Macron to travel to riot-hit New Caledonia

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00:00 Philip Turrell is with me in the studio, our foreign editor. Philip, first of all,

00:04 how significant do you think this visit is by the French president? Well the

00:08 first thing is that this is a surprise visit which is what is being described

00:11 at by the Aliso Palace here, so unexpected, which means that the

00:16 situation's got so bad in New Caledonia that I think Emmanuel Macron feels that

00:21 he has to go there to try to defuse what is an incredibly tense standoff. This is

00:26 the worst political standoff between the loyalists, those who are in favor of

00:32 remaining part of France, and the independence supporters, basically the

00:38 Canaks, the indigenous population, who are no longer talking to each other and

00:43 no longer even willing to get round the table to try to negotiate a way out of

00:47 the standoff that has been in the headlines for at least the last

00:52 week or so. A reminder that six people have been killed so far including two

00:56 gendarmes, there's a state of emergency in New Caledonia, and I think that the

01:02 visit by Emmanuel Macron is really a last-ditch effort to try to bring the

01:08 two sides back to the table to try to find a way out, but it's not going to be

01:11 easy for the French president because as was explained in the Figaro newspaper in

01:16 one of its articles, it says that there have been seven years of tormented

01:21 relations between Emmanuel Macron and New Caledonia. First of all for him not

01:25 paying enough attention to the importance of the island, and then making

01:31 remarks that were extremely badly received by the Canaks, and that's why

01:39 many of them have voted in favor of the far-right National Front in recent

01:45 elections. So it's a very difficult situation for Emmanuel Macron to try to

01:49 master, but I think he feels that if anyone's going to do that it's going to

01:53 be him, and if someone's going to have to go there it's going to have to be him,

01:55 and that's why he's decided to drop everything and go to New Caledonia to

01:59 try to find a way out of the current standoff. Right, Philip, and this crisis

02:04 was sparked by a plan by the government here in Paris to make it easier for

02:10 people from mainland France living in New Caledonia to vote there. That is what

02:15 ignited so much anger among the indigenous Canak people there. Given the

02:22 scale of the anger and the scale of the unrest, is that still going to go ahead?

02:26 Well that's another problem for Emmanuel Macron because he is under pressure not

02:31 only in New Caledonia but also here in France with some saying you have to

02:36 bulldoze that reform through, and others say no no you must delay it and get

02:41 everyone back to the negotiating table because you've done everything that you

02:45 said you were going to do and it's the indigenous population that are not

02:49 playing by the rules anymore. So it's difficult to see what Emmanuel Macron is

02:53 going to do. I suspect that he will probably say he's going to delay the

02:57 implementation of this new policy to try to make some kind of way forward, but it

03:04 depends whether or not, as I said before, the two sides want to come to the

03:06 negotiating table, whether they're willing to talk to each other. Just to

03:10 wrap this up, I mean to explain a little bit in detail about what the problem is,

03:14 is that it all boils down to who is allowed to vote in elections in New

03:20 Caledonia, provincial elections, the elections that form the government that

03:25 rules the island in New Caledonia, and there have been two different accords

03:29 which have been agreed between both sides, between the independent seekers on

03:33 one side and the indigenous population on the other, the first one in 1988 after

03:37 similar types of violence we've just recently seen, which we call the

03:41 Matignon Accords, and another series of accords in 1998 called the New Mayor

03:45 Accords, and that made it only possible for those who'd been on the island

03:49 before 1998 to vote in these provincial elections. All other elections, be they

03:54 legislative, presidential, European, everybody can vote, but provincial

03:57 elections it's only those who've been on the island since 1998 or before that

04:01 that can vote. This time round what the government wants to do is to make it all

04:05 those who've been on the island over the last 10 years, or more than the last 10

04:09 years, who can vote. What the Cannacs are saying is well that's going to bring in

04:12 an extra 25,000 voters, most of them European or French, and we're going to be

04:16 finding ourselves in an increasingly small minority and that's why we're not

04:19 accepting it. So it's difficult to see what Emmanuel Macron can do because

04:23 there's pressure on his shoulders to enlarge the number of voters because

04:26 many saying we've been living here for years, we don't have the right to vote,

04:29 why not, we need to be able to do that. The Cannacs are saying well if you're going to

04:32 give them the vote that's not going to go through and there'll be even greater

04:35 violence, maybe even civil war. So that's what Emmanuel Macron is trying to work

04:39 his way out of at the moment and it's very difficult to see how he's going to

04:44 make any progress. Philip Tell, thanks very much indeed.

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