Election of the Day: Autonomous Region of Bougainville

The Autonomous region of Bougainville comprises a main island (roughly the size of the big island of Hawaii or Puerto Rico) and a few outlying islands over 300 miles East of the Island of New Guinea. It is home to roughly 300,000 people. Politically, it is part of the country of Papua New Guinea, despite having little history or affinity, culturally, linguistically, or politically, with PNG. On Sept 4, they will elect a new government, including a president and 46 assembly members, elected from single member districts.

I don’t have any particularly clear or consistent criteria for when to cover subnational elections in this series. The two main questions, when making such a determination are “does this seem interesting or important for some reason?” and “do I feel like it?” This one gets a clear “yes” to the first (and second) question. There’s a non-trivial chance this will be the last election held in the Autonomous region of Bougainville, and the next election held here will be the first election held in the independent state of Bougainville, replacing South Sudan as the world’s youngest country.

A bit of history: despite some minor interactions with Dutch, British, and French explorers and traders, Bougainville was not formally colonized until 1886, when they became a German protectorate, following and agreement between Germany and the United Kingdom on how to divide up the Solomon Islands. This agreement also gave Germany several other Northern Solomon islands, although they ceded them in the Tripartite Convention of 1899, which set the boundaries between Bougainville and the Solomon islands that exists today. German colonialism never really got very far in a practical sense–governing Bougainville from the colonial base of German New Guinea (the northern half of main-island modern-day Papua New Guinea) wasn’t particularly practical, and live largely went on as before. Germany didn’t even set up and administrative station on the island until 1905.

Following Germany’s defeat in World War I, German colonial possessions all over the world were mandated by the League of Nations to a number of other countries. German Samoa was mandated to New Zealand, obtaining independence in 1962, while the Caroline, Mariana (excluding Guam) and Marshall Islands were mandated to Japan. Bougainville and German New Guinea were mandated to Australia. Australia decided to administere their mandates collectively as the Territory of New Guinea. After WWII, Australia merged the territory of New Guinea with the territory of Papua (the southern half of the main part of Papua New Guinea today). Papua had been a British colony prior to 1906, when they transferred control to a newly independent Australia. (As far as I can tell, this was because they found it a bit of hassle to administer, and Australia’s a newly independent country now so why shouldn’t they step up and do their part for the Commonwealth?) In 1975, Papua New Guinea obtained its independence, including Bougainville. The residents of Bougainville, which is geographically, culturally, linguistically much closer to the Solomon Islands than to the main part of Papua New Guinea, were largely united in their belief they should be independent. It didn’t help that a major copper mine, Panguna, was opened in the center of Bougainville in the 1970’s. The mine was quite lucrative, but Bougainvilleans bore the brunt of environmental and social disruptions and pollution from the mine without sharing much at all in the economic benefits. (The copper from the mine comprised nearly half of PNG’s export economy for much of the 70’s and 80’s.) Bougainville attempted to declare independence in 1975 and again in 1980, to no avail. In 1988 the Bougainville Revolutionary Army launched a war for independence that lasted over a decade and took around 20,000 lives. The peace, brokered by Australia, led to the creation of the Bougainville Autonomous Government in 2001, which significantly expanded local autonomy. The infamous mine, an early target of the BRA, remained closed, as it had been since the early months of the conflict. The peace agreement also included a pledge to hold a non-binding referendum on Bougainville’s independence no later than 2020. In 2018, former Taoiseach of Ireland Bertie Ahern was appointed chair of the Bougainville referendum commission, and preparations began. After a few delays, the referendum took place in November/December 2019. The results were overwhelming–98.3% for independence, 88% turnout.

This in itself didn’t have to mean anything. Port Moresby’s obligations under the peace agreement had now been fulfilled. PNG’s minister of Bougainville Affairs said that Papua New Guinea would “need time to absorb the results” before deciding on any next steps. Negotiations about Bougainville’s future began in earnest in 2021, and there is a general sense, in Bougainville, that Port Moresby is dragging their feet. In late June of this year the “Melanesian agreement” was signed between the two parties; it affirms, formally for the first time, that the PNG government recognizes and intends to respect the referendum results, but doesn’t contain many binding provisions to move the process along with any particular haste.

This week’s election includes a presidential election and a 46-seat single member district assembly. Incumbent president Ishmael Toroama is seeking re-election, his main competitor appears to be long-time assembly member Joe Lera. Two other members of Lera’s party are also running, but apparently they’re using a 3 person list RCV for the presidential election, and encouraging/hoping voters rank that party’s candidates 1-2-3. As one might expect given the 2019 referendum results, all candidates are committed to independence. A key difference between Toroama and Lera regards how to approach it. Toroama has set a deadline of Sept 1, 2027 to complete the independence process, and has pledged to declare independence unilaterally on that date, if the negotiations regarding succession have not reached their conclusion by that time. (My understanding is this date also appears in the Meleanesian agreement, but as a goal rather than a deadline.) Lera supports a more flexible and conciliatory approach, arguing that under Toroama’s leadership Bougainville has consistently overplayed their hand and harmed the negotiation process as a result. Other contenders, including Sam Kauona, former military leader of the BRA, are running against Toroama on the theory that he isn’t pushing hard enough for independence, and if he had been pushing harder, it’d be done by now.

Another political tightrope Bougainville politicians must navigate is the future of the Panguna mine. It hasn’t been in operation since the BRA shut it down, and keeping it closed has been the official policy of the government of the Autonomous Region since 2018. But Bougainville is a very poor place; a non-trivial portion of the population survives by subsistence agriculture with relatively little interaction with a cash economy. (The good news is the soil, climate, and growing conditions are quite good, which means practitioners of subsistence agriculture here are better off, and less in danger of food insecurity, than in much of the world, but that small blessing isn’t easily transformed into tax revenue.) Any future government of a new state will be understandably desperate for revenue. Vast reserves of copper, not to mention significant gold reserves, remain waiting to be plucked from the earth in these mines. But the horrific environmental despoilation the mine caused, when open, is a powerful memory and a potent motivator of the need for independence and self-determination. Of course mining can be done in less environmentally destructive ways than PNG and their corporate partners practiced in the 1980’s, but selling such a vision is tricky. Toroama is an advocate for cautious re-opening under conditions of self-determination only: only once we get our full independence, and carefully and democratically craft a safe and equitable plan for re-opening the mine, should we proceed with doing so. Others emphasize the need for generating revenue quickly and advocate for a more aggressive schedule. Figuring out how to re-open the mine in a manner that generates significant revenue quickly while minimizing backlash will be a serious challenge the winner of this election may well face.

This election will take place on Sept 4th, which marks a procedural change for Bougainville, as all previous elections have taken place over a period of a week or longer. (This was initially on my calendar as “Sept 2-8” but was recently changed to a single day.) The change seems to be driven by a desire to adhere to international electoral norms, although administrators admit it might prove challenging, given the travel needed to polling stations in some remote parts of the territory.

Update: shortly after pressing “publish” I learned that this election has been delayed until Friday due to “delays in ballot paper delivery and quality-control issues.” An exception will be made for the Atolls constituency, who will proceed with the September 4th date for unspecified logistical reasons. Also, apparently the assembly will be comprised of representatives from 38 single member districts, not 46. There will also be 3 seats reserved for women, and 3 seats reserved for former combatants. The president votes in the assembly as well, bringing the total size up to 45, not 46. The “Election of the Day” series editor regrets these errors.