Six deaths in six days, Nouméa international airport blocked by rioters, access to food and healthcare increasingly difficult for residents… For six days, New Caledonia has been in the grip of violence . At issue: the constitutional bill carried by the government which aims to unfreeze the electorate in the archipelago. If Emmanuel Macron calls for “finding an agreement” between the various Caledonian representatives, without which the constitutional revision will be presented to Congress “at the end of June”, many elected officials are calling for this constitutional bill to be suspended. Guest of the Grand Rendez-vous d’Europe 1/ CNews/ Les Échos, Fabien Roussel also expressed this opinion. The deputy from the North and national secretary of the French Communist Party would also like Caledonians to “take their destiny into their own hands and engage in a process of decolonization”.
He calls on them in particular “to build a common destiny with all those who live there today, that is to say the Kanaks, the first people, the Vietnamese, the Europeans, the French, the mixed race…” to “achieve a form of independence with cooperation and close links with the French Republic”, he says.
“The government bears a serious responsibility”
The national secretary of the PCF says he is in favor of a new referendum in New Caledonia. “Why not trust those who knew how to write history 30 years ago and over the last 30 years, they have still succeeded in this mechanism,” he insists. “If that’s what they decide [un quatrième référendum, ndlr], let’s do it! I think it’s complicated enough that it’s not up to us, here from Paris, to tell them what to do. The state must remain impartial.”
While the State is trying to regain control over the situation in the archipelago, with the dispatch of law enforcement, Fabien Roussel considers that the government “bears a serious responsibility” for the violence. “We warned that the worst could happen, and the worst has happened,” he regrets.
According to the deputy from the North, the first thing to do would be to “postpone the thaw. The response must first be political. Today, what message is the government sending? Mr. Darmanin, the state of emergency. This is not “That’s not how we’re going to calm the situation. On the contrary, we’re throwing fuel on the fire,” he denounces at the Grand Rendez-vous microphone.