New Caledonia: FLNKS to formalize its position on the Bougival agreement on Tuesday

The Socialist Kanak National Liberation Front (FLNKS) will announce its position on Tuesday on the agreement signed in mid-July with the state and non-independence supporters, movement officials reported to Agence France-Presse on Sunday, August 10.

The outcome is hardly in doubt: all the structures (parties and unions) that make up the FLNKS have already spoken out against the Bougival agreement, signed on July 12 after ten days of intense negotiations between pro-independence and non-pro-independence supporters under the aegis of the Minister for Overseas Territories, Manuel Valls.

The text, negotiated in the Paris region, provides for the creation of a "State of New Caledonia" and a Caledonian nationality , as well as the possibility of transferring sovereign powers (currency, justice, police). But although described as "historic" by loyalists, it immediately sparked a storm of protest from independence activists, because it does not provide for a new referendum on independence.

At the opening of an extraordinary congress on Saturday in La Conception, a suburb of Noumea, FLNKS president Christian Tein called, in a statement read by an activist, for a "clear and unambiguous" rejection of the agreement. Its provisions "are only an illustration of the contempt of the administering power for our fight for recognition as a colonized people," he also stressed.

Under judicial supervision, Christian Tein is banned from entering the French Pacific archipelago and attended the proceedings via videoconference. Released on June 13 after a year of pre-trial detention at Mulhouse-Lutterbach prison (Haut-Rhin) , he remains under investigation for his alleged role in the violence that left 14 dead and billions of euros of damage in 2024 in New Caledonia. The political leader has always denied calling for violence.

Inviting activists to "clarify [their] strategy" , Christian Tein considered that the members of the FLNKS must remain "open to dialogue" , which must take place "only on the modalities of accession to full sovereignty" , "in bilateral format" with the State, and this "until September 24, 2025" , as decided by the previous congress of the movement last January. "We must capitalize on our assets and make the most of them in order to access full sovereignty at the latest before the presidential election of 2027" , he concluded.