PAPAA’LA: money, politics and religious stampede

By Leonard Fong Roka

Just by scrolling through the blog, PAPAA’LA CHRONICLES (http://papaala-chronicles.blogspot.com/) and its literary content, one could work out that the said Kingdom of Papaala is a pure fantasy of money, politics and religious fanaticism created for the people of Bougainville by Bougainvilleans.

In our world, man must labor to get something on his table. Thus, in the post conflict Bougainville where the economy is still staggering due to political and economic complexities and people’s unsettled mindsets that is centered on the Melanesian culture of compensation for the crisis related loses, con man did took advantage of our people.

ABC's Foreign Correspondent Shane McLeod explaining the K17 000 affair in film, Interview with Francis Ona, outside Arawa's UV-Stract Office

In the European context, money, politics, religion and man function as independent individuals or entities. But in Bougainville, with Papaala we are having these conflicting subjects: money, politics, and religion as a single realm of activity with the ‘man’ at the centre.

This is the primary reason why, the religious with little formal education are the hardcore followers of Papaala.

In the Arawa, some Pentecostal prayer groups and individuals in the mainline churches, make a monthly donation of K10.00 that go towards Papaala for the good of Bougainville. Where, this money ends up in, I am not sure. But, it is Tonu where the Bougainville’s only government that promotes religious, financial and political liberation for the people of Bougainville is based.

In the ABC Foreign Correspondent film, Interview with Francis Ona, the late President Joseph Kabui tells reporter Shane McLeod: ‘…he is a bit of an evangelist in there, and a sales man there, and a bit of a conman there—so, he is certainly a smooth operator’.

In this scenario we can see how sophisticated the system is for our ‘less educated people that are in an economically difficult world of Bougainville’. It is justifiable; to say in our part of the world that religion is also a problem to Melanesian developing countries. People are trapped by the ‘God our means and way’ identity of Papaala. And we cannot declare war against each other as Bougainvilleans for we are still immature to the process of modernization.

But, then we should always not be bias. But should know that, superstitious thinking has no place in the world for with it, as Divine Word University’s lecturer Bernard Yegiora (2012) puts it, ‘without inferential or dialectical thinking we would be void of new knowledge and devoid of progress of human society. Inferential or dialectical thinking flourished when the Greeks (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) broke away from superstitious [religious] thinking (lecture notes)’. This act then brought change into our world.

Thus, fellow Bougainvilleans, reality must explain our world and not superstition. UV-Stract since coming into existence, according to ABC’s reporter Shane McLeod, has robbed 4 out of every 5 Bougainvilleans of millions.

A classical example from ABC’s Shane McLeod is the UV-Stract Contract of a poor Bougainvillean who went ahead to bring his case for us to see, hear and think about it from a dialectical perspective:

‘That is, this man in 1999, invested a K17 000.00 and was told that within 45 days, his money would double up (he would have a balance of K34 000.00). And in the year, the ABC Foreign Correspondent film, Interview with Francis Ona, was shot that is in 2005, the investor was told that his balance was now worth K51 million’.

However, just like the rest of the Bougainvillean Papaa'la made millionaires, he has to keep depositing without thinking of withdrawing to enjoy the benefits before he dies. This really contradicts the fact that, money is for a person's daily use to sustain his life.

What a dream of unreality! If it is real, then it is an illegal money operation under the carpet of the international laws that governs our world.