Picking up the pieces

(The new president of the ABG, James Tanis, being accorded a chief’s honour by his clansmen at his recent inauguration celebrations at his home village of Marai in the Bana district. The president was paid the highest respect and was carried to the celebration arena by his people)

Bougainville’s new president James Tanis has a big job to restore peace and unity, writes ILYA GRIDNEFF

WHEN young Bougainvillean James Tanis worked at the giant Australian-run Panguna copper mine in 1988, he was one day told not to come to work because the mine’s finance office would be targeted by saboteurs.
The warning proved right and, the following day, the 23-year-old’s job was to sift through his burnt office’s charred remains and pick up the pieces.
Twenty years on, following a long and destructive secessionist conflict and further years of arrested development, another chapter of Bougainville’s history begins, with Mr Tanis taking up office as president of the troubled autonomous region.
Once again, he has to pick up the pieces.
Mr Tanis, 43, admits he’s young for the role, and knows he has 16 months before he faces the voters at fresh elections.

In his maiden speech after his inauguration last week, Mr Tanis did not shy away from what he knows is a mammoth task ahead.
“An enormous amount of work and patience and tolerance (is needed). It will not be done in 16 months. But it will be done,” he said.
Mr Tanis outlined a Martin Luther King style “dream” to bring together rival groups, factions, clans and sub-clans. He wants to unify the regions and inspire a disaffected younger generation to become, once again, a proud, peaceful and prosperous Bougainville.
“I have a dream of a truly united Bougainville, free of weapons, where people resolve their differences through traditional ways of discussion, reconciliation and customary forgiveness – not through the barrel of a gun,” he said.

“I am driven by the concept of unity of one Bougainville.
“The only true road is peace,” he said.
“We will be one people – one Bougainville.”
Tensions on the island ignited in 1988 when disgruntled locals blew up power pylons at the massive Panguna mine.

This act of sabotage, and further such acts that followed, proved an insurmountable setback for the copper and gold mine, which was forced to close.
Central Bougainville landowners, embittered by disputes over royalty payments and the environmental damage caused by the mine, had begun a decade-long armed secessionist struggle, first against the mine, then against PNG’s security forces.
By late 1997 after the infamous Sandline affair unfolded in Port Moresby, including the flying in of mercenaries, an army mutiny and a defiant prime minister losing his job, Bougainville’s civil war dissipated and ended.

The mercenaries, who were meant to quash Bougainville’s secessionists, were sent packing, prime minister Julius Chan was forced to step down and the new administration of prime minister Bill Skate, with Australian and New Zealand support, opened the way for peace talks.
But, many thousands had died on the island.
Lost income from what was once the world’s largest open cut gold and copper mine left central Bougainville’s impressive infrastructure decaying and dilapidated.
The civil conflict was over but the next decade saw Bougainville struggle through a legacy of post-conflict trauma, including widespread destruction and arrested development.
Part of the 2001 Bougainville Peace Agreement offered an independence referendum some time after 2015. This much sought-after vote remains at risk as disputes and feuds between different factions on the island continue.

Mr Tanis has acknowledged the legacy of former president, the late Joseph Kabui, who died from a heart attack last June.
Mr Kabui, in the final stages of his life, was increasingly criticised over a series of controversial deals on future mining concessions.
Mr Tanis distanced himself from his friend and former boss.
“I cannot be another Kabui,” he said.
“I am James Tanis. I will continue his (Kabui) works but, at the same time, I am not just a photocopy. I must continue the good work my way.”
Mining was what brought Bougainville into the world’s focus and made it the hub of PNG’s economy.

It brought Bougainville boom but it also brought bust and sparked the civil war.
“I want to make it very clear that I will not force mining upon you,” Mr Tanis told Bougainvilleans.
“Any decision on mining rests in the hands of the people of Bougainville.
“We must remember that Bougainville’s future does not depend on mining alone.
“We need a broad-based economy,” Mr Tanis said.
“To the Panguna landowners, I say I support you in your moves to end the conflict where it started,” he said.

The conflict and formative events of 1988 interrupted Mr Tanis’ undergraduate degree in PNG.
Instead of continuing studies, he went home and joined the armed struggle.
But despite his close association with former Bougainville Revolutionary Army leaders Francis Ona and Mr Kabui, Mr Tanis is more recently known as a key player forging the peace agreement.
After that, from 2003 to 2005, Mr Tanis worked as Bougainville’s minister for peace and autonomy where he pushed for reconciliation, peace building and gun reduction in troubled south and central Bougainville.

In the 2005 presidential elections, Mr Tanis came third behind John Momis, PNG’s current ambassador to China, and the overall winner Mr Kabui.
Since then, Mr Tanis has operated a small tradestore in Bougainville’s relatively peaceful capital Buka.
In an essay Mr Tanis wrote in 2005, he recalled the Panguna mine office fire in 1988 when he worked as a casual employee in the mine’s finance section.
He heard workers complain that expatriate staff were better paid and Australian bosses showed favouritism and failed to employ enough locals.
The mine’s toxic tailings polluted a river his clan relied on for food and customary practice near where he was born in Panam village, Lamane, South Bougainville near the border with Central Bougainville.

A 10-year secessionist conflict followed by many years of slow peace building racked by continuing internal division with little economic development means Bougainvilleans face tough challenges to rebuild their infrastructure and economy.
Mr Tanis knows if Bougainville’s pieces are to be put together again, he has to first pick up the peace process, then comes the ultimate goal – independence.

Source: The National