The separatist president of French Polynesia Moetai Brotherson, elected last Friday by the Local Assembly of the French territory of the Pacific, presented Monday, May 15 to the press a government composed of four women and six men. Like the list presented by the pro-independence party that won the territorial elections on 30 April, the new executive is largely made up of men and women hitherto unknown in politics, sometimes very young. However, he did not achieve the parity promised during his campaign.
If the vice-president, also Minister of Culture, Handicrafts, Research and Higher Education, Eliane Tevahitua, is a long-time elected official, the Minister of Equipment and Major Works Jordy Chan, a graduate of the Ponts et Chaussées, is at 29 the youngest of the government and has no political experience. The new Minister of Youth and Sports Nahema Temarii, 32, is the director of a communications agency. The Minister of Education Ronny Teriipaia is the first associate of reo Tahiti (Tahitian language) and will be responsible for setting up the first immersion schools in Polynesian languages. Other ministers, such as Solidarity Minarii Galenon and Employment Vannina Crolas, are better known figures in local politics.
The President assigned the ministerial portfolios of International Air Transport, Territorial Equality, International Affairs, Archipelago Development, Digital Economy and Consequences of Nuclear Tests, as well as Tourism, the first local economic resource.
'No witch hunts'
Moetai Brotherson also introduced his interministerial delegate for disability, Nathalie Salmon-Hudry. This young woman in a wheelchair was already known to the general public for publishing an autobiography and advocating for the accessibility of public services to people with disabilities. The Minister of Non-Autonomous Persons, Minarii Galenon, said that 50,000 Polynesians (out of 280,000) suffered from a disability.
President Brotherson has pledged that there will be "no witch hunts" in community services. Winner of the outgoing autonomist president Edouard Fritch, Moetai Brotherson promised during his campaign to restore purchasing power to Polynesians, in a community very dependent on imports and strongly affected by inflation (8.5% in 2022).
