Leonard Fong Roka
Panguna people saw the environmental carnage and the influx
of aliens from New Guinea and beyond. Today, they know that the extraction of
the mineral ore on their land was for the good of Papua New Guinea and not
Bougainville. They know at least, a Panguna kina, was milked on the Highlands
Highway construction; a Panguna kina is there in the founding of the Air
Niugini; a Panguna kina is there in the building of the Waigani parliament
house and the list goes on. To them, Papua New Guinea was made by the Panguna
mine and the many Bougainville cocoa and copra plantations.
This is the insight the uneducated or illiterate majority of
the landowners that comprises a population of youths and children are told day-in-day-out.
Since the days of the crisis to the dawn of the peace process, this is the
information they are being nurtured in. One hears these stories in the family
homes; after church services and worst of all, in the boozing midst (stand a
New Guinean (ere’rengkong) here and you hear all the Panguna-connected curses).
For the majority of the static and illiterate
Bougainvilleans, the Bougainville crisis did opened their realization of the
fact that they are Solomon Islanders. At the peak of the Australia-backed Papua
New Guinea blockade of their island, they had a brother who gave them little ammunition
and medicine. His islands were well connected in closeness from the coasts of
Buin and Kieta as he saw it from the high mountains; a fact, that is not a
reality towards New Guinea.
The political discourse of the conflict-days was anti-PNG.
Church men preached gospels loaded with sentiments of anti-PNGism. Few music
artists of Bougainville sing all the negativity created on Bougainville by the
New Guineans (the illiterate so love these artists and their songs) and the BCL.
In every traditional feasting night or days there is anti-PNG or BCL folksongs
sang or poetic lamentation songs at funerals in any post-conflict Bougainville
death for all, every bad things happening is all created by the past deeds.
For all the majority of Bougainvilleans and the Panguna
people, this is the culture the people are engaged to, or are subjected to.
Thus, when one looks at the re-opening of the Panguna mine,
one has to look at the people profile (including their likes and dislikes) of
the Panguna district and the existing landowners’ body to get a clear picture
of what our hope is in re-opening the mine.
But, the noted trend in approaching the subject today is the
non-landowner dictates like the wishes of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, the
ABG and so on that is not considerate of a retributive justice for all bad
things that happened on Bougainville because of the mining.
To the people, the 10 billion forwarded by late Francis Ona
is not in the coffin resting with Francis Ona. On this issue, there are many
injustices on Bougainville that ought to be addressed before talking about
mining.
Firstly, the majority of the Panguna population consists of
the illiterate or half-literate (high school failures or ex-BCL laborers and
other ordinaries) men and women. But in this group of people Bougainville
politics is a culture alongside the wealth of guns and trade of guns.
In this group also, is where one finds the culture of
entrepreneurship is growing. This unit of people hosts gold panners, gold
buyers, scrap metal dealers, victims to scrap metal dealing conman, retail
outlet operators and those investing further into cocoa planting by buying land
in the coastal areas such as Wakunai and Tinputz Districts.
And before the Bougainville conflict, this people were
no-bodies in their own land and so in 1988-1989, the late Francis Ona ran to
this people for support and got what he wanted readily even without setting for
himself any political manifesto to execute the secessionist struggle; thus the
crisis was born against BCL and its few ‘local friends’ and Papua New Guinea.
When the Bougainville peace process came into existence, it
was those surviving old BCL’s ‘local friends’ and the crisis created
opportunists went ahead with Panguna mine re-opening talks whilst the majority
slowly adapting to changes by engaging into business and investment with their
own sweat without talking about the mine’s re-opening.
Thus on the issue of Panguna re-opening talk, one as to deal
accordingly between the crisis-created opportunists (some are armed), the few
old BCL’s ‘local friends’ (majority in the current Panguna Landowner
Association) and the change adaptive majority (crisis-created opportunists run
here for support) in their folly.
So far, the discourse on the issue of Panguna re-opening
comes from the crisis-created opportunists and the few old BCL’s ‘local
friends’ who feign as genuine representatives of the population. The dangerous
majority, that is adaptive to changes in Panguna and so engaged to personal
small-scale business activities and so on, has no voice yet. Thus, every now
and then, the Panguna re-opening gossip that is often exciting the world is not
representative of the Panguna’s majority.
And this is obvious. Every foreigner that enters Panguna
with mine re-opening interests chats with crisis-created elite or the members
of the Panguna Landowners Association (many of whom are BCL’s old ‘local
friends’) and then return to spill their bias in-house chit-chat to the media
as a break-through towards the re-opening of the Panguna mine.
Majority of the Panguna people (illiterate and literate) are
standing on the foundation of the recent Bougainville history. To them, BCL was
for Papua New Guinea’s development and not Bougainville; and re-opening of the
mine goes well for the locals in an independent Bougainville that is free from
Papua New Guinea (failure of the Bougainville weapons disposal program comes
into play here because many people see that Papua New Guineans will be
returning if Bougainville is free from weapons) where benefits will be for
Bougainvilleans.
Furthermore, majority of the Panguna people and Bougainville
should be assured that their crisis-created spirit of entrepreneurship will be
sustained by the ABG. But so far, the signs are not good for Bougainvilleans as
the ABG is trying to suppress the bases of self-reliance for Bougainville by
inviting Chinese foreign direct investment to get Bougainville in a trickle of
seconds away from the stone-age into the computer-age (a process that took the
industrial countries centuries to develop through agriculture or a step-by-step
transition from subsistence to market economies) and likely to create loopholes
for the Bougainville economy in the long run (when extraction of raw materials
are depleted and the investors proudly return, where will the Bougainvillean
turn to where all farming land is gravel?).
Many can critic this discourse, but one has to note that the
Bougainville crisis was a ‘natural university’ to many Bougainvilleans for it
opened the mind’s eye to the islanders.
So, re-opening of the Panguna mine must follow the dictates
of the Bougainville people with a leadership that is trusted by the people and
not the kind of leaders that are dirt to the people’s eyes and yet are currently
playing the game for Bougainville's Panguna re-opening.
