New Caledonia votes against independence from France for the third time

“FRANCE IS MORE beautiful,” Emmanuel Macron, its president, said on December 12th, “because New Caledonia has decided to stay part of it.” The French territory, some 17,000km away from Paris in the Pacific Ocean, emphatically rejected independence earlier that day by 96.5% to 3.5%. It was the last of three referendums laid out in the Nouméa Accord of 1998, a compact designed to end bitter conflict between the islands’ loyalist politicians and the largely indigenous and pro-independence Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS). The result is a turnaround from the previous two polls, when it seemed as though pro-independence sentiment was gaining strength. In the first, in 2018, 43.3% voted “oui” to independence; in the second, two years later, 46.7% did.