Patrick
Decloitre, Correspondent French Pacific
Desk
A rift within New Caledonia’s pro-independence
movement has further widened after the second component of
the “moderates”, the UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia),
has officially announced it has now left the once united
Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front
(FLNKS).
The UPM announcement, at a press conference
in Nouméa, comes only five days after the PALIKA (Kanak
Liberation Party), another moderate pro-independence group,
also officialised it was splitting from the FLNKS.
It
was in line with resolutions taken at the party’s Congress
held at the weekend.
Both groups have invoked similar
reasons for the move.
UPM leader Victor Tutugoro told
local media on Wednesday his party found it increasingly
“difficult to exist today within the (FLNKS)
pro-independence movement, part of which has now widely
radicalised through outrage and threats”.
He said both
his party and PALIKA did not recognise themselves anymore in
the FLNKS’s increasingly “violent operating
mode”.
Tutugoro recalled that since August 2024, UPM
has not taken part in the operation of the “new FLNKS”
(including its political bureau) because it did not accept
its “forceful ways” under the increasing domination of Union
Calédonienne, especially the recruitment of new
“nationalist” factions and the appointment of CCAT leader
and UC political commissar Christian Téin as its new
President,.
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Téin was arrested in June 2024 for
alleged criminal-related charges before and during the May
2024 riots and then flown to mainland France.
After
one year in jail in Mulhouse (North-east of France), his
pre-trial conditions were released and in October 2025, he
was eventually authorised to return to New Caledonia, where
he should be back in the next few days.
Christian
Téin’s return soon
Téin remains under pre-trial
conditions until he is judged, at a yet undetermined
date.
Téin and a “Collectif Solidarité Kanaky 18”
however announced Téin was to hold a public meeting themed
“Which way for the Decolonisation of Kanaky-New Caledonia?”
on 22 November 2025 in the small French city of Bourges,
local media reported, adding “this will be his last public
address before he returns to New Caledonia”.
Tutugoro
says things worsened since the negotiations that led to the
signing of a Bougival agreement, in July 2025, from which
FLNKS pulled out in August 2025, denouncing what they termed
a “lure of independence”.
“This agreement now
separates us from the new FLNKS. And this is another reason
for us to say we have nothing left to do” (with them), said
Tutugoro.
UPM recalls it was a founding member of the
FLNKS in 1984.
UPM, PALIKA founding members of the
FLNKS 41 years ago
On 14 November, the PALIKA [Kanak
Liberation Party] revealed the outcome of its 50th Congress
held six days earlier, which now makes official its
withdrawal from the FLNKS (a platform it was part of since
the FLNKS was set up in 1984).
It originally comprised
PALIKA, UPM [Progressist Union in Melanesia], Union
Calédonienne (UC) and Wallisian-based Rassemblement
démocratique océanien (RDO).
The PALIKA said it
decided to formally split from FLNKS because it disagreed
with the FLNKS approach since the May 2024
riots.
Since the PALIKA announcement, its spokesman
Charles Washetine told several local media his party was
still supporting a project of “full sovereignty” with
France, through negotiation and dialogue.
But “it’s
certainly not through destruction that we will build
something for our children”, he stressed.
He admitted
the Bougival text was “perfectible” and sill required some
clarifications, especially in relation to the power
retrocessions process and which legal instrument would be
used to action those gradual handovers from France to New
Caledonia.
After the FLNKS Congress held in August
2024, PALIKA and UPM had already distanced themselves from
the FLNKS and the CCAT (Field Action Coordinating Cell, a
group that was tasked late 2023 to organise protests against
a French-planned Constitutional change that later
degenerated into the riots that claimed the lives of 14
people), saying they “did not recognise themselves” in the
radical approach.
Neither PALIKA nor UPM took part in
the August 2024 Congress, as FLNKS resolved at the time that
“mobilisation tools” such as CCAT (set up by Union
Calédonienne) and several other groups, were officially
accepted into the party’s fold.
Pro-independence
moderates united as ‘UNI’
Tutugoro said UPM is now
determined to continue working with PALIKA as a National
Union for Independence (Union Nationale pour
l’Indépendance, UNI) united group and to grow into a
fully-fledged political party, in preparation of municipal
and later provincial elections.
He said the UPM also
reaffirmed its support for the Bougival agreement, which
sets a roadmap for a “State of New Caledonia”, its
associated New Caledonian nationality within the French
realm and further transfers of powers from
France.
After ten days of intense negotiations, the
Bougival project was signed in the small town of Bougival
(West of Paris) by politicians representing both pro-France
and pro-independence parties, including the FLNKS.
But
in August 2025, the FLNKS said it withdrew its negotiators’
signatures, but was willing to discuss only in “bilateral”
mode with France and with a short-term target of “full
sovereignty”.
It has also claimed on numerous
occasions that FLNKS was the only legitimate voice of the
indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for
independence.
All the other parties have since
maintained strong support for the Bougival deal as a basis
for further discussions and eventual
implementation.
On the moderate pro-independence side,
both UPM and PALIKA said they believed attaining
independence was still possible under the Bougival
process.
“It allows the creation of a State of New
Caledonia and it provides prospects for the population to
build together an international recognition”, Tutugoro told
journalists on Wednesday.
During her first visit to
New Caledonia last week, newly-appointed French Minister for
Overseas Naïma Moutchou said the Bougival pact would be
submitted to a “consultation” in New Caledonia, akin to a
local referendum, so as to give it more popular
weight.
Signatories placed under police
protection
Since all the signatories returned to New
Caledonia in July 2025, they have been placed under personal
police VIP protection.
At the height of the May 2024
insurrectional riots that claimed the lives of 14 people,
destroyed hundreds of businesses and made tens of thousands
of unemployed (with an estimated over €2 billion and a GDP
drop of 13.5 percent), Tutugoro’s house was part of numerous
private properties targeted by arsonists.
Local
politicians are still believed to remain under VIP police
personal guard.
In a media statement last week, the
FLNKS reiterates its stance, saying “the so-called Bougival
project cannot constitute a working base because it goes
against (New Caledonia’s) decolonisation
process”.
“It’s written in black and white in the
Bougival agreement project: the decolonisation process goes
on”, Moutchou swiftly clarified while still in New
Caledonia.
In a thinly-veiled threat, the party also
warns against “Any attempt of forceful passage (passage en
force) risks bringing the country to a situation of lasting
instability”.
Security: ‘zero tolerance’
In
terms of security, Moutchou said “to be very clear, it will
be zero tolerance”.
“Security forces will stay as long
as needed. We currently have twenty gendarmerie squadrons
(over 2500 personnel). This is twenty out of the 120 squads
available for the whole of France”, she told NC la
1ère.
As a matter for comparison, when the riots
broke out on 13 May 2024, there were only six law
enforcement squadrons posted in New Caledonia. Significant
reinforcement came during the following weeks, reaching 20
squads of police and gendarmerie, despite a high security
demand at the time on the Paris-hosted Olympics.
“I’m
very attached to the authority of the State. There are rules
and they must be respected. You can demonstrate, you can say
you don’t agree. But you don’t cross the red line”, she told
Radio Rythme Bleu on Friday 14 November 2025.
The
FLNKS, still rejecting the Bougival process, said during the
minister’s visit, they have handed over a project for a
“framework agreement” that would serve as a “basis” for
“future discussions” with France, but without including any
other party in the negotiating process and therefore
excluding the inclusive, bipartisan and consensual
mode.
It did not immediately react to UPM’s latest
announcement.
On the pro-France side, several leaders
have reacted favourably to Moutchou’s parting
release.
“The minister’s visit concludes on a positive
note”, Rassemblement-LR leader Virginie Ruffenach wrote on
social networks, saying this citizen consultation project
will “turn New Caledonians into judges of peace”.
“At
this stage, FLNKS does not seem to want to find an agreement
with the (French) State and New Caledonia’s political
forces. The other forces have therefore made the choice to
submit the Bougival agreement to New Caledonians before the
(French) Parliament approves a Constitutional Bill”, wrote
Les Loyalistes leader Sonia Backès.
Pro-independence
‘moderate’ pro-Bougival vs anti-Bougival
hardliners
In the new situation and two currents (pro
and anti Bougival) in existence within the pro-independence
camp, however, it remains unclear on what basis this de
facto local referendum will be held in terms of electoral
roll and lists, who will be qualified to vote and how the
question asked will be formulated.
The three recent
referenda on New Caledonia’s independence were held (in
2018, 2020 and 2021) under a “special list” of citizens
meeting specific requirements in terms of birth place,
ancestry and duration of residence.
All three
consultations resulted in a majority “NO” to
independence.
Since 2022, under the guidance of New
Caledonia’s autonomy Nouméa Accord (signed in 1998), New
Caledonia’s political stakeholders have attempted to meet
inclusively and draw the conclusions from the post-referenda
“situation thus created” (as formulated in the 1998 pact)
and find a new course for the French Pacific territory’s
political future.
Over the past four years,
participants (and no less than half a dozen Ministers for
Overseas) deplored the recurrent non-attendance of Union
Calédonienne to any inclusive, plenary and bipartisan
session
attempt.
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