In the far north of New Caledonia, the Pagou tribe in Koumac will give its name to a congress that will remain in the annals of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS). The pro-independence alliance had chosen the place called “Bois noir”, named after this umbrella-shaped tree under which people gather to protect themselves from the rain or the sun, for its “53e extraordinary congress”. Extraordinary, it was, with the appointment, on Saturday August 31, of Christian Tein as president of the FLNKS. That is to say the emblematic leader of the Cellule de coordination des actions de terrain (CCAT), placed in provisional detention at the Mulhouse-Lutterbach penitentiary center (Haut-Rhin) since June 23 for his alleged role in the violence that has shaken the archipelago for almost four months and which has caused eleven deaths.
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A position that had not been filled since 2001, in favor of a “rotating animation” of the four historical components of the front. With the consequence of a functioning out of touch and a culture of procrastination partly responsible for the failure of the independence claim, the young activists of the CCAT had denounced, without embellishment, during the very first general assembly of the movement, in June.
“It is the congress of reconciliation of the FLNKS with the pro-independence people, with the youth”rejoices Laurie Humuni, secretary general of the Oceanian Democratic Rally, the party currently responsible for leading the FLNKS. The CCAT, an independence organization blamed by the government for the riots, is also recognized as “political mobilization tool”. For their part, the “nationalists”this small group of ten movements which gravitate around the FLNKS, which have in common the fact of embodying a hard line, have finally obtained the sesame which they have been waiting for a long time: a place alongside the four historical components.
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In fact, the cursor within the FLNKS has moved. The Progressive Union in Melanesia (UPM) and the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika), parties considered moderate, did not participate in this congress, whose agenda they did not endorse. Questioned by the channel Nouvelle-Calédonie la 1reVictor Tutugoro, the president of the UPM, denounced “a unilateral decision, taken when we know very well that [Christian Tein] eis the head of the CCAT, the movement behind the destruction and riots. There is a risk of the FLNKS imploding.
Scarecrow
The non-independence supporters, for whom Christian Tein (whom they describe as “terrorist”) is a real scarecrow, seized the opportunity to denounce “a fatal provocation”marking the FLNKS “of the seal of infamy” and no longer allowing it to be considered “as a legitimate interlocutor.”
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