The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will address Papua New Guinea’s national Parliament today.

The UN chief is in Papua New Guinea on a four-day official state visit September 2-5.

Prime Minister James Marape has held bilateral discussions with Guterres at his Melanesian House Office in Port Moresby yesterday.

“We remain fully committed to the United Nations Charter and to the principles of peace and cooperation among nations,” Marape said.

Marape said Guterres’ visit during PNG’s 50th anniversary celebrations “is historic” and “affirms our place in the global family of nations and our shared responsibility to work together”.

He also assured the UN boss that his government is committed to implementing the outcome of the Bougainville referendum. Bougainville head to the polls on Thursday to elect their next government.

Guterres said PNG has chosen the path of wisdom and peace when it came to their autonomous region of Bougainville.

He said the way the government has managed the Bougainville referendum demonstrates its commitment to democracy and dialogue.

PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko said the country recognises the crucial role of the UN through collective action and cooperation among member states.

“We have always stood firm with our colleague of member nations, as we believe in and will continue to promote bilateralism,” he wrote in a post on his official Facebook page.

“While we also continue to be an active contributor to global dialogue, we continue to support the role of the UN as provider of humanitarian aid, and facilitator of agreements on worldwide issues such as poverty, climate change, and disease,” he added.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The dominant issue going into the next election in Bougainville next week is not much different from the last election five years ago.

The autonomous Papua New Guinea region goes to the polls on September 4.

In 2020, there were strong expectations Bougainville would soon be independent, given the result of an overwhelming referendum for independence just months earlier.

That has not happened yet, and Port Moresby has yet to concede much ground.

Most recently, at Burnham in Christchurch in June, little progress was made, as Massey University academic Dr Anna Powles points out.

“Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape referred to Burnham as a spiritual home of the Bougainville peace process,” she said.

“And yet, on the other hand, you have the Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama saying very clearly that independence was non-negotiable, and setting out a number of terms, including the fact that Bougainville was to become independent by the 1st of September 2027.

“If Papua New Guinea did not ratify that, Bougainville would make a unilateral declaration of independence.”

Seven candidates standing
There are seven people standing for the presidency, including long-time MP in the PNG national Parliament, Joe Lera.

He said everyone wants independence, but he wants to see a more conciliatory tone from the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG).

“Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside the [Bougainville] Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result. But the Peace Agreement does not say independence will be given to us based on the result,” Lera said.

“What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.

“When we fix those, the nation-building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.”

However, Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama has no intention of deviating from the path he has been following.

“It gives us the opportunity whether the national government likes it or not,” he told RNZ Pacific this week.

“It is a national constitution guarantee of the framework of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, and that is how I’m saying to them, whether we come into consultation, we have different views.

“At least it is the constitutional guaranteed process set in by the National Constitution.”

Achieving sovereignty as soon as possible is the driving force for the man who has been leading Bougainville’s campaign, the Independence Implementation Minister Ezekiel Masatt.

He said the signing of the Melanesian Agreement at Burnham was pivotal.

“We must obtain political independence in order to have some sovereign powers, in order to make some strategic economic decisions,” he said.

“Now, given the Melanesian Agreement where Bougainville can achieve some sovereign powers I think that is a great start in the right direction.”

Masatt is standing in the Tonsu electorate in North Bougainville.

Former army officer Thomas Raivet is running for a second time. He is confident that he and his New Bougainville Party colleagues, Nick Peniai and Joe Lera, can be a formidable presence given the impact of preference votes.

“We believe that we can make a difference, because for the last five years, nothing has really happened here and and maybe five years ago, and maybe you go back 10 years, nothing has really happened for us,” Raivet said.

“I see this as an opportunity just to be part of the development of new Bougainville.”

Sam Kauona, who once led the Bougainville Revolutionary Army alongside Ishmael Toroama, is another presidential candidate.

He has run before but says this time he will win because of the Toroama governmment failure to bring independence.

“Because the government, for the last five years, did not achieve what Bougainvilleans, what we, wanted. They were concentrating on one option only. That’s why it wasted the last five years, and we did not achieve anything.”

The vote in Bougainville is being held over just one day for the first time, with results anticipated within a week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Elizabeth Tako Palin is one of five women contesting the Bougainville North women’s reserved seat next month.

It was previously held by Amanda Masono, who has chosen to contest the open Atolls seat, which was once held by her father.

The autonomous Papua New Guinea region is holding a single-day poll on 4 September to elect a new 46-member House.

A record 34 women are standing, including 14 in the three seats reserved for women.

Former teacher Palin ran in 2020 and has wide political experience at the local level.

She spoke with RNZ Pacific.

(This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Elizabeth Palin: I was a former chair lady in the local level government, community government, and I just resigned to contest the seat. I served in the community government and at the ward assembly system for 10 years. But prior to that I was a teacher by profession,

Don Wiseman: Being in the local level government. Is that a full time activity, is it for you?

EP: It is, yes.

DW: What does it involve?

EP: It involves chairing the local level government at the community base level, and also taking care of the five wards within the respective community government that I’m heading.

And, formally, in the first establishment of the first House of Assembly, I was the vice-chair lady. So as one of the ward members in the five wards under the urban council, urban community government. I contested the fourth House and I came second. I came back to be with the community, and then I worked with the people.

I went contested [a second election] and I became the ward member and also lobbied for the chair position, and I became the chairperson.

DW: So you want to be in the ABG [Autonomous Bougainville Government]. What is it you want to achieve there?

EP: Being in the local level government, I have experienced a lot where we do not see the link. We do not really see that link from the top level of leadership down to the local level. We do not really feel it in some sense.

Therefore, I decided that maybe I can be able to contest and get that leadership, and in experiencing my leadership at the ward level and community government level, I believe that I can be able to take that leadership and build that link from the top down to the ward assembly level, which includes the community government and vice versa, from the community government up to the top.

This is what I experienced, and that is the main reason why I am contesting the seat. Also, I believe in my leadership because I have been with the local level government, and I believe I can perform at a much higher level as well.

DW: Yes, well, you will have been campaigning now for weeks, because it’s such a long period of campaigning, isn’t it? How are people reacting to you?

EP: Oh, I have been receiving positive responses from the people, from the voters, in terms of the way I present my campaign strategy, my platform, especially.

I have so far received very positive response from the general public and the voters in the region, and from all the locations that I have conducted my campaign.

DW: Yes, I wouldn’t expect a politician to say anything else going into an election. Independence for Bougainville is, it would seem, very close. How important is it to you that it’s sorted sooner rather than later?

EP: Being a leader, a woman leader in having gone through my people’s experience in terms of fighting for their rights and for their independence, this coming independence, and what we we have been standing for as our political agenda is very, very crucial to me as with the general population of Bougainville.

I cannot say no to that. I do understand a lot of work to do in terms of getting us prepared, in terms of demonstrating the indications and so forth, that we are able to get independence and we are independently ready. But based on the fights of our forefathers and our people and having lost the 20,000 lives, I stand for that.

I believe that such a person like me, a woman with a strong voice at the political scene, in the political scene and level, I can be able to work as a team with the other leaders of Bougainville to get that independence.

But having said that, it does not really mean that that is it. We are ready. As leaders, on the ground and at the different levels of governance, we need to work, and we have this how many years that have been given within the time frame for us to work in order to show that we’re able to be an independent, sovereign state, and that is what I believe in.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A longtime Bougainville politician, Joe Lera, wants to see widespread changes in the way the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) is run.

The Papua New Guinea region, which is seeking independence from Port Moresby, is holding elections in the first week of September.

Seven candidates are running for president, including Lera.

He held the regional seat in the PNG national Parliament for 10 years before resigning to contest the presidency in the 2020 election.

This time around, Lera is campaigning on what he sees as faults in the approach of the Ishmael Toroama administration and told RNZ Pacific he is offering a different tack.

JOE LERA: This time, people have seen that the current government is the most corrupt. They have addressed only one side of independence, which is the political side, the other two sides, They have not done it very well.

DON WISEMAN: What do we mean by that? We can’t bandy around words like corruption. What do you mean by corruption?

JL: What they have done is huge. They are putting public funds into personal members’ accounts, like the constituency grant – 360,000 kina a year.

DW: As someone who has operated in the national parliament, you know that that is done there as well. So it’s not corrupt necessarily, is it?

JL:Well, when they go into their personal account, they use it for their own family goods, and that development, it should be development funds. The people are not seeing the tangible outcomes in the number two side, which is the development side.

All the roads are bad. The hospitals are now running out of drugs. Doctors are checking the patients, sending them to pharmaceutical shops to buy the medicine, because the hospitals have run out.

DW: These are problems that are affecting the entire country, aren’t they, and there’s a shortage of money. So how would you solve it? What would you do differently?

JL: We will try to make big changes in addressing sustainable development, in agriculture, fishing, forestry, so we can create jobs for the small people.

Instead of talking about big, billion dollar mining projects, which will take a long time, we should start with what we already have, and develop and create opportunities for the people to be engaged in nation building through sustainable development first, then we progress into the higher billion dollar projects.

Now we are going talking about mining when the people don’t have opportunity and they are getting poorer and poorer. That’s one area, the other area, to create change we will try to fix the government structure, from ABG to community governments to village assemblies, down to the chiefs.

At the moment, the policies they have have fragmented the conduit of getting the services from the top government down to to the village people.

DW: In the past, you’ve spoken out against the push for independence, suggesting I think, that Bougainville is not ready yet, and it should take its time. Where do you stand at the moment on the independence question?

JL: The independence question? We are all for it. I’m not against it, but I’m against the process. How they are going about it. I think the answer has been already given in the Bougainville Peace Agreement, which is a joint creation between the PNG and ABG government, and the process is very clear.

Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside of the Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result.

But the Peace Agreement doe not say independence will be given to us based on the result. What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.

When we fix those, the nation building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.

DW: So you’re talking about something that would be quite a way further down the line than what this current government is talking about?

JL: The issue is timing. They are putting deadlines themselves, and they are trying to push the PNG government to swallow it. The PNG government is a sovereign nation already.

We should respect and honestly, in a family room situation, negotiate, talk with them, as the Peace Agreement says, and reach understanding on the timing and other related issues, but not to even take a confrontational approach, which is what they are doing now, but take a family room approach, where we sit and negotiate in the spirit of the Peace Agreement.

This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Don Wiseman is a senior journalist with RNZ Pacific. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

More than 400 candidates have put their hands up to contest the Bougainville general election in September, hoping to enter Parliament.

Incumbent President Ishmael Toroama is among the 404 people lining up to win a seat.

Bougainville is involved in the process of achieving independence from Papua New Guinea — an issue expected to dominate campaigning, which lasts until the beginning of September.

Voting is scheduled to start on September 2, finishing a week later, depending on the weather.

Seven candidates — all men — are contesting the Bougainville presidency. This number is down from when 25 people stood, including two women.

Toroama is seeking a second term and is being challenged by his former colleague in the leadership of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), Sam Kauona.

Kauona is one of several contesting a second time, along with Thomas Raivet and a former holder of the Bougainville Regional Seat in the PNG Parliament, Joe Lera.

There are 46 seats to be decided, including six new constituencies.

Two seats will have 21 candidates: the northern seat of Peit and the Ex-Combatants constituency.

Several other constituencies — Haku, Tsitalato, Taonita Tinputz, Taonita Teop, Rau, and Kokoda — also have high numbers of candidates.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Bougainville election process begins today with the issuance of the writs yesterday.

Nominations open Tuesday, July 8, and close on Thursday, July 10.

Voting is scheduled for one week starting on September 2, allowing seven weeks of campaigning.

Candidates will be vying for a total of 46 seats, with the autonomous Parliament agreeing earlier this year to add five additional seats.

The seats were created with the establishment of five new constituencies: two in South and Central, and one in North Bougainville.

“This is one of the most important democratic tasks of any nation — to conduct elections where the people exercise the ultimate power to re-elect or de-elect the representatives who have served them in the last House,” Bougainville Parliament Speaker Simon Pentanu said.

“The elections in Bougainville have always been fair, honest, transparent, and equitable. This is a history we should all be proud of and a record we must continue to uphold,” he said.

The region’s Electoral Commissioner Desmond Tsianai said the issuing of writs was a significant event in the electoral calendar.

“We have delivered credible elections in the past and I assure you all that we are prepared, and we will have this election delivered at international standards of free, fair and inclusive — and most importantly, according to the law.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer.

Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch.

Both governments have agreed that the national Parliament in PNG has a key role in the decision over the push for independence.

They recognise that the Bougainville desire for independence is legitimate, as expressed in a 2019 independence referendum result, and that this is a unique situation in PNG.

That is the agreement’s attempt to overcome pressure from other parts of PNG that are also talking about autonomy.

The parties say they are committed to maintaining a close, peaceful and enduring relationship between PNG and Bougainville.

Both sides said that to bring referendum results to the national Parliament both governments would develop a sessional order, which was a the temporary adjustment of Parliament’s rules.

Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee
They said that a Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee on Bougainville, which would provide information to MPs and the general public about the Bougainville conflict and resolution, is a vital body.

The parties said they would explore the joint creation of a Melanesian framework with agreed timelines, for a pathway forwards, that may form part of the Joint Consultations Report presented to the 11th National Parliament.

Once the Bipartisan Committee completes its work, the results of the referendum and the Joint Consultation Report would be taken to the Parliament.

The parties said they would accept the decision of the national Parliament, in the first instance, regarding the referendum results, and then commit to further consultations if needed, and this would be in an agreed timeline.

In the meantime, institutional strengthening and institutional building within Bougainville would continue.

To ensure progress is made and political commitment is sustained, the monitoring of this Melanesian Agreement could include an international component, a Parliamentary component, and the Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, all with UN support.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Reports in Papua New Guinea say the governments of Bougainville and PNG have agreed to table the 2019 independence referendum results in Parliament.

While discussions are ongoing, some degree of consensus has been reached during the talks, being held at Burnham Military Camp, just outside of Christchurch in New Zealand’s South Island.

The talks are not open to the media.

A massive 97.7 percent of Bougainvillians voted for independence in 2019.

Former Bougainville president John Momis told delegates in Burnham to “take the bull by the horn” and confront the independence issue without further delay.

Both governments have agreed to present three highly pivotal documents to the PNG National Parliament.

The commitment was formally conveyed by PNG’s Minister of Bougainville Affairs, Manaseh Makiba.

Only sovereignty acceptable
Meanwhile, the ABG President, Ishmael Toroama, said Bougainville would not accept a governance model that did not grant sovereignty.

This comes amid talk of other options, such as self-government in free association.

To achieve membership of the United Nations sovereignty is needed.

Writing in the Post-Courier, journalist Gorethy Kenneth said the Bougainville national leaders, for the “first time have come out in aligning with the Bougainville team in New Zealand”.

She reported that Police Minister and Bougainville regional MP Peter Tsiamalili Jr said he was in a peculiar position but he represented the 97.7 percent who voted for independence and he would go with the wishes of his people.

The ICT Minister, and South Bougainville MP Timothy Masiu also said his one vote in Parliament would be for independence as far as his people were concerned.

The PNG government has spoken previously of fears that independence for Bougainville would encourage other provinces to seek autonomy.

Provinces, such as New Ireland, have made no secret of their dissatisfaction with Port Moresby and desire to control more of their own affairs.

But the Bougainville Minister of Independence Implementation, Ezekiel Massat, said Bougainville’s status was constitutionally “ring-fenced” and could not set a precedent for other provinces.

He said “under the Bougainville Peace Agreement, independence is a compulsory option”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In recent weeks, Bougainville has taken the initiative, boldly stating that it expects to be independent by 1 September 2027.

It also expects the PNG Parliament to quickly ratify the 2019 referendum, in which an overwhelming majority of Bougainvilleans supported independence.

In a third move, it established a Constitution Commission and included it within the region’s autonomous Parliament.

To learn more, RNZ Pacific spoke with Australian National University academic Dr Thiago Oppermann, who has spent many years in both Bougainville and PNG.

Don Wiseman: We’ve had five-and-a-half years since the Bougainville referendum, but very suddenly in the last couple of months, it would seem that Bougainville is picking up pace and trying to really make some progress with this march towards independence, as they see it.

Are they overplaying their hand?

Dr Thiago Oppermann: I do not believe that they are overplaying their hand. I think that the impression that is apparent of a sudden flurry of activity, arises partly because for the first two years after the referendum, there was a very slow pace.

One of the shortcomings of the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA) was that it did not set out a very clear post-referendum path. That part of the process was not as well designed as the parts leading to the referendum, and that left a great deal of uncertainty as to how to structure negotiations, how things should be conducted, and quite substantial differences in the views of the Papua New Guinean government and the ABG (Autonomous Bougainville Government), as to how the referendum result would be processed further.

For instance, how it would it need to be tabled in Parliament, what kind of vote would be required for it, would a negotiation between the parties lead to an agreement that then is presented to the Parliament, and how would that negotiation work? All these areas, they were not prescriptive in the BPA.

That led to a period of a good two years in which there was very slow process and then attempts to get some some movement. I would say that in that period, the views of the Bougainvilleans and the Papua New Guineans became quite entrenched in quite different camps, and something I think would have to give eventually.

Why the Bougainvilleans have moved towards this point now, I think that it bears pointing out that there has been a long process that has been unfolding, for more than two years now, of beginning the organic process of developing a Bougainvillean constitutional process with this constitutional development committees across the island doing a lot of work, and that has now borne fruit, is how I would describe it.

It happens at a point where the process has been unblocked by the appointment of Sir Jerry Mataparae, which I think sets a new vigour into the process. It looks now like it’s heading towards some form of outcome. And that being the case, the Bougainvilleans have made their position quite clear.

DW: Well, Bougainville, in fact, is saying it will be independent by 1st September 2027. How likely do you think that is?

TO: I think there’s a question that comes before that. When Bougainville says that they will be independent by such a date, what we need to first consider is that the process of mediation is still unfolding.

I think that the first thing to consider is, what would that independence look like, and what scope is there within the mediation for finding some compromise that still suits Papua New Guinea. I think that there’s a much greater range of outcomes than people realise within this sort of umbrella of independence, the Bougainvilleans themselves, have moved to a position of understanding independence in much more nuanced terms than previously.

You might imagine that in the aftermath of this fairly brutal and bitter civil conflict, the idea of independence at that time was quite a radical cut towards “full bruk loose” as they say.

But the reality is that for many post colonial and new states since World War Two, there are many different kinds of independence and the degree to which there remains a kind of attachment with or relationship with the so called parent colonial country is variable, I should add.

I do not want to digress too much, but this concept of the parent colonial country is something that I heard quite a lot of when I was studying the referendum itself. Many people would say that the relationship that they had to Papua New Guinea was not one of enmity or of like running away, it was more a question of there being a parent and Bougainville having now grown up to the point where the child, Bougainville, is ready to go off and set up its own house.

Many people thought of it in those terms. Now I think that in concrete terms that can be articulated in many different ways when we think about international law and the status of different sovereign nations around the world.

DW: If we can just look at some of the possibilities in terms of the way in which this independence might be interpreted. My understanding is, for Bougainville it’s vital that they have a degree of sovereignty that will allow them to join organisations like the United Nations, but they’re not necessarily looking to be fully independent of PNG.

TO: Yes, I think that there would be like a process underway in Bougainville for understanding what that would look like.

There are certainly people who would have a view that is still more firmly towards full independence. And there will be others who understand some type of free association arrangements or something that still retains a closer relationship with Papua New Guinea.

I do not think many people have illusions that Bougainville could, for instance, suddenly break loose of the very deep economic connections it has with Papua New Guinea, not only those of government funding, but the commercial connections which are very, very deep. So suddenly making that disappear is not something people believe it’s possible.

But there are many other options that are on the table. I think what Bougainville is doing by having the announcement of the Independence Day is setting for Papua New Guinea saying, like, “here is the terms of the debate that we are prepared to consider”. But within that there is still a great deal of giving and taking.

DW: Now within the parliament in PNG, I think Bougainville has felt for some time that there hasn’t been a great deal of understanding of what Bougainville has been through, or what it is Bougainville is trying to achieve. There’s a very different lineup of MPs to what they were at the turn of the century when the Bougainville Peace Agreement was finalised. So what are they thinking, the MPs from other parts of the country? Are they going to be supportive, or are they just thinking about the impact on their own patch?

TO: I am not entirely sure what the MPs think, and they are a very diverse bunch of people. The sort of concern I think that many have, certainly more senior ones, is that they do not want to be the people in charge when this large chunk of the country secedes.

I think that is something that is important, and we do not want to be patronising the Papua New Guineans, who have a great deal of national pride, and it is not an event of celebration to see what is going on.

For many, it is quite a tragic chain of events. I am not entirely sure what the bulk of MPs believes about this. We have conducted some research, which is non randomised, but it is quite large scale, probing attitudes towards Bougainvillean independence in 2022, around the time of the election.

What we found, which is quite surprising, is that while, of course, Bougainville has the highest support for independence of any place in Papua New Guinea, there are substantial numbers of people outside Bougainville that are sympathetic to Bougainvillean independence or sympathetic towards implementing the referendum.

I think that would be the wording, I would choose, quite large numbers of people. So, as well as, many people who are very much undecided on the issues. From a Papua New Guinean perspective, the views are much more subtle than you might think are the case. By comparison, if you did a survey in Madrid of how many people support Catalan independence, you would not see figures similar to the ones that we find for Papua New Guinea.

DW: Bougainville is due to go to elections later this year. The ABG has stated that it wants this matter sorted, I think, at the time that the election writs are issued sometime in June. Will it be able to do this do you think?

TO: It’s always difficult to predict anything, especially the future. That goes double in Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. I think the reality is that the nature of negotiations here and in Bougainville, there’s a great deal of personal connections and toing and froing that will be taking place.

It is very hard to fit that onto a clear timeline. I would describe that as perhaps aspirational, but it would be, it would be good. Whether this is, you know, a question of electoral politics within Bougainville, I think there would be, like, a more or less unanimous view in Bougainville that this needs to move forward as soon as possible. But I don’t know that a timeline is realistic.

The concerns that I would have about this, Don, would be not just about sort of questions of capacity and what happens in the negotiations in Bougainville, but we also need to think about what is happening in Papua New Guinea, and this goes for the entire process.

But here, in this case, PNG has its hands full with many other issues as well. There is a set of like LLG [Local Level Government] elections about to happen, so there are a great deal of things for the government to attend to. I wonder how viable it is to come up with a solution in a short time, but they are certainly capable of surprising everybody.

DW: The Prime Minister, James Marape, has said on a number of occasions that Bougainville is not economically ready or it hasn’t got the security situation under control. And my understanding is that when this was raised at the last meeting, there was quite a lot of giggling going on, because people were comparing what’s happened in Bougainville with what’s happening around the rest of the country, including in Southern Highlands, the province of Mr Marape.

TO: I think you know for me when I think about this, because I have worked with Bougainvilleans for a long time, and have worked with Papua New Guineans for a long time as well. The sense that I have is really one of quite sadness and a great missed opportunity.

Because if we wind the clock back to 1975, Bougainville declared independence, trying to pre-empt [the establishment of] Papua New Guinea. And that set in train a set of events that drastically reformed the Papua New Guinean political Constitution. Many of the sort of characteristic institutions we see now in Papua New Guinea, such as provinces, came about partly because of that.

That crisis, that first independence crisis, the first secession crisis, was resolved through deep changes to Papua New Guinea and to Bougainville, in which the country was able to grow and move forward.

What we see now, though, is this sort of view that Bougainville problems must all be solved in Bougainville, but in fact, many of the problems that are said to be Bougainville problems are Papua New Guinea problems, and that would include issues such as the economic difficulties that Bougainville finds itself in.

I mean, there are many ironies with this kind of criticism that Bougainville is not economically viable. One of them being that when Papua New Guinea became independent, it was largely dependent on Bougainville at that time. So Bougainvilleans are aware of this, and don’t really welcome that kind of idea.

But I think that more deeply there were some really important lessons I believe that could have been learned from the peace process that might have been very useful in other areas of Papua New Guinea, and because Bougainville has been kind of seen as this place apart, virtually as a foreign nation, those lessons have not, unfortunately, filtered back to Papua New Guinea in a way that might have been very helpful for everybody.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Autonomous Bougainville Government President Ishmael Toroama has condemned the circulation of an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video depicting a physical confrontation between him and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape.

The clip, first shared on Facebook last week, is generated from the above picture of Toroama and Marape taken at a news conference in September 2024, where the two leaders announced the appointment of former New Zealand Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae as the independent moderator for the Bougainville peace talks.

It shows Toroama punching Marape from a sitting position as both fall down. The post has amassed almost 190,000 views on Facebook and more than 360 comments.

In a statement today, President Toroama said such content could have a negative impact on Bougainville’s efforts toward independence.

He said the “reckless misuse of artificial intelligence and social media platforms has the potential to damage the hard-earned trust and mutual respect” between the two nations.

“This video is not only false and malicious — it is dangerous,” the ABG leader said.

“It threatens to undermine the ongoing spirit of dialogue, peace, and cooperation that both our governments have worked tirelessly to build.”

Toroama calls for identifying of source
Toroama wants the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA) of PNG to find the source of the video.

He said that while freedom of expression was a democratic value, it was also a privilege that carried responsibilities.

He said freedom of expression should not be twisted through misinformation.

“These freedoms must be exercised with respect for the truth. Misusing AI tools to spread falsehoods not only discredits individuals but can destabilise entire communities.”

He has urged the content creators to reflect on the ethical implications of their digital actions.

Toroama also called on social media platforms and regulatory bodies to play a bigger role in stopping the spread of misleading AI-generated content.

“As we move further into the digital age, we must develop a collective moral compass to guide the use of powerful technologies like artificial intelligence,” he said.

“Truth must remain the foundation of all communication, both online and offline.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The first large-scale environmental impact assessment of Rio Tinto’s abandoned Panguna mine in Papua New Guinea has found local communities face life-threatening risks from its legacy.

The independent study was initiated after frustrated landowners in PNG’s Autonomous Region of Bougainville took their longstanding grievances against Rio Tinto to the Australian government in 2020.

British-Australian Rio Tinto has accepted the findings of the report released on Friday but has not responded to calls by landowners and affected communities to fund the clean-up.

Rio Tinto abandoned one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines in 1989 when a long-running dispute with landowners over the inequitable distribution of the royalties turned into an armed conflict.

The Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment report found the mine infrastructure, pit and levee banks pose “very high risks,” while landslides and exposure to mine and industrial chemicals present “medium to high” risks to local communities.

Flooding in downstream from Panguna — caused by a billion tons of mine tailings dumped into the Jaba-Kawerong river system — was reported as posing “very high” actual and potential human rights risks.

“The most serious concern is the potential impact to the right to life from unstable structures, and landform collapses and flooding hazards,” the report concluded, with the access to healthy environment, water, food and housing also impacted.

More than 25,000 people are estimated to live in the affected area, on the island of 300,000 in PNG’s east on the border with Solomon Islands.

“Rio Tinto must take responsibility for its legacy and fund the long-term solutions we need so that we can live on our land in safety again,” Theonila Roka Matbob, lead complainant and Bougainville parliamentarian, said in a statement.

“We never chose this mine, but we live with its consequences every day, trying to find ways to survive in the wasteland that has been left behind.”

“What the communities are demanding to know now is what the next step is. A commitment to remediation is where the data is pointing us to, and that’s what the people are waiting for.”

In August, Rio Tinto and its former subsidiary and mine operator Bougainville Copper Limited along with the Autonomous Bougainville Government signed an MoU to mitigate the risks of the ageing infrastructure in the former Panguna mine area.

Last month the three parties struck an agreement to form a “roundtable.”

Rio Tinto in a statement after the report’s release said the roundtable “plans to address the findings and develop a remedy mechanism consistent with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

“While we continue to review the report, we recognize the gravity of the impacts identified and accept the findings,” chief executive of Rio Tinto’s Australia operations Kellie Parker said.

Rio Tinto divested its majority stake in the mine to the PNG and ABG governments in 2016, and reportedly wrote to the ABG saying it bore no responsibility.

Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama in welcoming the report thanked Rio Tinto “for opening up to this process and giving it genuine attention and input.”

In a statement he said it was a “significant milestone” that would help with the “move away from the damage and turmoil of the past and strengthen our pathway towards a stronger future.”

Bougainville voted for independence from PNG in 2019, with 97.7 per cent favoring nationhood.

Exploitation of Panguna’s estimated U.S.$60b in ore reserves has been touted as a major future source of income to fund independence. The referendum result has yet to be ratified by PNG’s parliament.

The first report of the Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment identified what needs to be addressed or mitigated and what warrants further investigation.

The second phase of the process will conduct more intensive studies, with a second report to make recommendations on how the “complex” impacts should be remedied.

A 10-year civil war left up to 15,000 dead and 70,000 displaced across Bougainville as PNG forces –supplied with Australian weapons and helicopters – battled the poorly armed Bougainville Revolutionary Army.

Panguna remained a “no-go zone” despite the Bougainville Peace Agreement in 2001, and access has still been restricted in the decades since by a road block of former BRA fighters.

A complaint filed by the Australian-based Human Rights Law Centre on behalf of affected communities with the Australian government initiated the non-binding, international mechanism to report on “responsible business conduct.”

They alleged that Rio Tinto was responsible for “significant breaches of the OECD guidelines relating to the serious, ongoing environmental and human rights violations arising from the operation of its former Panguna mine.”

“This landmark report validates what communities in Bougainville have been saying for decades – the Panguna mine has left them living with an ongoing environmental and human rights disaster,” HRLC legal director Keren Adams said in a statement.

“There are strong expectations in Bougainville that Rio Tinto will now take swift action to help address the impacts and dangers communities are living with.”

The two-year, on-site independent scientific investigation by Australian engineering services company Tetra Tech Coffey made 24 recommendations on impacts to address and what needs further investigation.

Comprehensive field studies included soil, water and food testing, hydrology and geo-morphology analysis, and hundreds of community surveys and interviews.

Outstanding demands from the community include that Rio Tinto publicly commit to addressing the impacts, provide a timetable, contribute to a fund for immediate and long-term remediation and rehabilitation and undertake a formal reconciliation as per Bougainville custom.

A class action lawsuit brought by 5000 Bougainvilleans against Rio Tinto and subsidiary Bougainville Copper Limited for billions in compensation earlier this year is unrelated to the impact assessment reports. Rio Tinto has said it will strongly defend its position.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

High in the forested mountains of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island lies an abandoned, kilometer-wide crater cut deep into the earth.

Formerly one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, the open pit now serves as an unsightly monument to the environmental and social chaos that underground riches can create.

Run for years by a subsidiary of Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine earned millions for Papua New Guinea (PNG) and helped bankroll its newfound independence. But it also poured waste into local waterways and fuelled anger among locals who felt robbed of the profits.

When an armed uprising ultimately shuttered the mine in 1989, the impoverished island was left reeling.

Nearly three decades later, in late 2022, human rights activists, the local government, and the mine’s former operators joined forces to produce a definitive assessment of the mine’s toxic legacy.

Their report, due to be released later this month, will become the basis for negotiations aimed at getting the mining companies to finally clean up the mess and compensate affected communities.

But its supporters now worry their efforts will be undermined by a class-action lawsuit launched in May against the mine’s erstwhile operators. The legal effort is being championed by former rebel leaders — and backed by anonymous offshore investors who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if it succeeds.

Worldwide litigation boom
The lawsuit is part of a worldwide boom in litigation financing that seeks to take multinational companies to task for ecological or social damage while potentially reaping a fortune for lawyers and funders.

Critics in Bougainville worry the lawsuit will reopen old wounds at a time when the island is making a push to break free of Papua New Guinea and become the world’s newest sovereign nation. Many Bougainvilleans are hoping to reopen the mine, using its wealth to fund their own independence this time around.

The region’s government and many local leaders believe the class action could put the mine’s revival at risk. There are also concerns the lawsuit would leave many Bougainvilleans empty handed, while the anonymous foreign investors would walk away with a significant share of the payout.

Unlike the official assessment, which seeks to identify everyone who needs to be compensated, the class action will only share its winnings — which could potentially be in the billions of dollars — with the locals who have signed on. Others will get nothing.

“There’s already fragmentation in the community and families are already divided,” said Theonila Roka Matbob, who represents the area around Panguna in the local Parliament and has helped lead the government-backed assessment process as a minister in the Autonomous Bougainville government.

She speaks from personal experience. The chief litigant in the class-action lawsuit, Martin Miriori, is her uncle. The two are no longer on speaking terms.

A losing deal
Gouged from Bougainville’s lush volcanic heart, the Panguna mine in its heyday supplied as much as 45 percent of PNG’s export revenue, providing it with the financial means to achieve independence from Australia in 1975.

The windfall, however, did not extend to Bougainvilleans themselves. Ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of PNG’s population, they saw Panguna as a symbol of external domination.

The mine delivered only a miserly 2-percent share of its profits to their island — along with years of environmental havoc.

During the 17 years of Panguna’s operation — from 1972 to 1989 — over a billion metric tons of toxic mine waste and electric blue copper runoff flooded rivers that flowed downstream towards communities of subsistence farmers. The result was poisoned drinking water, infertile land, and children who were drowned or injured trying to cross engorged waterways.

In 1989, enraged Bougainville locals launched an armed rebellion against the PNG government. The mine was shut down, closing off a vital source of revenue for the national government in Port Moresby.

A brutal civil war raged on for nearly a decade, leaving more than 15,000 people dead, while a naval blockade by PNG’s military obliterated the island’s economy.

A peace deal in 2000 granted Bougainville substantial autonomy. But nearly a quarter-century later, the legacy of Panguna and the war it provoked is still deeply felt.

Few paved roads, bridges
There are few paved roads and bridges in the island’s interior. Residents earn a modest living through cocoa and coconut farming, or by unregulated artisanal mining in and around the abandoned Panguna crater.

Rivers polluted by years of runoff are still an otherworldly shade of milky blue.

At least 300,000 people are estimated to live on Bougainville, including as many as 15,000 who live downstream of the mine. Of those, some 4500 have joined Miriori — Roka’s estranged uncle and a tribal leader whose brother, Joseph Kabui, served as the first president of autonomous Bougainville — in seeking restitution through the class-action suit.

“We’ve got to make people happy,” Miriori said. “They’ve lost their land forever, environment forever. Their hunting grounds. Their spiritual, sacred grounds.”

While the tribal leader and former rebel is a well-known figure in Bougainville, the funders of the lawsuit are not. They have managed to keep their identities secret in part because the company behind the suit, Panguna Mine Action LLC, is registered on Nevis, a small Caribbean island that does not require companies to publicly disclose their shareholders and directors.

Miriori declined to comment on who was behind the company, saying, “I will not tell you where the funding is based … you can source that from our people down there [in Australia].”

James Sing, an Australian based in New York, is Panguna Mine Action’s chief public representative. He initially agreed to an interview, but later referred reporters back to a London-based public relations agency, Sans Frontières Associates.

The agency declined to reveal Panguna Mine Action’s investors.

Litigation funding documents obtained by OCCRP, however, shed some light on the history of the case. The documents show that Panguna Mine Action began to investigate the possibility of a class-action suit as early as July 2021.

The Bougainvillean claimants, led by Miriori, were formally brought into an agreement with the company and its Australian and PNG lawyers in November 2022. The suit was publicly announced this May.

Handsome profit
The lawsuit’s investors stand to profit handsomely from any eventual settlement: Panguna Mine Action is poised to receive a cut of 20 to 40 percent of any payout resulting from the suit, with the percentage increasing the longer the process takes, the funding documents show.

In interviews and statements, both Miriori and Panguna Mine Action have put the potential value of any award in the billions of dollars.

The lawsuit’s financiers defend their substantial share of the potential benefits as standard practice.

“The costs of launching and running the class action against a global miner are significant, and almost certainly could not be met from within Bougainville without funding from an external party,” the company said in its statement.

Panguna Mine Action added it would bear sole responsibility for costs if the lawsuit is unsuccessful.

According to Michael Russell, a Sydney-based class action defence lawyer, such funding arrangements are typical in the burgeoning world of litigation finance, where investors seek out cases that promote virtuous social causes while offering huge potential payoffs.

A similar case is unfolding in Latin America, where more than 720,000 Brazilians are seeking $46.5 billion as part of a gargantuan class action against mining giant BHP and its local subsidiary for their role in a 2015 dam collapse.

In such cases, funders can justify walking away with significant cuts of any winnings because of the substantial risk they face of losing their investment if a case fails, Russell said.

Such cases were rarely initiated at the grassroots level by the victims themselves, he added.

“Most of the time, either the plaintiff firms or the funders will be the catalyst for a claim,” he said. “They are very alert to opportunities.”

Rival restitution plans
Government officials including Miriori’s niece, Roka, say the class-action case, which is due to hold opening arguments in October, threatens to derail the ongoing impact assessment aimed at calculating the full cost of the mine’s environmental impact and developing recommendations for addressing the damage.

The assessment, which counts community members among its stakeholders and bills itself as an independent review, is supported by Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre, which has hailed the project as “an important step” towards rectifying the mine’s devastating impact on thousands of Bougainvilleans.

However, while Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper are both funding the project, they have not yet committed to paying for any compensation or cleanup. Roka said she was concerned the lawsuit could reduce the company’s willingness to engage with the process, since it could view the assessment as a tool that could be used against them in the courtroom.

Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama backs the impact assessment and has lambasted the class action suit as the work of “faceless investors . . .  taking advantage of vulnerable groups.” (His office did not respond to an interview request.)

He also expressed concern that the court proceedings threaten to “disrupt” his government’s efforts to reopen the mine, which still holds an estimated $60 billion in untapped deposits.

Bougainville’s leaders see the mine as key to securing the island’s economic future as it sets out to form an independent state — a dream that drew overwhelming public support in a 2019 referendum.

Exploration licence
Earlier this year Toroama’s government granted Bougainville Copper a five-year exploration licence for the Panguna site.

The lack of media and polling in Bougainville make it hard to measure public opinion on plans to reactivate the mine, but many locals appear to support reopening it under local control as an essential tool for achieving independence.

Bougainville Copper’s brand is still toxically associated with Rio Tinto and its past abuses, despite the fact that the international mining giant gave away its majority stake for no money in 2016.

The publicly traded company is now majority co-owned by the governments of PNG and Bougainville, and Port Moresby has pledged to hand over all its shares to the autonomous region in the near future.

Panguna Mine Action acknowledges that its effort could stand in the way of the mine’s reopening — but the company says that is a good thing.

“It is our understanding that the people of Bougainville do not wish mining to be recommenced under any circumstances or, alternatively, unless Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper acknowledge the past, pay compensation and remediate the rivers and surrounding valley,” the company said in a statement.

Rio Tinto declined to comment. Mel Togolo, the chairman of Bougainville Copper, told OCCRP that the lawsuit was the work of “a foreign funder who no doubt is seeking a return on an investment.”

With global copper prices soaring on high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, the Panguna mine would be an attractive prize for both Western mining companies and firms from China, which is dramatically expanding its influence in the South Pacific.

Since a future Bougainvillean state would be economically dependent on the mine’s revenue, some have raised concerns that control of the mine could become a proxy battle for geopolitical influence in the broader region.

For his part, Miriori expressed little concern that a multibillion-dollar payout might stir resentment by reaching only a fraction of the people affected by the mine’s environmental destruction.

“Only those who signed will benefit,” he said, adding that the opportunity was made “very clear to people” through awareness campaigns.

“Those who have not signed, it’s their freedom of choice.”

Among those who did not sign is Wendy Bowara, 48, who lives in Dapera, a bleak settlement built on a hill of mine waste. Bowara said she is looking to the government-backed assessment, not the lawsuit, to deliver compensation and clean up Panguna’s toxic legacy.

“We are living on top of chemicals,” she said. “Copper concentration is high. I don’t know if the food is good to eat or if it’s healthy to drink the water.”

But while it may seem odd given her grim surroundings, Borawa says she strongly supports reopening the mine.

“It funded the independence of Papua New Guinea,” Bowara said. “Why can’t we use it to fund our own independence?”

Allan Gioni contributed reporting.

Aubrey Belford is the Pacific editor for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

About 4500 Bougainvillean residents now back a lawsuit against mining giant Rio Tinto.

This is an additional 1500 people from the autonomous Papua New Guinea region joining the action since it was filed in May this year.

Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama said the lawsuit was disappointing and was pursued by those people acting against Bougainville’s interests.

The government was not backing it in any way, shape or form, he said.

The claimants are seeking billions of dollars in compensation from Rio Tinto which operated the Panguna copper and gold mine in the 1970s and 1980s before it was forced to shut by civil war.

The mine was at the heart of that war which brought death and devastation to Bougainville over a 10-year period until 1997.

They say Rio Tinto, which was the majority shareholder in Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) at the time, is responsible for the large scale environmental and social harm that resulted from what was one of the biggest mines in the world.

A former senior Bougainville political leader, Martin Miriori, who is the lead claimant of the class action, said the “large increase in claimants demonstrates the strength of feeling among local people that Rio Tinto and BCL must make amends for decades of environmental devastation”.

He said “this issue will not go away, as the legal action has attracted strong support, and reminded the world of the destruction caused by the mine operator’s reckless actions.”

A first court hearing is set for Port Moresby on 10 October 2024.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Bougainville Affairs Minister Manasseh Makiba has described the Post-Courier’s front page story yesterday regarding a meeting between Bougainville and national government leaders as “sensationalised” and without substance.

The Autonomous Bougainville Government (AGB) had warned it might use “other avenues to gain its independence” should the PNG government “continue to be mischievous” in dealing with the Bougainville independence agenda.

Makiba said the report was the work of individuals with vested interests and was designed to derail the progress made so far over the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA).

He also announced that the Joint Supervisory Body (JSB) meeting scheduled for yesterday had been postponed until tomorrow because agendas had not been supplied on time by the joint technical team (JTT) headed by the Chief Secretary and his Bougainvillean counterpart Kearneth Nanei.

“The restoration development grants, Bougainville Copper Ltd shares, and fisheries revenue sharing agreement were matters being dealt with by the joint technical team due to the technical and legal nature of the process,” Makiba said.

“The joint technical team comprises departmental heads and technical professionals from both the national government and the Autonomous Bougainville Government [which] will conduct consultations before jointly drawing up agendas for the JSB to deliberate.”

Makiba said the system currently in place through the joint technical team was very transparent and allowed for constructive discussions from both sides before it got to the political level.

‘Sticky subjects’ resolved
“Any disagreement or issues relating to any sticky subjects are resolved at that committee level,” Makiba said.

“To suggest or imply that the government is bulldozing matters or turning a deaf ear to any issue is an understatement,” Makiba said.

He urged both parties to respect the peace agreement.

The Bougainville warning was sounded by ABG Attorney-General and Independence Implementation Minister Ezekiel Massat just as the ABG delegation headed to Port Moresby for the JSB meeting with the national government.

The Bougainville delegation, led by President Ishmael Toroama, is due to meet with the national government to discuss the ratification process outlined in the Bougainville Peace Agreement and the constitution.

Massat said that there had been events that had happened which Bougainville had not been consulted on by the national government, consequently defeating the purpose of the peace agreement.

He cited the appointment of Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Wagambie Jr and the current JSB meeting which had been called and changed by the national government without consulting ABG.

Resolution from last JSB
“While the ABG will be participating, it wants to see the two parties set into motion the resolution from the last JSB, for the parties to agree to call in a moderator to try to resolve the impasse over how results from the 2019 Referendum will be tabled and ratified by the National Parliament,” Massat said.

The ABG also demands that a bipartisan committee be established comprising national and Bougainville members to urgently communicate awareness about the Bougainville issue and independence agenda to all members of Parliament before the ratification vote.

Massat said the lack of consultation of the national government might create “suspicion and mistrust” and Bougainville might be forced to pursue other legal means to achieve the “Bougainville people’s dreams of independence” as shown in the overwhelming majority vote in the 2019 referendum.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Opposition spokesperson for Bougainville affairs Sir Puka Temu has warned the Papua New Guinea government not to take the Bougainville ratification process lightly and has called for an urgent leadership meeting.

He urged Prime Minister James Marape and his Minister for Bougainville Affairs, Manasseh Makibato, convene an urgent meeting between the two governments.

Sir Puka said that the government’s inability to ratify the referendum results last year went against the understanding set out in the Era Kone Covenant and the Wabag Roadmap by both the Autonomous Bougainville government (ABG) and the government of PNG.

“Prime Minister James Marape and the Minister for Bougainville Affairs need to come out clearly on when they will ratify the referendum results in Parliament and give their assurance that they will not fail on their part of the agreement,” Sir Puka said.

“The ratification is the responsibility of the national government and not the ABG’s.

“The people of Bougainville did their part by peacefully conducting the referendum and engaging in meaningful dialogue with the national government on when to ratify the results.

“The Marape/PANGU-led government have already failed their end of the bargain to ratify the results in 2023. And they are continuing to fail the people of Bougainville by delaying their decision on when the results will be ratified.

PM ‘not serious’
“It is evident the Prime Minister and his government are not serious about Bougainville, as there was no mention of it in the first sitting of Parliament this year had it not been for a question without notice from the Member for North Bougainville Francesca
Semoso.

“If the government were serious about ratifying the results, they would have made the ratification a priority of theirs on the first sitting of Parliament.

“Yet the government has opted to adjourn Parliament to May 28 nearly halfway through the year, and even then, the ratification of the results are not guaranteed to be a business of the Parliament.

“With the ABG presidential elections set for next year, the people and leaders of
Bougainville are running out of time.”

Sir Puka said Marape had had more than five years to ratify the referendum results, yet there had been many promises and little action.

“James Marape is in fact the post-referendum prime minister – it is his leadership that will coincide with the future of Bougainville, and he must not take that status lightly,” Sir Puka said.

Now that Marape had exhausted his international trips over the last two
years, he should pay serious attention to the pressing issue domestically.

‘Delaying and distracting’
The leaders and people of Bougainville would soon catch on to Marape-led government’s approach of “delaying and distracting”.

“ABG President Ishmael Toroama and his leaders have been very diplomatic, very
patient, and understanding throughout this ongoing process, however, Mr Marape must not think that this considerate treatment will last forever.

“I also appeal to the four Bougainvillean MPs in government to critically assess if Mr Marape is doing all he can in his powers to fulfill the results of the referendum.

“Three of you are in PANGU Pati yet the party leader and your fellow colleague PANGU MP and Minister for Bougainville Affairs are causing rifts and not results.

“The people of Bougainville have decided, and regardless of the ratification process that continues to be delayed, those results will still be there in history. The ball is in the government’s side of the court to guide this process or stand by and watch if they take too long.”

Sir Puka also said he would ask to meet President Toroama to formally discuss the opposition’s alternative policies and position regarding Bougainville as the shadow minister.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz