New Caledonia’s main pro-independence organisation, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), has formally confirmed its “block rejection” of the French-led “Bougival project.” Under the agreement, the colony’s pro- and anti-independence parties committed to a so-called “historic” deal regarding the future political status of the Pacific territory, designed to pave the way for a “state” within the French Constitution.
The talks, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, were aimed at creating a framework to replace the 1998 “power sharing” Nouméa Accord. The 13-page Bougival document, officially entitled “Agreement Project of the Future of New Caledonia,” was signed by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls and all 18 delegates, including five representing the FLNKS, on July 12 after 10 days of negotiations on the outskirts of Paris.
The negotiations involved France and New Caledonia’s pro-France bloc as well as the pro-independence Kanak representatives. A major point of contention was the electoral law changes aimed at further marginalizing the indigenous Kanak population that sparked last year’s civil unrest.
The FLNKS announced its unanimous rejection of the document at an extraordinary Congress held on August 9 in Mont-Dore, near Nouméa. The FLNKS statement endorsed the “total and unambiguous rejection” of the agreement because it is “incompatible” with the right to self-determination and bears a “logic of recolonisation” on the part of France.
FLNKS negotiators who put their signatures on the document, including chief negotiator and Union Calédonienne Chairman Emmanuel Tjibaou, were stood down and their mandate declared null and void. Tjibaou, the son of FLNKS founder Jean-Marie Tjibaou, was elected last year, amid a surge of pro-independence votes, as one of the colony’s two representatives in the French National Assembly.
FLNKS president Christian Téin, addressing the Congress via telephone from France where he is awaiting trial, called on the FLNKS to “clearly and unequivocally” reject the agreement. He declared it demonstrated “the administrating power’s [France] contempt towards our struggle for recognition as the colonised people.”
Téin called on the FLNKS to “remain open to dialogue,” but to focus only on ways to obtain “full sovereignty” in direct bilateral talks with the French State, and no longer with the opposing local political parties who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France.
Following the FLNKS announcement, Valls flew to New Caledonia attempting to salvage the agreement, which now faces collapse. It was his fourth trip to Nouméa since taking office late 2024, in his efforts to reach a negotiated settlement following last year’s uprising by indigenous Kanaks against French colonial rule.
The seven-month rebellion was marked by widespread rioting with 14 people killed, mostly by French gendarmes, and damage estimated at €2.2 billion. Fuelled by social inequality, unemployment and economic desperation, it brought alienated youth into conflict, not only with colonial oppression, but with the territory’s political establishment, including the official Kanak pro-independence parties.
Macron made clear that “Republican order” would be imposed in the most brutal fashion. Over 7,000 military and police personnel were dispatched to put down the “insurrection” and leading Kanak independence activists, including Téin, were sent to prisons in France.
Macron pressured the pro-independence parties to bring the rioters to heel. The FLNKS embraced talks with French authorities while striving to keep a lid on the rebellion that had erupted from below. Last December Daniel Goa, retiring leader of the FLNKS-affiliated Union Calédonienne (UC), admitted that there was “a perception” that calls for de-escalation were “not heeded” and the insurrection had gotten out of control.
France’s ruling elite was not going to relinquish its grip on its strategically important colonial possession. Under the Bougival deal, calls at the heart of the uprising for full and sovereign political independence were betrayed. The agreement did not grant France’s 172 years-old colony independence, either immediately or in the future.
Besides the creation of a “state” of New Caledonia, the agreement proposed a dual New Caledonia-French citizenship and the transfer of certain powers such as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia. The document also envisioned a limited range of political reforms, more powers for the three provinces and enlarging the controversial list of eligible citizens allowed to vote at the local provincial elections, which prompted the initial protests in 2024.
France was to retain control of policing, courts, currency and defence, but with new structures to enlist a wider layer of the New Caledonian political establishment in an extended “partnership.” The territory’s administration was required to conduct diplomatic relations “in accordance with the international commitments and the interests of France,” and uphold Paris’s strategic interests, which includes France’s military base and its commitment to the US-led buildup to war against China.
Macron declared the Bougival agreement was a “bet on trust” that it would lead to a “peaceful relationship with France,” with the signatories all pledging to sell and “explain” the document to their respective constituents. Many have been offered police protection following denunciations, including thinly-veiled death threats, spread through social networks.
According to RNZ, the parties that have unreservedly pledged their support to the agreement are: the pro-France Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, the Wallisian-based Eveil océanien and Calédonie ensemble, along with the pro-independence Union Nationale pour l’Independance (UNI), which includes the “moderate” Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) and Union Progréssiste en Mélanésie (UPM), both of which split from the FLNKS last December.
Union Calédonienne, the major component of the FLNKS and oldest pro-independence grouping, held a series of meetings before the FLNKS Congress. All rejected the Bougival document. The UC leaders told a media conference the agreement was only a “lure of sovereignty” that guaranteed neither real sovereignty nor “political balance.” “As far as we’re concerned, Bougival, it’s over,” vice-president Mickaël Forrest said.
The FLNKS boycotted a meeting last week with Valls intended to translate the agreement into legal and constitutional terms. Instead, the FLNKS is demanding a “Kanaky Agreement” to be concluded before September 24 and a “fully effective sovereignty process” to be in place before the French Presidential elections in 2027. It also wants the provincial elections, initially scheduled for no later than November 30, to be maintained instead of being postponed again to mid-2026, as under the Bougival prescriptions.
What has not, and will not, be discussed, let alone agreed upon, are any substantive measures to seriously address the desperate social crisis facing the colony’s working class and youth, marked by inequality, poverty and alienation. The entire local political establishment supported moves to smother the uprising.
The FLNKS, despite proclaiming “socialism” in its title, is not socialist but a petty-bourgeois nationalist organisation seeking further privileges for a narrow indigenous elite. It was instrumental in establishing the Nouméa Accord which ended civil war conditions of the 1980s in return for political and business influence.
The French state, assisted by local authorities, continues to persecute those who were involved in the unrest. More than a year after the death of a French gendarme, three people have recently been charged with the shooting at Saint Louis in May 2024.
Of 14 people killed during last year’s clashes only two were gendarmes, the second one shot by accident by another police officer. Saint Louis was blockaded and became the site of months of conflict, as gendarmes fought to clear the road to the outlying town of Mont Dore. Armed clashes continued between the GIGN elite military intervention unit and Kanak activists in the area and elsewhere. None of the French military or gendarmes have been charged over the Kanak deaths.