We Say 3

Papua New Guinea's national government would privately have been dismayed by a plea from the East New Britain provincial government for greater autonomy. By agreeing to consider the request with no time set for a decision, the government had to placate the provincial leaders it came from. To have spurned their submission outright would have fanned embers of secession from mainland Papua New Guinea that have lain sometimes latent and sometimes smouldering in PNG's Islands region ever since, and even before independence came to the country in 1975.

East of East New Britain lies the island of Bougainville, where a war was fought between the national government and secessionists partly over the issue of independence from Papua New Guinea.

It ended with a cease fire and then a peace agreement in 1998 after great loss of lives and the wrecking of nearly all the island's infrastructure. A cause of the war was the national government's fear that the emergence of an independent Bougainville would have a domino effect.

It would encourage other island regions breaking away from mainland PNG, and then even mainland provinces beginning agitation to escape rule by the national government at Waigani, Port Moresby.

Some Bougainville politicians continue to have full independence as their ultimate goal. Whether the mass of Bougainville's people really want that, is another matter. Some Bougainville politicians are power-hungry personalities with only their own ambition and self-interests at heart.

Similar thoughts are harboured in some East New Britain hearts. The movement that produced the submission, now in the hands of the national government, could be the first step taken in a strategy intended to lead to eventual independence.

East New Britain differs from Bougainville. At 19,329 square kilometres, it is almost twice the size of Bougainville's 10,600 square kilometres. West New Britain, slightly larger that the eastern province, is however, somewhat less developed and likely to remain so for a long time to come.

A difficulty before would-be provincial secessionists is that few provinces have the infrastructure needed to function independently from the national government. They don't have the ports, airports, roads, telecommunications or the economies needed to make a go of independence. Most, perhaps all, would be worse off by themselves than they would be as part of Papua New Guinea.

Infrastructure has to be paid for with money and that wouldn't come as a farewell present from the indigent national government. It would not flow from aid donor countries, which, like Pacific Islands governments, rightly recoil from the thought of the region's largest, wealthiest and potentially powerful country becoming destabilised by fragmentation.

Bougainville's war was fomented not merely by thoughts of secession, but the matter of control of the island's mineral wealth. The Panguna copper mine financed the early years of Papua New Guinea's independence.

As the wreck it is now, the mine is not worth re-opening. Other very rich copper and gold prospects are thought to lie near it and those could warrant Panguna's redevelopment.

Bougainville is a very attractive little explored exploration prospect. Bougainville's leaders are very conscious of that. The lure of that potential is quite likely what now really motivates talks of eventual secession.

East New Britain's desire for greater administrative, economic and financial autonomy arose because of the national government's failure to attend adequately to provincial needs.

If Papua New Guinea's national leaders are to keep their diverse country intact, they can do no better than make huge improvements to their own performances. That is an absolute necessity for the sake of all Papua New Guineans.