The result of Bougainville’s 2019 independence referendum, in which 97.7 percent of voters chose to leave Papua New Guinea, was tabled in PNG’s parliament in August, almost seven years after the vote was held. The date parliament will decide is due to be announced next month. Prime Minister James Marape and other members have indicated the answer could be pushed back over a period of years, possibly a decade, RNZ Pacific reported on September 22.
The referendum was not binding. Parliament holds the final say on ratification, and it set a three-quarters majority of members as the threshold, higher than the two-thirds ordinarily required to amend Papua New Guinea’s constitution, Asia Pacific Report reported. Members prayed on the floor on August 25 before taking the matter up.
Peter Tsiamalili Jr, the regional member for Bougainville, told parliament the tabling was a beginning rather than an end. “It marks the beginning of Parliament’s direct and solemn consideration of the question placed before it by the people of Bougainville,” he said. “This matter must never be reduced to partisan politics. It must not become a contest between government and the opposition, nor should it become a source of division between Bougainville and the rest of Papua New Guinea.”
The longer timeframe Marape has floated would give Bougainville years to build its economy and its public services before the question is revisited. The Autonomous Bougainville Government is working from a different clock. Its president, Ishmael Toroama, has said Bougainville intends to declare independence in 2030 whatever parliament decides.
What holds the two clocks apart is the Burnham Accord, signed in New Zealand last year, under which both governments agreed to be bound by parliament’s decision and to keep talking. Kerenga Kua, the member for Sinasina Yonggomugl, called the accord “some level of comfort to all of us to know that firstly, people should not react unilaterally to any outcomes. People should not resort to violence. We should all cooperate to maintain peace, harmony, good order, good governance, and then we talk. We sit down, and we talk about what we will do going forward.”
Patience has limits. An attack on mining company equipment at Panguna this month broke a long stretch of calm and suggests frustration is building over how long the question has stayed open. Kua pointed to a poem the member for Central Bougainville, Timothy Masiu, read in parliament in July, likening the matter to a tide that comes in today, and tomorrow, and the day after. “We keep coming back,” Kua said. “We keep talking about it. Keep coming back, refresh the issues, recharge the issues, keep talking about it until hopefully one day it gets resolved.”
Bougainville has had its answer since 2019. What it does not have is parliament’s.
Photo: Hanahan Bay, Buka Island. Jeremy Weate, CC BY 2.0.
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