Massey University's Anna Powles says Bougainville's independence is an incredibly challenging issue. Photo: BenarNews / Stefan Armbruster
As the Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville prepares to elect a new government, front and centre is the issue of independence.
There have been plenty of discussions on the matter, most recently when both governments gathered at Burnham in Christchurch.
These negotiations come on top of a resounding result in a referendum on independence conducted in Bougainville in 2019.
RNZ Pacific spoke with Anna Powles, an associate professor in defence and security studies at Massey University, to get her view on what is going on.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
DON WISEMAN: It's coming up to six years since the referendum, and I'm just wondering what sort of progress has been made toward this quest for independence. Has any been made?
ANNA POWLES: Well Don, this is an incredibly challenging issue. As you said, we're coming up to the six year anniversary of the referendum, where around 97 percent of Bougainville's population voted for independence.
But, as we know, that referendum was not binding and so we now find ourselves in 2025 where Bougainvillean and Papua New Guinean parties met in Burnham army base to work through these issues, and they ultimately came up with the Melanesian Agreement.
They signed that in June this year, which really tried to shift the progress forward in terms of trying to seek a solution to an issue which dates back to pre-independence for Papua New Guinea.
Photo: Supplied
DW: Yes, well, this Melanesian solution that sounds like the solution you have when you haven't got a solution. It doesn't seem to amount to much to me, as an outsider.
AP: Well, it was remarkable on a couple of points. Firstly, Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape referred to Burnham as a spiritual home of the Bougainville peace process. And yet, on the other hand, you have the Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama saying very clearly that the independence was non-negotiable, and setting out a number of terms, including the fact that Bougainville was to become independent by the 1st o September 2027.
If Papua New Guinea did not ratify that Bougainville would make a unilateral declaration of independence, which is not the first time Bougainville has done that either. In 1990, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) made a unilateral declaration of independence, and similarly, back in the 1960s as well.
DW: Yes, and they have a habit of not going very well, these unilateral declarations, in various situations around the world. Do they? They don't work.
AP: No, and that's where there is effort, through the joint moderation meeting process, to try and find solutions to the question of Bougainville's political status, either within the broader Papua New Guinean state - you currently have the Autonomous Province.
There have been a number of options which have been touted, similar to, for instance, free association like Cook Islands' relationship with New Zealand, for example. But none of these options have really gained a lot of ground at all.
DW: And they haven't gained ground because they exclude sovereignty, and that's their critical thing. They want to be able to join the UN and bodies like that, don't they?
AP: Exactly. And these talks come on the eve of Bougainville's presidential elections, which take place on the fourth of September this year, less than a month away.
The question of Bougainville's future, both its political future, but also its economic future, are issues which are top of mind, very much so, as voters go into this election.
What is of concern here is that there are still a lot of outstanding issues within Bougainville itself relating to the Bougainville crisis and the years of conflict. It's very hard to see a potential way forward here, as Papua New Guinea has also been fairly clear in terms of its own position of not letting Bougainville break away fully.
DW: Yes, PNG has really not given any ground at all have they, since the beginning of this process?
AP: No, and they have concerns, that, and these are long standing concerns, and we've seen a number of different Papua New Guinean Prime Ministers reiterate the concern that if Bougainville was to become fully independent, that that could potentially lead to a cascade of claims by other states, for instance. And that has always been very much at the heart of Papua New Guinea's concern.
DW: Now one of the key campaigners for the presidential election, veteran politician Joe Lera, who's been the regional MP in the PNG parliament in the past, he says, on the quest for independence that the current government has been far too strident, and he thinks they've got to take a more conciliatory approach towards Port Moresby, and it sort of makes sense, doesn't it? We have had these dramatic statements coming from Ishmael Toroama at the beginning of the various talks that have been held, laying out where they're going, where they want to go, or where they intend going, before anyone's heard from the other side. It seems like a back to front negotiation tactic.
AP: Well, it certainly limits the ability for either side to actually negotiate. Lera has made that comment recently that there is strong support for Bougainville and independence. Very, very strong support. We saw that with the 97.7 percent voter turnout in favor of independence for Bougainville, but that the process itself needs to be rethought through.
The process needs to allow for far greater negotiation than we're currently seeing with these declaratory declared positions, as you say from the outset.
There's not a lot of wiggle room there to move, and this is where there is some source of frustration around that.
So while there's a demographic that Toroama is appealing to, in terms of being very strident on independence, there's still a process that needs to be worked through, and for as long as that I can remember, and there has always been discussion about a Melanesian solution to this issue, but these kinds of declarations are not facilitating that.
DW: What do they precisely mean by a Melanesian solution?
AP: Well, finding a distinctly Melanesian approach or a Melanesian solution to the issue.
Now, what that looks like I'm not sure. There's been various discussions over the years about what that would look like - what it would look like for Bougainville to remain part of Papua New Guinea in a way. But Bougainville is already autonomous, although, key areas like foreign policy, for instance, still fall under Papua New Guinean responsibility.
It is unclear what that would potentially look like, but finding a way which is ensuring that the process is peaceful to reach that outcome, and that is going to become increasingly challenging.
