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The period under review saw great changes taking place in French Poly- nesia. The United Nations General Assembly (unga) voted to relist the country as a non-self-governing terri- tory, the first instance for that body to do so since it relisted New Caledonia in 1986 (France had unilaterally de- listed both countries in 1947). How- ever, the people whose lobbying led to this decision-pro-independence poli- tician Oscar Temaru and his support- ers-lost the leadership of the country to their former (temporary) ally and now once again archenemy Gaston Flosse, whose party swept the ter- ritorial elections in May 2013. After Flosse won a two-thirds majority in the French Polynesia Assembly under the new voting system, his return to power as a quasi-absolute ruler also drew to a close a decade of political instability.
At the start of the review period, the international lobbying efforts by the Temaru government had been going on intensively for months and culminated in the hosting of two major international meetings. On 5 July 2012, Temaru hosted the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Forum of the Club of Madrid, a group of former govern- ment leaders and businessmen pre- dominantly from Western countries. A week later, from 12 to 13 July, Tema- ru's Tavini Huiraatira party hosted an international forum of experts from other governments, the United Nations, and academia on the topic of postcolonial nation building, appro- priately named "Build Me a Nation" (left untranslated into French or Tahi- tian). The open workshop, which was well attended by the public, featured presentations by Algerian diplomat Mourad Ahmia, executive secretary of the g-77 (the caucus of developing countries within the United Nations); the roving ambassador of Fiji to the Pacific Island countries, Litia Mawi; Hawaiian political scientist Keanu Sai, leader of the acting government of the Hawaiian Kingdom since 1996 (Hawaiian Government blog); two Kanak leaders from New Caledonia; and a Canadian economist. These invited experts shared their knowledge and experience with various aspects of decolonization in other countries in order to help French Polynesia develop a way to function as a nation-state in the future (ti, 13 July 2013).
As usual, both meetings were strongly criticized by the pro-French opposition, especially the leading opposition party Tahoeraa Huiraatira (in English, "Popular Rally"),...