Relations are tense with the independents
Gérald Darmanin, one of the main ministers of Emmanuel Macron’s government is in Caledonia for a week. Most of the time, ministers only stay three days during a trip where they go to French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna or Australia. The Minister of the Interior (who is responsible for the police) will only come to Caledonia. He is accompanied by Jean-François Carenco, the Minister for Overseas France. The length of this trip shows how tense the situation is.
Caledonia is coming to the end of the period of the Nouméa agreement signed in 1998. The independentists want independence. They would accept a kind of independence-association with France. The loyalists do not want this at all. They believe that independence-association is independence in disguise. As they have won the last three referendums (2018, 2020 and 2021), they say that independence has been definitively rejected by Caledonians. The independentists say that the third referendum is not valid because they boycotted it.
Not easy!
