Bougainville President elect prepares for swearing in ceremony

Updated January 2, 2009 15:03:43

Next week James Tanis will be sworn in as the second President of the Autonomous Bougainville Government of Papua New Guinea. Mr Tanis is a former Vice President of the Bougainville Peoples Congress. Experts say the election of the new president represents a generational change in the leadership for the Province. Mr Tanis won the by-election over 13 others following the death of Joseph Kabui last June.

Geraldine Coutts

Adviser to the Autonomous Bougainville Government, and a Fellow in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Anthony Reagan

REAGAN: James is a younger man from a new generation of leadership who was a student when the conflict began, he was at University in Lae.

He was a secretary to Francis Ona, the leader of the Bougainville Interim Government and Bougainville Revolutionary Army in the early period of the conflict and was one of the last of the main leadership to leave Francis Ona and join the peace process.

He did that in about 1998, some months after the peace process had begun.

But throughout the period since then, the ten to eleven years since then, he's been one of the main leaders of the negotiations with Papua New Guinea for a compromised settlement to the conflict. And so whilst he's seen by many as strongly pro-secessionist, he's in fact always been throughout the peace process very much an advocate for finding a middle way.

So I think we will see a continuation of support for the negotiated peace agreement for the autonomy arrangements for trying to make those work. I don't think we will see a dramatic difference there.

We'll just have to wait and see whether he takes a different position on some of the internal issues facing Bougainville. For example, the possibility of resumption of mining.

Joseph Kabui and his cabinet were certainly heading in the direction of restarting mining in Bougainville and that's of course a major controversial issue, whilst many support it, there is quite a lot oppose it.

COUTTS: Well, what about Joseph Tanis himself, because he was one of the militants around the mine in Panguna opposing mining during the conflict and was partly instrumental in the mine being closed down?

REAGAN; Well, not entirely. One of the myths about Bougainville is that it was all about closing the mine and Francis Ona never intended to close the mine in full.

What he wanted was to get a lot more revenue from the mine and to share it more equally in Bougainville and he got closure of the mine early on as part of his strategy to get a negotiated settlement, and he hoped that a closure of the mine early on would hasten the speed towards independence, but that the mine would then be the main source of revenue for an independent Bougainville.

So there is a lot of misconceptions about what people believed about mining in Bougainville and I don't think Tanis has a clearly stated position on those issues yet.

We just have to wait and see what emerges.

COUTTS: Well, with an interview that Radio Australia and Pacific Beat has already done with Mr Tanis. He has said that he is going to wait and see and he is going to leave it up to the people when it comes to mining,

But when it comes to voting, he was a clear first ahead of the second comer, Mr Kaona. Do you think that is going to allow him the time or will people give him the time now to find his feet and establish himself as a leader or will he be expected to hit the ground running?

REAGAN: He doesn't have much time. The next election is in the middle of next year, the middle of 2010, so he's really got less than 18 months to establish himself. So he will be under a lot of pressure to get himself established as a major figure with difference from others early on. The turnout in the election was quite low, around 35,000 voters out of an estimated voter number of about 120,000, so you are only looking at about a third of the people voting.

COUTTS: So why was do you think, are people not interested or have they just lost heart?

REAGAN: It's flattened in PNG and in Bougainville, the by-elections. The turnouts seem to be pretty low. I think in part it was because the election was quite different from the previous one, when there was two clearly presidential if you like candidates, Momis and Kabui, which clearly defined ideological positions.

This time there were 14 candidates. The ideological differences between them were much less clear. They didn't have party machines generating lots of support for them and people were a bit unclear, unsure of what it all meant and thinking well, the real votes next year anyway.

So and there was some difficulties also in some areas in getting to the vote and there were some problems of the rolls. So all of those facts together I think explain most of the problems of the turnout.

COUTTS: Well, people listening to this now will hear that you are clearly in an airport with all the announcements going on in the background. Anthony Reagan, thank you for taking the time before you board a flight to Bougainville for Monday's swearing in. We'll let you get your flight, and thank you very much for joining us on Pacific Beat today.

REAGAN: Not at all, good to speak to you Geraldine.