By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist
A longtime Bougainville politician, Joe Lera, wants to see widespread changes in the way the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) is run.
The Papua New Guinea region, which is seeking independence from Port Moresby, is holding elections in the first week of September.
Seven candidates are running for president, including Lera.
He held the regional seat in the PNG national Parliament for 10 years before resigning to contest the presidency in the 2020 election.
This time around, Lera is campaigning on what he sees as faults in the approach of the Ishmael Toroama administration and told RNZ Pacific he is offering a different tack.
JOE LERA: This time, people have seen that the current government is the most corrupt. They have addressed only one side of independence, which is the political side, the other two sides, They have not done it very well.
DON WISEMAN: What do we mean by that? We can’t bandy around words like corruption. What do you mean by corruption?
JL: What they have done is huge. They are putting public funds into personal members’ accounts, like the constituency grant – 360,000 kina a year.
DW: As someone who has operated in the national parliament, you know that that is done there as well. So it’s not corrupt necessarily, is it?
JL:Well, when they go into their personal account, they use it for their own family goods, and that development, it should be development funds. The people are not seeing the tangible outcomes in the number two side, which is the development side.
All the roads are bad. The hospitals are now running out of drugs. Doctors are checking the patients, sending them to pharmaceutical shops to buy the medicine, because the hospitals have run out.
DW: These are problems that are affecting the entire country, aren’t they, and there’s a shortage of money. So how would you solve it? What would you do differently?
JL: We will try to make big changes in addressing sustainable development, in agriculture, fishing, forestry, so we can create jobs for the small people.
Instead of talking about big, billion dollar mining projects, which will take a long time, we should start with what we already have, and develop and create opportunities for the people to be engaged in nation building through sustainable development first, then we progress into the higher billion dollar projects.
Now we are going talking about mining when the people don’t have opportunity and they are getting poorer and poorer. That’s one area, the other area, to create change we will try to fix the government structure, from ABG to community governments to village assemblies, down to the chiefs.
At the moment, the policies they have have fragmented the conduit of getting the services from the top government down to to the village people.
DW: In the past, you’ve spoken out against the push for independence, suggesting I think, that Bougainville is not ready yet, and it should take its time. Where do you stand at the moment on the independence question?
JL: The independence question? We are all for it. I’m not against it, but I’m against the process. How they are going about it. I think the answer has been already given in the Bougainville Peace Agreement, which is a joint creation between the PNG and ABG government, and the process is very clear.
Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside of the Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result.
But the Peace Agreement doe not say independence will be given to us based on the result. What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.
When we fix those, the nation building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.
DW: So you’re talking about something that would be quite a way further down the line than what this current government is talking about?
JL: The issue is timing. They are putting deadlines themselves, and they are trying to push the PNG government to swallow it. The PNG government is a sovereign nation already.
We should respect and honestly, in a family room situation, negotiate, talk with them, as the Peace Agreement says, and reach understanding on the timing and other related issues, but not to even take a confrontational approach, which is what they are doing now, but take a family room approach, where we sit and negotiate in the spirit of the Peace Agreement.
This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Don Wiseman is a senior journalist with RNZ Pacific. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
