More than 250 delegates from an ad hoc control commission arrived in Nouméa on the evening of Wednesday December 1 to ensure the sincerity and regularity of the third referendum on the independence of New Caledonia on December 12, said the senior official. police station of the Republic.
Arrived by a specially chartered flight, these delegates - officials of prefectures or judicial and administrative magistrates - will be distributed to all the polling places.
They will be in all 260, 252 arrived from Metropolitan France and 8 recruited locally.
Under the health protocol in force in New Caledonia, all arrivals had to present a complete vaccination schedule and will be confined for 7 days in a hotel, before a screening test.
To read also "Referendum in New Caledonia: once again, the perilous unknown of the day after"
A United Nations expert mission is also present to oversee this referendum, which will ask the 185,004 Caledonian voters the question:
"Do you want New Caledonia
to gain
full sovereignty and become independent?"
This latest ballot in the decolonization process of the Nouméa Accord (1998) is shunned by the separatists, who demanded its postponement because of the Covid-19 epidemic, which
"prevents a fair campaign from being conducted"
.
They have already warned that they will not recognize its result and will challenge it in international forums.
"The vote is not compulsory, this element of context will not mar the sincerity of the ballot,"
declared Francis Lamy, State Councilor and chairman of this control commission.
To read also "New Caledonia: between France and independence, there is no third way"
Two referenda on independence have already taken place on November 4, 2018 and October 4, 2020 and were won by the pro-France with 56.7% of the vote then 53.3%.
