Contributing Stonewalling to the Death of Joseph Kabui

Leonard Fong Roka

David Perakai was one of the founding figures of militancy against the Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) in 1988 and the late President, Joseph Kabui’s blood nephew. Since the 1990 ceasefire between the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) he had remained around his uncle and, with the dawn of the Bougainville Peace Process as of 1997, he served as the personal bodyguard till the president’s death in June 2008.

Mr. David Deona Perakai

 

To him, the late President Joseph Kabui’s death was the punishment will of the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) simply because of his approval of the Canada based businessman, Lindsay Semple’s firm, Invincible Resources backed Bougainville Resources Development Corporation (BRDC) without cabinet’s blessing.

The BRDC issue was addressable on the floor of the ABG parliament with public awareness and peoples’ reactions as recently experienced by President John Momis with his Chinese deals. But the 2005-2008 (death interrupted term of President Joseph Kabui) ABG House, with its few big-mouth parliamentarians, was not willing to deal with it systematically.

According to David Perakai, the late president had the desire to treat the BRDC-Invincible Resources affair independently thus he was not willing to dip his hands into the K20 million Lindsay Semple’s money for his medical expenses after the in-house political row broke out.

The ABG, under late Joseph Kabui, initially used some of this money to repatriate BRA/Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) overseas based activists namely, Moses Havini, Mike Forster and Martin Miriori. Some of this controversial money undeniably went down the pockets of the BRDC/Invincible supporters; some went to the recently completed ABG housing project at Hutjena/Kubu and Sohano Island.

But for the president who was now trying to bring the problem he was a part of, back to the house and address it, had his parliamentarians protesting against him by denying him access to clean funds for his medication overseas.

Just before the BRDC/Invincible Resources standoff, the late Joseph Kabui was admitted at the Pacific International Hospital in Port Moresby with a serious heart problem for a medical check. Here, he was referred overseas to a Catholic Church run Malhas Hospital in Townsville, Australia, for an operation to replace the main artery supplying blood out of the heart.

Thus, in June 2007, the president and his wife and David Perakai were in Townsville and the late Joseph Kabui underwent medication. His artery was removed and replaced with a plastic artery that required a review every six months at the cost of some K10 000 and with other expenses like transport it would add up to an estimate of K20 000.

Upon his return, the inter-ABG row over the BRDC/Invincible Resources affair erupted dividing the government and getting the public condemnation of the president.

In sight of his medical needs and in an attempt to isolate the BRDC/Invincible Resources crisis, the president pushed for a proper budgetary allocation for his medical review that was due in the break of 2007/2008 Christmas period. But this was denied.

By this time another problem surfaced in the ABG, the member for Central Bougainville Women, Magdalene Toro’ansi was stripped from her portfolio for being a mole in the ABG.

Magdalene Toro’ansi was known in the ABG and administration for licking out confidential ABG agendas to Waigani before planned Waigani-ABG meetings thus all ABG meeting or negotiation strategies were unproductive. So, all the Bougainville Executive Council (BEC) did was removed her to the backbench.

But to cover up her disloyalty to Bougainville, she joined the anti-BRDC camp that included parliamentarians Robert Sawa Hamar, Thomas Lugabai and Francisca Semoso who was then deputy speaker of parliament with a claim of lies that she was being sacked because she was exposing the facts about the BRDC/Invincible Resources case to the people. This changes added fuel to the anti-Kabui media campaign.

The protestors claim was that President Joseph Kabui was and will be misusing public funds in the pretext of his medical trips and so on thus reaching an amicable solution to the BRDC/Invincible Resources issue was difficult since the protesting groups’ will was to defame and remove the president from power through any means available.

With a settlement of the crisis nowhere in sight, the president’s health worsens as he faced another dilemma of missing the second medical review period on June 2008. But with the threatening illness he and David Perakai left for Manus Province where the president himself chaired the Papua New Guinea governors meeting.

On Friday the 6 of June 2008, the president and his team returned back to Bougainville without any rest when the protestors ordered a BEC meeting to talk about the BRDC/Invincible Resources case by 1 o’clock that same day and after midnight on the 7 of June 2008 he died at his residence at Hutjena.

For David Perakai and other parliamentarians and bureaucrats sympathetic to Kabui, there are doubts as to why the President John Momis, after getting into office had the readily available privilege costing the ABG some K80 000 for a medical review in Singapore with his whole family without any noise from the parliamentarians!

For the president, the trip was more a holiday since he and the family spent a period of time in Singapore; a privilege that the late President Joseph Kabui was denied.

So he concludes that, the death of the President Joseph Kabui was the will and work of the ABG and the Invincible Resources Company. There are not any big-mouths today against the ABG but for the first house, there was because the first house was active and always finding ways to move Bougainville forward.