At the National Rally, it’s “his” subject. The one where, apart from her, no one really speaks within the party, we assure you. On May 16, in the midst of the crisis in New Caledonia, Marine Le Pen surprised by wondering on the set of France 2: “Perhaps we need one more referendum in New Caledonia?” Pleading for “pacification” over the long term, she opened the possibility of a referendum “in forty years”. The declaration is surprising: in 2021, during the last referendum provided for by the Matignon and Nouméa agreements, signed in 1998, the one who was then president of the National Rally considered that the Caledonians were expressing themselves “definitively”.
Marine Le Pen is now playing the negotiation card. “Let’s restore order and resume the proven technique of the Nouméa agreements,” she told L’Express. “Aside from that, we are discussing the economic outlook and the necessary investments.” The leader of the far right is no longer talking about a distant problem, which she should potentially be concerned about in the perspective of 2027. If, within the framework of the anticipated legislative elections of June 30 and July 7, the RN was in position to access Matignon, the burning issue of New Caledonia will very quickly arrive on the desk of Jordan Bardella, expected Prime Minister.
Flammable situation
Because, in Nouméa, the situation is far from being resolved. In a letter sent this June 18 to the Caledonians, Emmanuel Macron declared “not to bring together the Congress” necessary for the adoption of the constitutional reform, after having announced, six days earlier, to “suspend” the thaw constitutional reform project of the electorate, at the origin of the violence on the archipelago. A sign of the tensions, the 43rd congress of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), initially scheduled for June 15, was postponed to a later date. Opposite, divided between radicals and moderates, the loyalist party is just as fragmented. Calm is gradually returning, but remains very fragile: in his letter, the Head of State demanded “the firm and definitive lifting of all roadblocks [et] the condemnation of violence without pretense.” “I have confidence in our ability to find together the path of respect, of shared ambition, of the future”, writes the head of state.
After the explosion of riots in New Caledonia, the National Rally remained silent, Marine Le Pen speaking only to call for calm, on May 14, on BFMTV: “We must not do anything that could hinder the capacity dialogue of tomorrow, of which the inhabitants of New Caledonia, whether Kanaks or loyalists, are perfectly capable.” In the National Assembly, the RN had voted the day before in favor of the constitutional bill on the electoral thaw. “I have always said that I will vote for the thaw because I am for it. But we should not have voted for it now,” she explains, referring to both the deadline for the Olympic Games and the economic crisis ahead. which the archipelago faces. “We must resume discussions and the electorate must be part of it,” she believes today.
“Integrate Kanak youth”
Over the past month, Marine Le Pen has made a clear departure from the position of the party co-founded by her father, traditionally closely linked to the loyalists. “We were against the Nouméa agreements and against the freezing of the entire electorate. We were virulently against any idea of independence because the leaders of the National Front at the time had French Algeria in mind, admits Marine Le Pen It’s also a story of generations, and today’s does not respond to the same reflexes.”
The three-time disappointed presidential candidate believes that it is “now necessary to convince”. “Have we really done everything to integrate Kanak youth into the economy?” she asks herself. If the Nouméa agreement has enabled progress, inequalities between communities and territories are far from having been reduced to nothing. According to a report commissioned by the State and published in May 2023, the percentage of executives within the “European” community is 11.5%, while it is only 1.3% among the Kanaks. Three years earlier, a study by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) indicated that social and ethnic divides were mixed in New Caledonia, a territory where 71% of the poor are Kanaks. The National Rally therefore intends to “integrate Kanak youth into the economic fabric of the island”. To achieve this, Marine Le Pen recommends “calling on neutral and essential personalities” to relaunch the process “by giving a timetable, as was done in Nouméa”. With whom ? She won’t say it, but explains that she has ideas from people “outside [sa] political family.
The risk of a “highly unstable situation”
To hear Marine Le Pen, her party would therefore succeed where more than thirty years of negotiations have stalled. “She has come to New Caledonia several times, once with her father in the 1980s and 1990s, and once in 2013, explains an experienced official familiar with the matter. She is surrounded in particular by André Rougé, who knows the overseas. It has experts and people who are capable of entering into dialogue with the separatists. On site, the former president of the RN is, however, surrounded by disabling soldiers, like the departmental delegate of the party, Guy-Olivier Cuénot, who, on X, notably takes up the racist and conspiracy theory of the great replacement. “Apart from its departmental delegate, the RN has no representative in New Caledonia,” points out Patrick Roger, author of New Caledonia. The tragedy. He has no influence there.” In the event of failure, Marine Le Pen does not hesitate to already prepare the ground. “Don’t forget that we are talking within the framework of cohabitation, all this cannot be done without the agreement of the president, because these discussions involve a potential constitutional reform, she whispers. So if Emmanuel Macron decides to block the process…”
In the event of complicated management of the New Caledonian issue, the RN will probably not hesitate to brandish the card of “institutional constraints”, as it already suggests with regard to several key promises of its program. “In New Caledonia, we are therefore talking about a burial of the thaw of the electoral body, estimates Jean-Jacques Urvoas, Minister of Justice from 2016 to 2017, under François Hollande, rapporteur in 2015 of the permanent information mission on the the institutional future of New Caledonia Since the RN is not a supporter of the constitutional reform project now, and we can imagine that the party will be a little more strengthened in July, the president of the. Republic will not be able to convene a Congress in any case to reach three-fifths in this space.”
In the event that the RN arrives in Matignon at the end of the next legislative elections, the former Minister of Justice is even more pessimistic about the future of New Caledonia. “The day Jordan Bardella becomes Prime Minister, the separatists no longer negotiate at all with the government,” he believes. On June 8, Daniel Goa, president of the Caledonian Union – a component of the FLNKS – demanded “non-negotiable” sovereignty which he intended to see proclaimed “on September 24”. “The riots, which have been confined to greater Nouméa in recent weeks, could spread. We have 30 units of mobile forces on the island, the numbers should be doubled,” continues Jean-Jacques Urvoas, who remains very pessimistic about the capacity of the RN to manage such a crisis: “As these people are not moderate, they could proclaim a state of siege with article 36 of the Constitution, i.e. power to the military. The situation in New Caledonia would be all the more unstable.”
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