Delays on sale of former French military land to French Polynesia

Transcript

The editor of Tahiti Pacifique monthly magazine says keeping a former French military base in Tahiti from being returned to French Polynesia, is bureaucracy gone mad.

The French government said in 2011 that the land and its facilities, which were no longer needed after the reduction of armed forces in French Polynesia, would be sold to locals.

But some say the French government is now having second thoughts and the French Polynesian president, Gaston Flosse, has called on France to maintain its military presence in the region.

Alex du Prel says the French government has said French laws cannot be applied before local laws are changed.

Mr du Prel says to further complicate matters, the deadline for a decision on how the land will be used has been moved from the end of this year to 2016. He spoke to Mary Baines.

ALEX DU PREL: Everybody was happy. The French army asked to make plans, what are they going to use it for. Were they going to make a museum? They were going to make public facilities, which didn't make the French government too happy because it meant spent more public money and hiring new civil servants to run all these operations. So they came up with a shopping centre, this and that. And finally after they presented their plans and nothing happened while in France, all the different towns that were affected by this closing of bases, nothing happened. So they said 'Oh, it's because Sarkozy was the president'. and that didn't turn out to be true. Finally we published the French explanation that it was because of bureaucratic difficulties, French Polynesia being fiscally independent and having its autonomy. They could not apply the laws. A Tahitian assembly would have to change some laws before it's possible and so on and so on. So apparently they might have now found a way - there might be a new law that will be passed by the local Tahitian assembly. And as the deadline was getting really close - it was the end of the year - the French government decided they're going to extend the deadline for another three years so they can settle these matters.

MARY BAINES: And there were talks of France selling the land back to the township for one euro.

ADP: Yeah. Instead of giving it, which is not allowed by law, they would sell it back for a symbolic euro.

MB: Why is this not progressing? It seems to be going quite slowly. What's the hold up?

ADP: The problem is if you want the law structure in French Polynesia, regarding the townships, it's different from France. In France it's direct from the state. Over here the law looks like a oil refinery. You have pipes all over in all directions. We call it 'the legal oil refinery of the local autonomy - the internal economy that the territory got in 2004'. We're having pretty strange and comical situations over here.