New Caledonia is a French sui generis collectivity with a system of government based on parliamentarism and representative democracy. The President of the Government is the head of government, and there is a multi-party system, with Executive power being exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Congress of New Caledonia. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Senate is the upper house of the French Parliament, with the lower house being the National Assembly, the two houses constituting the legislature of France. The French Senate is made up of 348 senators elected by part of the country's local councillors, as well as by representatives of French citizens living abroad. Senators have six-year terms, with half of the seats up for election every three years.
Christian Poncelet was a conservative French politician. A member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), he was President of the Senate from 1998 to 2008. In addition to being a Senator, he was Mayor of Remiremont (Vosges) and was also the President of the General Council of Vosges.
Pierre Frogier is a French politician, who was President of the Government of New Caledonia from 2001 to 2004. He has been French senator for New Caledonia since 2011, and was member of the National Assembly of France from 1996 to 2011. He served as President of the Congress of New Caledonia from 1995 to 1997.
Future Together was a center-right political party in New Caledonia supporting the maintenance of political and administrative ties with France.
The Nouméa Accord of 1998 is a promise by the French Republic to grant increased political power to New Caledonia and its original population, the Kanaks, over a twenty-year transition period. It was signed 5 May 1998 by Lionel Jospin, and approved in a referendum in New Caledonia on 8 November, with 72% voting in favour. Under the accord, two more referendum votes, on whether to remain a special collectivity of France or become an independent state, have been held. One was held in 2018, and the second was held in 2020. In both votes a majority chose to remain French. The Nouméa Accord permitted a final referendum to be held, voted for by the Congress of New Caledonia. It was held December 2021 and widely rejected independence amid boycott by the independence movement.
The Congress of New Caledonia, a "territorial congress", is the legislature of New Caledonia. It has 54 members who serve five-year terms, selected proportionally based on the partisan makeup of all three assemblies of the provinces of New Caledonia with a 5% threshold. The congress is headquartered at 1 Boulevard Vauban in downtown Noumea. Local media in New Caledonia refer to the congress as "boulevard Vauban" when referencing it.
Yvan Randriasandratriniony is a Malagasy politician. He served in the government of Madagascar as Minister of Agriculture, Breeding and Fishing from March 2002 to January 2004 and Minister of Decentralization and Regional Planning from January 2007 to April 2008. He became President of Tiako i Madagasikara (TIM), the ruling party, in October 2007, and he was President of the Senate of Madagascar from May 2008 to March 2009; he also served for a time as ambassador to South Africa.
Roger Karoutchi is a French teacher and politician who has been serving as the first Vice President of the French Senate since 2020. He previously served as the French Ambassador to the OECD and as Secretary of State to the French Prime Minister, with responsibility for Relations with Parliament.
Harold Martin is a French politician. He served twice as President of the Government of New Caledonia and three times as President of the Congress of New Caledonia between 1997 and 2011. Former student as a site manager in the ESTP, Martin replaced Marie-Noëlle Thémereau in 2007 as the leader of the ruling Future Together party after the party suffered an electoral setback to choose the territory's two members of the French assembly.
Gérard Philippe René André Larcher is a French politician serving as President of the Senate since 2014, previously holding the office from 2008 to 2011. A member of The Republicans, he has been a Senator for the Yvelines department since 1986, with an interruption between 2004 and 2007, when he was Minister for Employment, Labour and Professional Integration of Young People under President Jacques Chirac. Larcher also served as Mayor of Rambouillet from 1983 to 2004 and again from 2007 until 2014.
Jacqueline Gourault is a French politician who served as Minister of Territorial Cohesion and Relations with Local Authorities in the governments of successive Prime Ministers Édouard Philippe and Jean Castex from 2018 to 2022. A member of the Democratic Movement (MoDem), she previously served as Minister attached to the Minister of the Interior from 2017 to 2018. In 2022, she was appointed to the Constitutional Council by President Emmanuel Macron.
François Pillet is a French lawyer and politician who has served as a member of the Constitutional Council since 2019. Pillet was previously senator for the department of Cher from 2007 to 2019. He is a member of The Republicans.
Gaël Yanno is a French politician, and a member of the Union for a Popular Movement. He served as President of the Congress of New Caledonia from 2014 to 2015, and again from July 2018 to May 2019.
The Movement for Diversity is a right-wing political party in New Caledonia, strongly supportive of the French status of the region; it is close to the French Union for a Popular Movement.
Dick Ukeiwé was a New Caledonian politician. Born in Lifou, France, he represented the island in the French Senate from 1983 until 1992, and was a member of the Rally for the Republic. He served as President of the Congress of New Caledonia from 1985 to 1988. His son, Bernard Ukeiwé (1953–2008), was also a New Caledonian politician. Ukeiwé died, aged 84, on 3 September 2013 in Dumbéa.
Jean-Pierre Nonault is a Congolese politician and diplomat. He was Congo-Brazzaville's Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1974 to 1979 and Ambassador to France from 1979 to 1984. Since 2002, he has been a member of the Senate of Congo-Brazzaville.
The 2014 French senate election was held on 28 September 2014 and featured results which saw the senate being reclaimed by the centre-right party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The right-wing conservative victory reversed the results which came during the previous 2011 French senate election, which was the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958 that the upper house of the French government had been won by a majority of left-wing candidates. Following the victory of the UMP, Gérard Larcher was nominated and subsequently elected to the position of president of the senate, taking the place of Jean-Pierre Bel who had served in the position following the Socialist Party's senate victory in 2011. The Far-right National Front party also claimed its first two seats in the senate election, which their leader Marine Le Pen described as "a historic victory".
Senate Republicans, formerly the Union for a Popular Movement, is a parliamentary group in the French Senate including representatives of The Republicans (LR), formerly the Union for a Popular Movement.
Caroline Machoro-Reignier is a Kanak politician in New Caledonia. A member of the pro-independence Caledonian Union, she led the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front alliance in the Congress of New Caledonia from 2011 to 2014. In 1988, she was one of the signatories of the Matignon Agreements between New Caledonian loyalists and separatists.
