PAPUA New Guinea’s Parliament has moved a step closer to setting out how it will handle Bougainville’s independence question.
And senior Bougainville leader and Works Minister, Peter Tsiamalili Junior, urged MPs to support a Sessional Order that would govern the process.
Tsiamalili told Parliament the motion was not a vote on Bougainville’s independence a decision on whether to accept or reject the 2019 referendum result.
He said lawmakers were being asked only to establish the framework for future deliberations.
“The purpose of the Sessional Order is to establish the process, the rules and the framework through which Parliament will subsequently consider the substantive matters relating to Bougainville,” he said.
The minister cast Bougainville’s political future as a long-running colonial issue inherited by both Bougainville and Papua New Guinea, saying the dispute predates independence and stems from boundary arrangements imposed in the late 19thCcentury.
The Bougainville Peace Agreement created a constitutional path for determining the region’s future, offering Bougainvilleans a choice between greater autonomy and sovereign independence.
In the 2019 referendum, 97.7 per cent of participating voters backed independence. The result is non-binding, however, and still requires consultation between the two governments and ratification by Papua New Guinea’s National Parliament before any change in status can take effect.
Under the proposed process, the government is expected to table three documents: the Bougainville Referendum Result, the Joint Consultation Report and the Melanesian Framework.
Tsiamalili urged MPs to agree first on the pathway before deciding the destination.
Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, emerged from a decade-long conflict that killed thousands before the peace agreement set out a roadmap toward self-determination.
Consultations between Port Moresby and Bougainville continue over the timing and terms of the next steps.
