BRA and Ona, names that carried hope but brought disaster

Leonard Fong Roka

Ages of suppression, exploitation and indoctrination of the Solomon island of Bougainville and its people brought about the anti-Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) and Papua New Guinea (PNG) government and people rebellion in late 1988. It was a violence to shut the Australian Panguna mine in the heart of Bougainville that was championing the exploitation of the land; it was a violence also to free Bougainville from the stinging political, economic and social claws of PNG, and built a new nation in the heart of the Pacific.

Bougainvillean with a gun

It all unfolded in Panguna in Central Bougainville in 1988 when the late Francis Ona and his band of followers now known as the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) executed a sabotage campaign on BCL properties and threat to its employees in order to put an end to a mine that promised so much but gave very little to Bougainvilleans. 

What a great organization for betterment, was the Bougainville Revolutionary Army for the exploited people of Bougainville.

Bougainvilleans like James Singko, Sam Kauona, and Francis Ona and so on did created drive to put people first in every form of development in the South Pacific. That is, the state or investor must involve the land owner as the primary stakeholder when forging any form of development on the land.

But the question for the Bougainville leaders is: Did they ever know the scale and scope of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army? Through the eye of history, the group and their leader Francis Ona could be said to have lacked the idea and purpose of what they created.

When studying the Bougainville Revolutionary Army from the historical angle, the element ‘Revolutionary’ is the subject matter. Did the Bougainville leaders pursue the negative or positive side of this term, revolutionary?

Revolutionary, according to Oxford Dictionary, is involving or causing dramatic change or innovation. But did late Francis Ona and his followers have a study on the concept in regard to their island home and people?

From the historical backdrop, it’s crystal clear that Bougainville leaders in the jungles around the Panguna mine in the late 1980s were running after a positive revolution. After years of struggle against the mining company, the colonial administration and the PNG government they were now fixed to fight for a positive change on Bougainville. And that change, must come at the shortest period or within the lifetime of those leaders.

History will not deny that the late Francis Ona had the vision for a better Bougainville but the problem with his leadership was that he was not capable to translate that vision energy into political leadership of the 1990 Bougainville.

There was also a trap of personal glory in his leadership, too. In a letter dating 20 December 1989 addressed to his sister Mrs. Cecilia Camel who was to be his spokeswoman at a PNG, landowners and Bougainville meet the following week, Ona had 4 demands. The first was ‘That the National Government recognize and declare that Francis Ona is the winner over the Bougainville crisis and the National Government the looser of the crisis’ and signed by a Bruno Kobala for Francis Ona.

Ona did not know that personal interest and people interest were two conflicting issues when he wanted to lead the Bougainville people to freedom.

As the said supreme commander of the BRA and leader of Bougainville people he absolutely lacked the political power to influence and instigate unity and order across Bougainville in a period the population were psychologically scattered by the revolution of shutting down a huge Panguna mine; removing of all non-Bougainvilleans and the control of Bougainville by the young locals with guns.

So when the political vacuum created by the departure of the PNG state and the dissolving of the provincial government opened wide, the late Francis Ona was lost. He was shocked and watched as his BRA plunders Bougainville into chaos. He watched as his BRA created division on Bougainville with their reckless pursued of personal interest.

Francis Ona’s leadership loses control of Bougainville as Bougainvilleans turned against each other off-track from his dreamt revolution for a prosperous Republic of Bougainville.

So he too forgot his loved term ‘revolutionary’ in the Bougainville Revolutionary Army which he was a supreme commander of and began his buck-passing game or a blame game that someone else was causing harm on Bougainville.