MAJOR INTERVIEW. “I don’t want to imagine that New Caledonia is a business as usual,” worries former Minister of Justice Jean-Jacques Urvoas

Former Minister of Justice (2016-2017) Jean-Jacques Urvoas looks back on the violence that has been hitting New Caledonia since May. For him, the State has failed in its role as “facilitator” dialogue between the different Caledonian camps. To get out of the crisis, “We will have to broaden the scope of interlocutors”he pleads.

Outre-mer la 1ère: In May, you said that “Without a global agreement, it will be chaos” in New Caledonia. Two and a half months later, are we there?

Jean-Jacques Urvoas: Unfortunately, we are there and I do not have the impression that this is a temporary situation. We have two hypotheses before us: the status quosince we see that the dams are being dismantled and rebuilt just as quickly, and that the fires and the damage continue.

The other scenario is not much more optimistic: it is escalation. Regardless of the massive presence of law enforcement, we could have an additional incident that further inflames the situation and extends it to the archipelago. So yes, it is chaos and the State is not living up to its responsibilities since its main duty is to guarantee public order.

You also said that the priority is to restore peace and that “Public order is not negotiable”. Obviously, this is not a sufficient answer.

No, that is not a sufficient answer because we must not be mistaken about what is at work. I think we must qualify the facts. When we approach these subjects from the angle of delinquency or violence, we omit the essential thing for me, which is the fact that it is a political conflict.

At its outbreak, there is the question, not of the thaw, but of sovereignty, since we know that demographic balance is at the heart of this problem. There is a long-standing concern about the Kanaks’ fear of finding themselves a little more of a minority on their island. And so, if we deny the political dimension of this conflict, we will not find the political response.

You were Minister of Justice. What is your view of these CCAT independence leaders who were imprisoned in France?

It is difficult for me to answer you because I have had responsibilities in this area and I know that when magistrates make these kinds of decisions, they do not do so lightly. And so, I want to believe that the files of the people who are incarcerated in France justified them being so far removed from their family life.

I understand the anger and incomprehension that this may cause, but I refrain from judging this event because, having worked with magistrates for many years, I know that they are aware of the extent of the symbolic act that they committed when deciding on these incarcerations.

Is the State not paying for its lack of impartiality over the past two years in this matter?

There are many criticisms to be made of the State. The main one is to note that nothing that happened was unforeseeable. There had been enough warnings to show that if the State did not find its traditional role, that is to say, to be a facilitator, but not a spectator. The State has never been a neutral third party in this affair, the State is a signatory to the Agreements and therefore it was its responsibility to make them work so that the threads of dialogue never become unstretched.

But for four years, the situation has continued to deteriorate, if only because of the abandonment of the traditional meetings that punctuated the Noumea Agreement: the abolition of the signatories’ committee, which was replaced by a kind of ersatz called the Leprédour format, at the initiative of Minister Lecornu, but which in the long term appears to be detrimental. Obviously, when the State integrates a member of the loyalist community into its government [Sonia Backès, secrétaire d’État à la Citoyenneté de 2022 à 2023]the other partners of the Agreement may be legitimately suspicious about the role that this member may play, especially when she is attached to the Minister of the Interior who had taken charge of the file.

Precisely, Marie Guévenoux, the resigning Minister Delegate in charge of Overseas Territories, must go to New Caledonia…

This is both good news and at the same time a bit surprising. This is a resigning minister in charge of current affairs. I do not want to imagine that New Caledonia is a current affair. I think that it is a serious affair that requires time. Unfortunately, Mrs Guévenoux does not have any. But perhaps she will tell us more about the conclusions of the mission of senior officials set up by the Head of State.

Following these weeks of violence, the legislative elections saw the victory of a pro-independence MP.

Above all, if you aggregate the results of all Caledonian voters, you have a pro-independence vote that is in the majority. This is a signal that must be heard.

And this is not insignificant for those who are trying to project themselves into the positive to see how we rebuild something so that peace returns and we can rebuild New Caledonia. Because what is happening before us is not an institutional problem, it is a social, economic problem.

No overall agreement could be reached. But the provincial elections must be held before December 15, while the question of the thawing of the electoral body has not been resolved…

This is a bizarre situation. Parliament has decided to postpone the elections. In the meantime, it has voted on a text that aims to unfreeze the electoral body. But this text is suspended [à cause de la dissolution de l’Assemblée nationale décidée par Emmanuel Macron début juin]. If nothing changes, the elections will be held. The electoral agreement is frozen. Can the elections be postponed again? Legally, yes. What a law has done, a law can perfectly undo. But is there a majority to postpone the elections again?

I believe that, on the thaw, the question is settled, there is no majority at this stage. It did not exist when the President of the Republic came to Noumea. It seems to me that the legislative elections have reshuffled the cards from this point of view.

Should these provincial elections be held before the end of the year, or should they be postponed again?

The new interlocutors who would come from these provincials would obviously have a gain in weight vis-à-vis a State which will be a fragile State whose government, whatever it may be, will be permanently threatened with a motion of censure. So for New Caledonia, having government interlocutors who are not assured of time is an additional difficulty because what must be initiated for the reconstruction of New Caledonia will obviously require a very strong presence of the State and a word that can be kept.

Loyalist Sonia Backès has proposed a partition of New Caledonia. Is this a sign of an impossibility of wanting to live together?

This is not a new proposal. It is a proposal that Senator Pierre Frogier made a few years ago. At the time, I took his proposal as something serious and solid. However, it is a position that I found pessimistic since it was based on the principle that we will not be able to build a shared, common future in New Caledonia.

I understand that Sonia Backès is taking it up again today because there are a certain number of inhabitants of Noumea who have seen their property burn, and who can draw the conclusion that if we withdraw behind a hypothetical Maginot Line, we will resolve the problem.

But I do not know of any path in history that has been built on fear of the other. I think it is a defensive solution, a fallback, that I hear, but that I do not believe is viable because the difficulties are not in Noumea, they are in New Caledonia. The city will continue to be attractive, and unless you decide to put up roadblocks at the entrance to Noumea, you will not prohibit the free movement of people and goods.

I remain convinced that the common future, that the creation of a Caledonian people, has not been extinguished by the increased violence that has taken place. I am simply absolutely convinced that we will not make the future with yesterday’s recipes.

Precisely, how can we find this path of dialogue again?

It seems to me that the two subjects are the economy and education. I believe that education is a subject that has not been sufficiently addressed by the Noumea agreements. When we see the results of the baccalaureate, we say to ourselves that there is something that must be relaunched because I remain convinced that education, culture is a factor of emancipation and therefore of understanding others. For the economy, I think the CCI has a much more important role to play today than yesterday. Donors are going to be essential to rebuilding.

We will have to broaden the scope of interlocutors. If we work with the same interlocutors, we will have the same difficulties. We must not ban some, but broaden towards others. I think that mayors, for example, must be the State’s first and foremost interlocutors.

Should the President of the Republic speak on the subject?

You know, the words of a President of the Republic are only of interest if they are to say something. If they are simply to repeat what he has already said, I do not think that it is useful. And then above all, it seems to me that the Caledonians need predictability. The word of the State cannot be limited to incantations. Saying that it will restore order, but there are 32 mobile force units on the territory… I believe that the Caledonians do not expect a word from the President of the Republic, they expect action. The State must first assume its own responsibilities to be credible for the future.