Comrades,
If there is one thing
in this wonderful wide world that is guaranteed to shit me to
tears and make me as mad as hell it's French colonialism.
Thought I'd get that out there right off the bat so you know
where this is coming from. There's no holding back here. It's
bee in bonnet time.
Last weekend's third
and final referendum on the question of independence for New
Caledonia was a complete & utter farce, never mind it being
an international disgrace and the pinnacle of arrogant French
cynicism. They tried to pull off an old de Gaulle
trick in the hope no one would notice. Wrong. As de Gaulle would
tell them from the grave, never go to the polls if you can help
it, just rule by referenda. Of course the French knew that the
mourning period for the Melanesian peoples can last a full year
by the time all the funereal
rites and complex rituals are able to be completed, let alone
for the almost 300 Kanak who died in the Covid19 outbreak,
mainly in the ironically named Loyalty Islands, but the French refuser
à bout portant repeated requests to postpone the
referendum on genuine humanitarian grounds, with the indigenous
peoples being met with continual nose thumbing and "up yours!
fuck you!" from the colonial administration. Asking them to vote
on their very future while in mourning was sheer
bloodymindedness in the extreme, and the "seperatists" had every
right in wanting no part of it, no part of it at all.
So, 96.49% of the votes
cast said NON to sovereignty??? Get away. You can't be serious.
This is the sort of stuff banana republic despots will run past
you seriously expecting you to be believe it. It's the kind of
result Vlad the Impaler gets in Russia. Just who do the French
think they are, using the Miracle of Democracy like that as
flimsy cover for their sheer bastardy? Everybody knows all the
referendum proved is that there was a very tight and very
effective boycott by the Kanak, who refuser à bout portant
to participate en masse in this despicable,
disrespectful, disgraceful fuckery. Look at the turn out - and
this is solidarity talking here - it was just 44%. The turn outs
in the first two referenda were 81% and 86% respectively. Any
common or garden psephologist could tell you that the OUI vote
would have been in with a great chance in a very tight contest
if the indigenous population turned out in droves, as the NON
vote has obviously been exhausted. But, true to form, the French
took the opportunity to run it anyway knowing full well what the
outrageously illegitimate result would be. And they had the gall
to send in 2,000 heavily armed gendarme to enforce the
scandalous pretense. You can leave it right there as far
as the referendum having any meaning at all is concerned, but to
conclude the tawdry 1988 Matignon Accords in such an appalling
manner - the accords which have been going on for 33 years in
all the grandiosity of Gallic stubbornness - 33 fucking years
for Chrissake! and now there's going to be another "18 month
consultation" on God only knows what. More "autonomy" under the
aegis of France? They've got to be joking. Do they think that
kind of pissantery will achieve anything? Improvement in the
life of anyone?
The thing that really shat me the most was the Kid President, I don't know who the fuck he thinks he is, what, the head prefect of the garçon, don't ask me, the King of France or something, going on national television saying that "this is a great day for France!". What? For who? Certainly not for the stupid natives who have to "be protected by France from China". What utter bullshit, Macron. It's a disgraceful day of shame, yet again, and you know it. I've been giving the Childe Emmanuel the benefit of the doubt for nigh on five years, but not now. A blatant suck up to French imperialism and being seen to be able to "hang on to the colonies" has clout in the Metropolitan electorate where he's up for re-election in April, so it was just another political ploy for him after all. Macron said in 2018 and 2020 before each independence referendum that he was neutral in this, had no opinion about it, as it was for the people of New Caledonia to decide...but then to gleefully declare the strictly boycotted third vote as "a great day for France" showed him up, not only as a baldfaced liar, but nothing more than a devious back stabbing backroom boy with a secret agenda.
I have spent a month
sojourning in the north-west of France, travelled extensively in
the former French colonies of Laos and Vietnam, spent plenty of
time knocking round the former half-French colony of the New
Hebrides now Vanuatu and a single day in Nouméa, on my
way to someplace else. I have never seen more French flags
flying in one place anywhere in the world than in the capital of
New Caledonia. They might as well bung up huge fucking great
billboards all over the Grand Terre spelling it out in
dramatic gigantic letters C’EST LA FRANCE! to remind
the pesky natives, just in case they didn't know. Perhaps they
have? I don't know. As if 168 years of French disposession &
oppression isn't enough already. Enough already.
Anyway, the French are in deep shit now with the United Nations's Anti-Colonial Committee, the C-24, more formally known as "The Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples ", who were quick to denounce the refendendum for what it was - a sham - effectively accusing the French of not being serious, and/or not really that interested at all in giving up an inch of ground on this one. Those good folks down at the UN will hang onto the French tail, like some shitty little bulldog, and won't let go for as long as it takes. The C-24's motto should be (with apologies to Sufjan Stevens) "We have fought the Knife People, and we will fight them again, until they are off our lands!"...or in less violent plain English, fuck off Macron, you two-faced bag of shit. If I've said it once, I'll say it again: Kanak pour la Kanaky!
Not many Kanak faces here, Quel?
