[3] In August 2008 he was chosen as the UPLD's candidate in the 2008 French Senate election, running on a joint opposition ticket with Tahoera'a Huiraatira leader Gaston Flosse.
[6] He repeated the criticism in 2010, pointing out that the law excluded compensation for contaminated land and failed to meet the needs and expectations of test victims.
[7] In May 2010 he complained to the French Prime Minister about the exclusion of a Tahitian delegation from a United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization meeting in New Caledonia.
[8] He later denounced the colonisation of French Polynesia by France and called the colonial era a dark period of humanity's history.
[9] In 2011 he called for France's nuclear compensation law to be amended to return the test sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa to French Polynesia.
[10] His bill to return the atolls was passed by the Senate in 2012,[11] but had not yet been debated by the French National Assembly by the time it was meant to take effect in 2014.