The independentist Roch Wamytan was reelected Wednesday July 28 as president of the Congress of New Caledonia, taking advantage of divisions among the loyalists and a few months before the last referendum on independence on December 12, AFP noted.
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The last term of the Nouméa Accord (1998) runs from 2019 to 2024 and the presidency of the deliberative assembly is renewed each year. Roch Wamytan was elected in the first round, with 29 votes out of 54, bringing together on his behalf the 26 elected members of the two components of the FLNKS - the Caledonian Union (UC) and the National Union for Independence (UNI) - thus than the three voices of Oceanian Awakening (EO), a small formation from the Wallisian and Futunian community.
Milakulo Tukumuli, leader of the EO, had conditioned his vote in favor of the loyalists on the presentation of a unitary candidate, which the various formations of this camp failed to do.
Despite intense discussions in recent days, the two loyalist groups - Avenir en Confiance (AEC) and Calédonie ensemble (CE, center right) - each presented a candidate: Virginie Ruffenach and Annie Qaeze.
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The ballot divided the majority coalition of the AEC since Virginie Ruffenach did not have full votes, obtaining only 7 of the 19 votes on which she could have counted. Twelve elected officials abstained due to an agreement reached at the beginning of the week with the CE party on Annie Qaeze's single candidacy, accompanied by an alternation in 2022. What the party of Virginie Ruffenach (Rassemblement-LR), member of the AEC coalition, pushed back.
With the re-election of Roch Wamytan, the separatists of the FLNKS now lead the two main institutions of New Caledonia after having assumed the presidency of the collegiate government on July 8.
"For the first time since the Noumea agreement, an unprecedented institutional situation is emerging"
, declared Roch Wamytan, evoking
"an immense challenge that must be met both imperatively and collectively"
.
Read also: Towards a New Caledonia led by the separatists
Whatever the result of the referendum of December 12, the State and Caledonian actors have decided that it will be followed by an eighteen-month transition period before a
“project referendum”
by June 2023.
