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Comment by trustno2 | Hacker News Reader

The referendum was boycotted by the opposition because it was in the middle of Covid-19

As a bit of background, this was because the Kanak were mourning the people the lost to Covid at the time of the referndum. The pro independance party asked for the vote to be postponed, which was rejected. The referendum was boycotted. As such the vote is not recognised by a big chunk of the population.

This referendum was the last of three that were agreed on following violent events occuring in the 1990s.

I think this was a really stupid move from the government, now there will be tensions until a new referendum about independance is organised or insependance is obtained by force.

More information here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_New_Caledonian_independ...

I’m not extremely familiar with the issue but it seems the independentists are a de-facto minority, which may also be the actual reason for the boycott of the last referendum, which was already heavily biased in their factor by excluding 20% of the population

The result of the second referendum was not showing independantists as a small minority: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_New_Caledonian_independ...

I'm not sure what the outcome would have been, but having such an important vote happening during an exceptional context like the first 2 years of covid really doesn't seem like a good idea.

"The" ?

What about the other two ? See that's exactly what I'm talking about, people with hard opinions and strong words but a very superficial knowledge of the situation

Then I hope they learned an important lesson about boycotting referenda.

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