is I who should know “, laughs the father before going back to the first one.
Nevertheless: almost four decades after the violence, everything has not yet completely healed, far from it. There are cold “hollows” and limp handshakes. “Sometimes there are old things that pop up”, deplores the mayor. As during the period between the municipal rounds, in June 2020, when “an opponent would have whispered in private that he did not want Kanaks at the town hall”. “But what nonsense …”, reacts the chosen one, still upset to have “could have been the target of such remarks”. This partly explains why Willy Goro Moto does not speak “never politics” and even less of the referendum. “It avoids the problems. And the problems, we have already known. “
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It is because Poya has come a long way. Yasmina Metzdorf has not forgotten that day in March 1989 when she decided to “get into the car alone” in the Montfaoué tribe to tell him that she had just accepted to be the principal of the school. “I warned her: ‘If I have a rock on my car when I pass, I won’t go back up.’ You know what? I went up every Tuesday and every Thursday to Montfaoué, and nothing ever, ever, ever happened to me … ” tells the wife of Claude Metzdorf, owner of several thousand hectares, known in New Caledonia for his political commitment and his feats of arms during “the events”inasmuch as head of the local section of the Rassemblement pour la Calédonie dans la République (RPCR), the historic party opposed to independence.
The first deputy, Giovanni Maillot, 45 years old today, put “something like three or four years before daring to redo the path between the tribe and the village. “” It was not done like that, tells the one who was a teenager at the time of the “events”. I felt suspicious for a long time, there are people I did not want to see again, it was like a war. But these are things that I don’t want my children to go through, that’s why it took that effort. “
“Today, the people who faced each other on the roadblocks, the enemies of yesterday, they meet again at the Post Office, at the gas station, at the doctor … Everyone knows each other here.”
Giovanni Maillotto franceinfo
The opponents of the time can even meet again in the hall of the municipal council, not very far from the chair of the mayor. During the last elections, Giovanni Maillot indeed crossed thehe Amic Creek Bridge, rolled a mile on a brown dirt road and parked his dark pickup to convince Edgard Mercier, 60-year-old Caldoche, round face known to everyone in the sector, former militia leader in Poya in the 1980s, to join … the independence list.
“When I said yes, it surprised more than one, does not hide the person concerned, stony voice and narrowed eyes. At the time [dans les années 1980], I was one of the most pissed off. I was in command of 33 people, I shot natives, Kanaks, I burned houses, I did all that. And there, I was elected municipal councilor in a pro-independence majority, I even took my card from the Union Calédonienne. Ssymbolically, it is strong. However, my approach is much simpler: I want to show that we can work together, in peace, that we can do things together. If no one takes the first step towards the other, how do you expect us to move forward? “
“The ‘events’, it took me ten years to get over it. For a long time, I fell asleep at night with my cocked rifle next to me. We don’t want to shoot each other anymore. We have done it enough. . “
Edgard Mercierto franceinfo
Edgard Mercier is in charge of mines and security. On the advice of the authorities, he had rightly asked the municipality of Poya to install fallback voting booths in the municipal school, in the event that a polling station is unable to open (due to pressure from opponents of the ballot) on referendum day.
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In the halls of the town hall, we hope that Poya’s experience can be useful to other municipalities “to move forward together”. Giovanni Maillot is convinced, “the example will come from below, from the people”. Edgard Mercier says the same thing … but with much harsher words. “That political leaders, of all stripes, loyalists as well as separatists, stop their bullshit. Nold people did not fight to see this. Let them sit around a table to find a solution so that this country and its children can live in peace. ”
Here he lifts his imposing figure from the bench he was sitting on, and walks forward, cigarette in mouth and crutch in left hand, to whisper one last thing. “By the way, journalist, mhis daughter was shot during the violence. July 1988. Five balls, one evening, around 6.30 pm, while she was playing with the dogs in the house. Later, I ended up introducing him the people who almost killed her. We asked each other for forgiveness, and we even became friends. What more is needed as proof that we can live together? ”