Bougainville’s Keyboard Politician

Leonard Fong Roka

It was in 1997 at the age of 19, I first openly announced at Arawa High School whilst doing Grade 7 that I wanted to be a politician. This was leaked out amidst the student body.

With that dream I reached Hutjena Secondary School in 2001; passed out in 2002 and went to the University of Papua New Guinea. At UPNG, I was really involved into politicking with fellow Bougainvilleans, especially students from Buin in South Bougainville, as a way of gossiping about our home and its problems.

I unofficially left UPNG in 2004, and was grounded at home in the Tumpusiong Valley of Panguna doing nothing but boozing and running after women. I was known for boozing and women and nothing good for my life.

In 2005, for the first Bougainville election for the formation of the autonomous government I was appointed the Returning Officer (RO) for the Ioro Constituency (Panguna), which was a job that had some significant impact, to my political thinking.

As a RO, my mere political thinking and talking at UPNG in 2003 was fueled a bit further as I was directly exposed to politicians. Working beside the District Administration that was responsible for the Bougainville’s 2005 election, I at least, got some insights into the pros & cons of politics in action.

From 2005 on, political fantasying for Bougainville was a daily affair that got my head aching every day. I did not have any person to share my thoughts with, but regularly before 2008, I had my blood relative the late ABG President Joseph C. Kabui to share with.

Once, at the Buka’s Kuri Village Resort, I was telling him that he and his fellow politicians had done a mistake by not granting powers to foreign forces to get rid of weapons from Bougainvilleans by force where necessary.

He just gave me general positive and negative consequences of such an act alongside what he claimed as more favorable weapons disposal program already in place.

Well, that’s then and now here I am at Divine Word University playing politics in the cyberspace.

My lecturer in Asian Influence and PNG Foreign, Bernard Yegiora, once stated to me that, ‘we don’t have a voice so this is where we voice our thoughts’. He was referring to my political posts in Facebook and my blog.

As early as 1997, I had that burning love for Bougainville politics. In fact, I often joked to my friends that I will be the first president of the Republic of Bougainville then. Whether, I will realized that or not, that’s human nature; the art of struggling between reality and fantasy.

Divine Word University, of course, get be into the Face book and the creation of my own blog. Actually, I began writing articles—mostly on Bougainville issues—to Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE in 2011.

Months after I created my own blog after coming across the PNG’s controversial blogger Martyn Namorong’s The Namorong Report.

With my little writing skills, I had written and publish in my blog and even Facebook regularly.

Around me, seemingly Face book is some cordial chatting medium, but some of us had engaged it to push our political interest or dreams through post or linking our blogs into Face book.

Yes, as Bernard Yegiora, said we bloggers and writers don’t have a position in power to spill off our thoughts to create policies in the legislature, so we make use of the Information Technology (IT) to spread our views.

We seat in our rooms in silence and write; our fingers do the job and not our mouths, as a parliamentarian does. But, we have a dream.

In regard to my Bougainvillean writings and thoughts, some boastful and greedy person would jump at me and say that I have the solution to the conflict; sorry, I am a writer and I try to create a scene to make my fellow Bougainvilleans to think, recall and love their past, present and try to design their future.

I am not a solution, but a dreamer for my Bougainville to be for Bougainvilleans; they had died for that, and why not!

My written words are the spices a Bougainvillean needs to add onto his solution menu for our island and its problems. They are not to be rejected, for us as Bougainvilleans—from every works of life—need to contribute and collectively we built a better future for our children.

I, as a keyboard politician, will never succumb to criticism; a keyboard politician must share his dreams for the betterment of our Solomon island of Bougainville.