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French South Pacific Policy 1981-1996

Part 1

The French Pacific Territories since 1981

1. Prelude. 1980: the View from Paris

The French National Assembly

W.S. McCallum

A Quiet Year

In political terms, 1980 was largely uneventful for France's three South Pacific TOM. No major new force for change there emanated either from Paris, or from the territories themselves. This situation contrasted sharply with the years preceding and following 1980. For instance in 1979 a new territorial administration had been appointed in New Caledonia and the Kanak nationalist FI had been founded there, while 1981 marked the advent of the first French Socialist Government since the 1950s.

By 1980, six years had passed since the election of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Since 1974 the liberal-conservative Governments appointed in Paris by Giscard d'Estaing had maintained their majority in Parliament in spite of internal Gaullist dissent and electoral challenges from the two major parties of the French Left, the PS and the PC. New Caledonia's redefined territorial statute had been in operation for three years, and the amendments to the French Polynesian statute, promulgated in 1977, were functioning without major problems. The controversy which had accompanied the land, social and economic reforms introduced in New Caledonia since 1978 by Paul Dijoud, the Secretary of State to the DOM-TOM, had receded, if not disappeared. Although by the end of 1980 Dijoud's reforms had been implemented, at that stage it was too soon to assess their overall effects. This consideration did not hinder the French Government in judging from its vantage point in Paris that administrative reforms in the Pacific territories were progressing well.(1)

Within those territories themselves in 1980, no new development of great consequence was timetabled. In New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia, neither territorial nor municipal elections were scheduled to provoke the hurried formation of the multitudinous, fractious parties that usually accompanied these events. The only elections to take place in the territories that year were for the Senators for Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia. Their results, on 28 September, represented a victory for political continuity. In Wallis and Futuna Sosefo Papilio, a representative for the conservative RPR, received the votes necessary for the renewal of his term in office for a further nine years. In doing so, he bolstered the dominant role that local Gaullists had held in the territorial administration since the early 1960s. In French Polynesia Daniel Millaud, a representative of the Giscardian UDF, was also re-elected.(2)

In 1980 the French Government was more preoccupied with events unfolding in the Franco-British Condominium of the New Hebrides than with the Pacific TOM. Fearful speculation asserted that the decolonisation of the New Hebrides might start a 'domino effect', that would somehow encourage the rise of Kanak nationalism in New Caledonia.(4) However, this argument ignored the different political situations in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. The former’s nascent Kanak nationalist movement had yet to attain the electoral strength of the New Hebridean VP. In 1980, secession from the French Republic represented an issue of prime importance for only a small minority in French Polynesia. Secession did not constitute an issue at all in Wallis and Futuna, where the desirability of links with France was almost unanimously affirmed. France’s recognition of the independence of two East African TOM, the Comoros in 1975 and Djibouti in 1977, were events held by French Governments under the presidency of Giscard d'Estaing to have no consequence for the Pacific TOM. The potential of the Comoros and Djibouti as 'dominoes' whose attainment of sovereignty might set a precedent for the French Pacific was assumed to be negated by their distance.(4)

The Eighth Plan

Independence was not a question contemplated in metropolitan administrative planning for the French Pacific in 1980, at least not in the political sense. The encouragement of economic independence there was however deemed desirable by state planners in Paris. While it was held to be desirable to maintain sovereignty over the components of the DOM-TOM, it was also considered preferable that they become lighter financial burdens for the French State. Published by the General Planning Commission in July 1980, the Eighth Plan for the DOM-TOM considered the lack of financial self-reliance of the Pacific TOM, and of the DOM-TOM in general, as a troublesome concern which needed to be addressed.(5) Scheduled for implementation between 1980 and 1985, the Plan declared that the economies of the Pacific TOM, like those of the DOM, were too dependent on metropolitan France and that greater self-sufficiency should be instilled in them. Deficiencies in the production base of the DOM-TOM had to be overcome if lasting economic development was to take place there.(6)

Some critical analysis of the unspoken assumptions underpinning this orientation should be offered, as certain peculiarities are apparent in it. The tacit assumption of the report was that the economic dependence of the DOM-TOM was inherently a bad thing. This had been a long-standing assumption in metropolitan French analysis of the role of the DOM-TOM in the Republic. It was argued that they should transcend the pejorative image of being "les danseuses de la France" or "les confettis de l'Empire",(7) dependent on financial assistance from Paris, by making a greater productive contribution to the national economy and becoming more self-reliant. On the other hand it might be asked whether this lack of economic independence was necessarily a bad thing for the Republic. If France wished to retain its global possessions, the encouragement of economic self-reliance might be a negative tendency. Were any of the DOM-TOM to become financially self-reliant, greater local demands for political independence could be encouraged. It would be contrary to the national interest if, for example, the establishment of economic independence in French Polynesia were to be followed by the demand of an electoral majority for self-determination.

Furthermore the metropolitan French preference for the DOM-TOM to become financially less dependent on state subsidies might marginally reduce state expenditure, but it should be asked if this was a realistic goal. Many regions of metropolitan France could not claim to be economically self-reliant. Why should the DOM-TOM be any more capable than them of reaching a state of financial self-support? If the small population and resource bases of the DOM-TOM are taken into consideration their prospects of achieving self-sufficiency do not appear to be great. From both French constitutional and economic perspectives, it was faulty logic to assume that the DOM-TOM should be anything more than minor, dependent components of a larger national structure.(8)

Official assumptions about development should also be critically scrutinised. Development or progress in the DOM-TOM was assumed by the officials and politicians who prepared the Eighth Plan to be synonymous with the expansion of capitalism there. The creation of new enterprises and the exploitation of natural resources would lead to the creation of jobs and commercial prosperity. This approach was Eurocentric in that it aimed to raise the material standard of living of the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM to a level similar to that of the metropolitan French. The indigenous tribal societies of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and of Wallis and Futuna were considered underdeveloped by the criteria expressed in the Eighth Plan because of the low penetration of European commercial values there, and because of continued tribal reliance on subsistence agriculture. However was it necessarily desirable for indigenous inhabitants of the Pacific TOM to see their traditional societies further eroded by the spread of the cash economy? Those living in the tribal milieu might not enjoy all the material conveniences of twentieth century European consumer societies, but these conveniences were not necessarily desirable if their acceptance involved abandoning communal socio-economic structures for a European society centred on the individual and orientated toward market capitalism. Tribal authorities would argue that such 'development' could break up traditional societies and produce harmful effects on the tribal subsistence economies of the Pacific TOM.(9) The exploitation of natural resources advocated by the Eighth Plan might also have destructive consequences for the environment in tribal domains, disrupting subsistence farming and hunting. The construction of tourist resorts could claim prime agricultural land, and open cast mining could destroy it, while logging could deprive local game of its natural habitat. What was considered 'development' and 'progress' in Paris could be perceived as the exact opposite by the indigenous inhabitants whose traditional lifestyles were touched by this change.

The administrative outlook expressed in the Eighth Plan was not the only criterion which might be applied to the situation of the DOM-TOM, and the official view should not be accepted without question as the sole relevant approach. Nevertheless, in order to better understand how the DOM-TOM were viewed from Paris, discussion in this work must of necessity follow the frames of reference offered by the Eighth Plan. Whether the document offered a realistic response should be asked. The objective of reducing the economic dependence faced by the DOM-TOM was offered with great verve, although remained easier said than done. The desirability of a diversification of local economic activity had been declared repeatedly in preceding state plans to no great effect.(10) What remained to be determined was whether the French Government could translate this target into durable results.

In terms of what in Paris was considered to be underdevelopment, the Pacific TOM shared many of the obstacles of the DOM, as well as possessing their own peculiar disadvantages. These disadvantages stemmed largely from the geographical location of the French Pacific. After noting the general dependence of the DOM-TOM on metropolitan France, the Eighth Plan indicated that the Pacific TOM were disadvantaged compared to the DOM because of their greater distance from French markets. This greater distance implied high freight costs for exports from the French Pacific to the mainland, rendering produce uncompetitive. This consideration, and the narrow range of exports from the TOM to their immediate Pacific neighbours, combined to act as a powerful disincentive to the growth of local production through export-led economies.(11) The Eighth Plan stressed the need for the encouragement of commerce in the French Pacific and with its regional neighbours in order to improve export opportunities from the TOM.(12) It was assumed that it would be more profitable to sell products from the French Pacific in the Pacific basin as a result of the relative proximity of potential markets there and the consequently lower freight costs involved.

Diversified export growth from the French Pacific had been mediocre in the late 1970s. Wallis and Futuna’s economy remained centred on subsistence agriculture. In New Caledonia and French Polynesia, local agricultural production had failed to meet the greater demands of local consumption stimulated by territorial population growth. The profitability of the only major New Caledonian export, nickel, was, like French Polynesian copra, constantly in flux owing to the instability of these commodities’ prices on the international market, although the difference was that, unlike nickel, copra declined steadily.(13)

Tourism, at that time the only other major area of economic development for the latter two territories, was noted as not having progressed to as great an extent as in the DOM.(14) For European and American travellers the French Pacific did not represent as convenient a destination as the French Caribbean. The greater distance of the Pacific TOM from Europe and the eastern seaboard of North America, and the higher airfares that resulted for European and American travellers, posed an obstacle to competitiveness with less distant holiday destinations. An increase in revenue from tourism would be dependent on encouraging visitors from the Asia-Pacific region, for whom the French Pacific represented a cheaper destination than it did for Europeans and the inhabitants of the east coast of North America. Much remained to be done in expanding tourism.(15)

The EEZs of the French Pacific also offered great potential for economic exploitation although few advances had been made in this field by the end of the 1970s. The Eighth Plan noted that the Pacific territories’ fisheries should be exploited beyond the artisanal level then prevalent.(16) Once again, commercial growth in this sector was dependent on improving regional trade, as frozen fish shipped from the Pacific TOM could not compete successfully in metropolitan France with the lower market prices of fish from the Atlantic Ocean. As shipping frozen fish to Europe was uneconomic, more profitable export markets had to be found in the Pacific basin.

It was asserted in the Eighth Plan that agricultural activity in the Pacific TOM, as in the Caribbean and other DOM, needed to be increased to the point that production would fulfil the demands of local consumers.(17) The document expressed the belief that such territorial self-sufficiency would reduce the demand for expensive imported food, shipped from as far away as Europe. The prospect of increasing local food production to the point where meat and vegetables could be exported to markets such as Japan and New Zealand was also optimistically contemplated.(18) Barriers to these potential exports were ignored; notably, Japanese tariffs on imports and New Zealand's ability both to produce its own food and to import it more cheaply from places other than the French Pacific.

Reviving agriculture in the Pacific TOM presented a particular challenge. Agriculture in French Polynesia and New Caledonia had declined markedly since the 1960s.(19) In French Polynesia, this decline had been accentuated by the arrival of the nuclear testing programme. The presence of the programme permitted a rapid expansion of tertiary sector employment. Not only were workers required on the test sites, they were needed in Papeete to staff support services for the nuclear programme. Traditional agriculture was abandoned by farmers attracted by the lucrative employment opportunities that the programme created.(20) In New Caledonia, the boom in the nickel industry from 1969 to 1972 had likewise accentuated the decline of agricultural activity to the advantage of more profitable employment in the mining sector. To the contrary, subsistence agriculture in Wallis and Futuna could not be described as declining, but it was unlikely to expand to any great extent for want of more arable land.

With the notable exception of nickel mining in New Caledonia, which dominated the territorial economy, local industry represented another underdeveloped sector in the French Pacific. The Eighth Plan advocated the creation of light industry and small artisanal enterprises.(21) The growth of these businesses would serve to diversify local economies and create employment opportunities. Evolution in the industrial sector, as with tourism, fisheries and agriculture, would be encouraged through government loans and subsidies. Competition from imported goods would be discouraged by tariffs.(22) What effect import tariffs might have in discouraging trade between the Pacific territories and their neighbours was not discussed.

One major obstacle to economic diversification in the Pacific TOM was purely internal. The Eighth Plan described the distorting and stifling effect that the presence of a well-paid civil service had on private sector growth in the DOM-TOM. The gap between public sector salaries, and the lower incomes private sector workers received, acted as a major barrier to entrepreneurial growth.(23) Local inhabitants, it was argued, were less likely to start their own businesses when better paid employment was offered in civil service posts. Locals were also less likely to be promoted to major administrative positions than the generally better qualified metropolitan French citizens who dominated this sector. The presence of metropolitan civil servants served both to undermine the growth of entrepreneurial activities in the Pacific TOM, and obstructed locals seeking to obtain high-ranking positions in the territorial bureaucracy.

It was proposed that public sector salaries should be reduced to make this employment less attractive.(24) However, lowered salaries would not reduce the size of administrative bodies in the DOM-TOM. With or without salary reductions, civil service posts would remain attractive to locals for the career stability they offered. Taking into account the added public sector work implied under the Eighth Plan by projected government development programmes that were advocated, it was unlikely that the preponderance of civil service posts would diminish in years to come. Whether lasting local economic growth and entrepreneurial initiatives could be built on the basis of a plan directed from Paris was a complicated question which was left unanswered.

A lack of educational qualifications, particularly in management and commerce, disadvantaged the majority of the inhabitants of the French Pacific. The Eighth Plan mentioned that education in the Pacific TOM was lagging behind the general educational standards of the DOM, which were themselves recognised as being lower than those of metropolitan France.(25) The number of people who had received secondary school education in French Polynesia was particularly low.(26) In Wallis and Futuna, there existed a significant number of adults who had not progressed beyond primary school level.(27) The educational disadvantages of the inhabitants of the French Pacific prevented most of them from obtaining public service work. Private sector opportunities that would enable unqualified workers to shape their own careers were limited. Unemployment in the Pacific TOM was aggravated by high local birth rates. Every year, more school leavers arrived on the employment market than there were jobs on offer. Simply put, population increase in the Pacific TOM was outstripping territorial occupational growth, an employment problem France was also experiencing on a national level. The Eighth Plan detailed the importance of educating more locals to a higher level than was prevalent. The inhabitants of the French Pacific would need to be offered wider educational opportunities, including vocational training and better access to tertiary education.

After summarising all these difficulties, the Eighth Plan concluded on an optimistic note. It was stated that for all the drawbacks still facing the DOM-TOM, living standards there had improved during the 1970s thanks to reforms undertaken by the State. Perhaps, it was suggested, this improvement was the very reason for the dissatisfactions and rising aspirations of the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM.(28)

Changes implemented during the presidency of Giscard d'Estaing were presented as a continuation of broader development trends undertaken in the DOM-TOM since the end of World War II. Under Giscard d'Estaing, the French Government recognised the importance of consulting with the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM to some extent in the formulation of administrative schemes. Nonetheless, the impetus for change, and the direction that change would take, would continue to be determined in Paris. Consultation with local leaders did not equate with relinquishing control of funding or policy formulation. Whether this choice was preferable to decentralisation was to be partially tested with the granting under Mitterrand of greater autonomy to the DOM-TOM in the 1980s. What conclusions might be drawn from this process in the Pacific TOM will be considered in the following chapters of part 1.

The important emphasis in the conclusion of the Eighth Plan was that the French Republic was continuing to promote modernity and social change in the DOM-TOM through the execution of benevolent reforms which promised greater happiness to their fortunate recipients. No hint was offered in the document that the shape and direction of government reform in the DOM-TOM might not have been to the liking of some of its inhabitants. For the leaders of the FI, the prospect of New Caledonia remaining under French administration appeared stifling for Kanak aspirations to self-determination. In French Polynesia, supporters of the minority Maohi nationalist parties asserted that in some respects the living standards of Polynesians had deteriorated since World War II. Far from being benevolent, post-war change resulting from the establishment of the nuclear testing programme in French Polynesia had, they argued, impacted negatively on the territory's economy and inhabitants.(29) The Eighth Plan did not venture so far as to question the very presence or structure of French administration in the DOM-TOM, and could not really be expected to do so, but preferred instead to suggest that some adjustments of existing structures might serve to solve remaining problems.

Parliamentary Debate

The reference to Republican continuity in the conclusion to the Eighth Plan for the DOM-TOM echoed words that Dijoud had offered in the National Assembly on 10 June 1980. In a debate on the DOM-TOM, he declared that "in the DOM-TOM the Government is actively and resolutely pursuing work performed by the Fifth Republic for more than 20 years".(30) Dijoud exhibited an unabashed optimism for the future stability of New Caledonia and French Polynesia that events later in the 1980s and in the 1990s were to overshadow. Such optimism, characteristic of other UDF members in the Government, was shared neither by their Gaullist colleagues in the RPR, nor by representatives of the Left during this National Assembly debate.

Although the speakers in the debate tended to generalise indiscriminately about the differing situations faced by the various components of the DOM-TOM, the discussion provides a useful starting point for an examination of French party policy concerning the French Pacific in the 1980s. To what extent the stances of the PS, PC, RPR and UDF later contradicted or affirmed the generalised observations offered by their representatives in this debate will be highlighted in the three following chapters.(31)

The DOM-TOM debate provided evidence of growing differences between RPR and UDF members of the majority in the National Assembly. Bernard Pons, then Secretary-General of the RPR, made an effort to disassociate his party from government reforms. Pons thereby implicitly rejected Dijoud's statement affirming government policy continuity in relation to its Fifth Republic antecedents.(32) After presenting a tribute to Gaullist DOM-TOM administration under the Fifth Republic, Pons expressed the fundamental position of the RPR: continued links with the DOM-TOM represented "an element essential to French dignity and influence". He added that the party had "another policy" from that practised by Dijoud, which would succeed in avoiding his unspecified mistakes by implementing coherent projects in the fields of economic, financial, taxation, social and cultural reform.(33) In what manner this policy might differ from that of Dijoud was difficult to ascertain, as Pons was sparing on details. Pons would not have the opportunity to test his capacity to restore confidence in the DOM-TOM until March 1986, when he was appointed Minister to the DOM-TOM. To what extent he achieved decentralisation in the Pacific TOM during his two years as Minister will be considered in more detail in chapters 2, 3 and 4.

It was clear that the errors referred to by Pons were the supposed responsibility of UDF Ministers. Dijoud riposted by saying that the RPR too had been part of the Government under Giscard d'Estaing's presidency. Were any blame to be apportioned, some must belong to the RPR.(34) Pons appeared to be making the most of the debate on the DOM-TOM in order to steer the RPR out of association with the UDF in this policy area. It was a manœuvre repeated by other RPR parliamentarians in various areas of debate during the months preceding the presidential elections in 1981. For Jacques Chirac, the RPR leader, to compete successfully against Giscard d'Estaing's candidature in those elections, a platform of consensual agreement with the UDF was the least desirable basis upon which to run a campaign. An examination of the extent to which differences really existed between the RPR and the UDF over DOM-TOM policy in the late 1970s lies outside the scope of this work. But, as will be seen, this was not to be the last occasion when rhetoric driven by electoral considerations outweighed a more disinterested appreciation of the situation in the DOM-TOM.

PS Deputies who spoke during the debate were also hostile to the optimistic pronouncements of the UDF representatives. They did however largely concur with the terms in which the Eighth Plan described the economic disadvantages of the DOM-TOM. Joseph Franceschi, the PS spokesman, summarised these problems in much the same manner as the Eighth Plan did, albeit in a less neutral and guarded tone, as befits an opposition representative. He mentioned the overwhelming of traditional agriculture and small businesses in the DOM-TOM by an inflated tertiary sector.(35) He described how the cycle of rural migration linked to declining agricultural production, and expanding urban unemployment, was related to the collapse of local production. While agreeing with government analysis of the troubles of the DOM-TOM, Franceschi criticised government attempts to solve these difficulties. Unlike UDF representatives, Franceschi wondered aloud whether the aforementioned problems could be resolved. He pointed out that in spite of the proportionately large deployment of metropolitan French officials and experts in the DOM-TOM, as well as the modernisation of their infrastructures, social services and communications, there remained a gap between the situations in these places and the aspirations of their inhabitants. He questioned whether the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM would ever attain the living standards of metropolitan France and contended that consequently government initiatives in the DOM-TOM had failed.(36) These lucid observations were to remain valid while PS representatives were in government during the 1980s and early 1990s.

For the PS in 1980, reform in the DOM-TOM needed to advance beyond administrative tinkering of the sort envisaged by the Government. Franceschi talked of the necessity to eradicate the last vestiges of colonialism. He added that "a new economic, social and cultural policy is to be recommended, without forgetting the need to re-empower those directly concerned".(37) The reforms that he deemed necessary to achieve this goal did not however differ substantially from the orientation of the Eighth Plan. Neither did his recognition of the importance of consulting the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM. In almost Giscardian terms, Franceschi emphasised the importance of regional development, as well as job creation, centred on an expansion of commercial agriculture, manufacturing and tourism.(38) Only rhetorical differences existed between the PS reform proposals he described and government initiatives already under way. He mentioned, for example, the need for "real land reform" in the DOM-TOM, displaying the tacit assumption that Dijoud's agrarian reforms in New Caledonia and elsewhere were somehow less than authentic. Franceschi's employment of some Marxian class analysis of social differences in the DOM-TOM also distinguished the PS from the liberal strand in the Government's outlook. He aligned the PS on the side of the oppressed in their struggle against "the exploiters",(39) although this proclamation represented evidence more of the differing ideological cultures of the UDF and the PS than of differing policy goals.

The majority of the comments uttered by Franceschi neither constituted startling policy initiatives nor offered new insights. For instance, on the question of the possible independence of one or more of the DOM-TOM, he stated:

If an authentic majority, particularly in the Overseas Territories, calls for independence, it must be given without delay. But the great majority of the population, especially in the Overseas Departments, still declares itself to be French. This wish and state of affairs must be taken into account.(40)

These and other words prompted a cry of "Très bien!" from Roch Pidjot, the sole FI parliamentary representative, but it is difficult to see in what respect the position of the PS differed from that of the UDF or the RPR on this issue. The precondition that Franceschi stated as necessary for territorial independence ("an authentic majority") was quite in keeping with constitutional practice that had been recognised and observed under Giscard d'Estaing and his Fifth Republic predecessors.

Neither de Gaulle nor Giscard d'Estaing would have disagreed with PS policy touching on this question as it was outlined by Franceschi. Originally, article 76 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic permitted a French TOM to accede to independence if this option was advocated by a majority in its Territorial Assembly, but only within four months from the promulgation of the Constitution on 4 October 1958, as stipulated in article 91.(41) Algeria's accession to independence in 1962, after a referendum which indicated that the majority of Algerian voters wished to relinquish French nationality, pushed back the barriers of this constitutional limitation. Not only had the deadline in article 76 passed, it was in any case inapplicable to French Algeria. Under the Fifth Republic French Algeria consisted of a number of Departments, and was therefore constitutionally ineligible for independence. In allowing Algeria to secede, de Gaulle set a precedent for change. Subsequently a new interpretation of the Constitution was formulated in 1966 by the Gaullist Minister René Capitant.(42) Known as the Capitant Doctrine, this interpretation argued that article 53 of the Constitution, which mentioned that "the interested populations" had to be consulted over any change in status of French territory,(43) overrode article 76. It was extrapolated that should it become apparent that a local majority in some part of the Republic might favour independence from France, the French Government should consult this group via a popular referendum. If the majority of voters in such a referendum backed independence, then France would relinquish its sovereignty over the territory in question. This interpretation gained widespread acceptance in government circles.(44) Using this new approach, France granted independence to the Comoros and Djibouti in 1975 and 1977 respectively. Apart from these two TOM, no other part of the Republic has gained sovereignty under the Capitant Doctrine. The limits of the doctrine would be tested in the unlikely event of a DOM pressing for independence.

Nor did Pons disagree with Franceschi's observation about the incontestable geostrategic importance of the DOM-TOM to France, given that they provided it with the third largest EEZ in the world.(45) It is apparent from the speech made by Franceschi that in 1980 the PS did not in any way advocate the abandonment of the DOM-TOM. Overall, the PS policy summary he provided was uncontroversial. Social reform was promised, although such reform had already begun under Dijoud. On the basis of the comments offered, it was difficult to discern how any future Socialist administration proposed to break fundamentally with previous policy conduct in the DOM-TOM.

To the left of the PS, PC Deputies offered the most scathing critiques of government policy. Unlike the PS, the PC was not convinced of the necessity of retaining French control over the DOM-TOM. Since its foundation in 1920, the PC had favoured the concept of France decolonising its possessions.(46) Maxime Gremetz, speaking for the party, went so far as to conclude that in supporting links with the DOM-TOM, the three leaders of the UDF, RPR and of the PS demonstrated fundamental agreement "Messrs Giscard d'Estaing, Chirac and Mitterrand are in agreement in refusing the peoples of the DOM-TOM the right to freely decide their fate".(47)

This remark was overstated, but contained a grain of truth. Insofar as they were unprepared to abandon constitutional precedent, none of the three were prepared to do as Gremetz suggested. Implicit in his words was the assumption that, given the opportunity, the PC would offer minority groups in the DOM-TOM their sovereignty. To date, the PC has not had the electoral strength to do so. It is highly improbable it will ever have sufficient votes to exercise a determining role in overturning the constitutional status quo. The PC was the only major party in the National Assembly which was hostile to French ties to the DOM-TOM. Communist Deputies were consequently isolated from exerting any major influence on DOM-TOM policy throughout the 1980s. Regardless, the PC repeatedly criticised the UDF, the RPR and the PS for their refusal to grant independence to electoral minorities in the DOM-TOM, as the case of New Caledonia illustrated.

The end of Giscard d'Estaing's presidency in 1981 created possibilities for new directions in DOM-TOM policy and thus for change in the French Pacific. Some aspects of UDF, RPR, PS and PC policies mentioned above were modified under changing circumstances in the years that followed. But the fundamental positions of the four main parties as expressed in 1980 did not change and exerted considerable influence on political debate concerning the Pacific TOM from 1981. The UDF maintained its focus on the importance of promoting state-guided liberal reforms and modernisation that would close the gap in the standard of living between the French Pacific and metropolitan France. In keeping with its conception of Republican tradition, the RPR regarded itself as the more legitimate guarantor of the well-being of the Pacific TOM. Contemptuous of Giscardian and Socialist reforms, it advocated a form of decentralisation (notably in New Caledonia) as the most effective method of restoring local confidence in the Republic. The PS also expressed contempt for reforms under Giscard d'Estaing, and desired greater change in the French Pacific. The Socialists claimed solidarity with the disadvantaged there, although they did not initially have any reform proposals for these people that were markedly different from those already set in motion. Lastly, the PC acted as critic to the reformist approaches of all three of the other major parties, continuing its tradition of entrenched and simplistic anti-colonialism.

Such was the Parisian political backdrop to France's Pacific territories in the months preceding the election of Mitterrand in 1981. The extent to which the Parisian view of the Pacific TOM was prompted to change in the years that followed, and the effects of such change, constitute the subjects of the following three chapters.

Notes

1. In order to protect against unscrupulous operators, no notes, bibliography or other references are provided in this Web publication. Readers wanting a specific reference may contact me at wsmccall@maxnet.co.nz.

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