Nerau bids for top post

BOUGAINVILLE

By DOMINIC N SENGI
PAUL Emmanuel Nerau, or Pen as he is affectionately called by mates, stands tall in the race to find Bougainville’s future president.
Physically tall as he is, he is a towering enigma of PNG and Bougainville’s yesteryears.
The son of a Buin chieftain, Nerau has made it plain clear, he is indeed the man Bougainville people will need to lead them as president into self-rule and statehood. He proposes himself as the “golden bridge” between Waigani, Papua New Guinea and Bougainville, the requisite to harmonise political, administrative constitutional, economic, social and infrastructure options for a future Bougainville.
The 68-year-old veteran is standing on solid credentials and reputation as charge for his leadership drive.
Backed by an unmatched bank of knowledge, global corporate management skills and experiences, made more noble and shrewd by his diplomatic training, and representative service for PNG and Bougainville, his global standing, renders him as Bougainville’s gift she rather not do without. Seriously!
If indeed the economic independence and ‘blue ocean’ national development strategic aspirations are Bougainville’s development bible for empowerment and prosperity for its people, Nerau stands in between on the golden bridge and blue Bougainville ocean with a development script firmly in his mindset.
None among others in the race are close on count of credentials and experience, including visionary innovation and political creativity than Nerau, who undoubtedly comes strongly along as Bougainville’s brand personality and leadership microcosm of acumen and intelligentsia.
Nerau reminisces on his island’s political entity, a soon-to-be nation’s political history. Its political skyline is dotted with men of great stature.
Following after other great men
Somare’s Bully Beef club front-liner, one of the nation’s founding fathers, the late Sir Paul Lapun, Donatus Mola, Leo Hannet, Theodore Miriung, Thomas Anis, Leo Morgan, John Momis, Alexis Sarei, Mel Togolo, and Moses Havini are among many others.
Nerau stands in the line down from these great men of repute who, individually or together, in their own ways have contributed immensely in the service of PNG and Bougainville. He draws a massive amount of strength and energy from this composite vault of history.
Nerau had carved his own pathway into the top echelon of these leaders that produced and governed Bougainville’s growth path as it integrated with greater PNG during the formative years of nationhood.
Growing up in his home district of Buin, South Bougainville, and attending the Marist Brothers’ St Joseph’s Rigu High School in Kieta, Nerau had observed the political rise of Bougainville’s outgoing president, Chief Dr John Momis at the beginning of his political and leadership career.
Together with the late Leo Hannet, Alexis Sarei and Daniel Sipin, Momis was among the crop of Bougainville seminarians expelled from the Catholic run St Fidelis Minor Seminary at Kap, in the Madang in the early 1970s.
Their sin – advocating free speech and expression through a ‘Dialogue’ newsletter – had violated the strict rules of this conservative Catholic priesthood institution. The only other Papua New Guinean among them was late Sir Ignatius Kilage from Chimbu, who later became PNG’s first Chief Ombudsman.
The Island’s political history also had a leaf of names such as the late Archbishop Sir Peter Kurongku and Bishop Gregory Singkai when the big hand of the Catholic Church was over this Melanesian island part of the PNG map that was agitating for self-rule and determination very early on in PNG’s history.
The church’s liberation theology teachings had rubbed on to these pioneering leaders of Bougainville, Nerau among them, instilling in them the steel, the moral core to the point where liberation from the bondage of colonialism was the only cause-way to greater freedom and independence.
Socialist leanings
Nerau had observed Momis especially, to be of socialist orientation, who subscribed to the African Julius Nyrere brand as evidenced by his early lay teachings in St Joseph’s, Rigu following expulsion from Kap.
But as Nerau freely admits, this solid mindset had set Momis off to a pioneering start as a leader in Bougainville and PNG.
Momis was quick, after completing his priesthood studies in Australia to seek the people’s mandate to replace the aging Sir Paul Lapun in the House of Assembly, the forerunner to the PNG Parliament today. The 1972 House of Assembly elections afforded Momis opportunity, together with overwhelming support he received from land rights agitation of the infamous Navidokoi Navitu Association (NNA) and other micro-nationalist uprisings occurring at the time.

Gifted with experience in corporate governance and diplomacy Paul Nerau makes a credible bid for presidency in a possible independent Bougainville

History records that Bougainville people’s unbroken mandate enabled Momis to hold onto Bougainville power socket until his most recent retirement.
As ‘father’ of the PNG Constitution, one can see the Nyrerian savories in the PNG constitution, and why not, Nerau quietly quipped when talking to this writer.
“Momis was there to do the job and together with others, he did it.
“As someone from Buin where both Momis and I come from, I had been proud except that what separated us has been my early subscription to the Pangu Party ideals of nationalism – unity in diversity, as Sir Paul Lapun and Leo Hannet had me staunchly subscribe to the Pangu cause in those formative days of PNG’s independence.
“In fact, I ended up marrying Sir Paul Lapun’s pioneering secretary, Pauline, now my loving and dear wife of 46 years. She is my anchor of strength as I found my own life and active participation in both PNG and Bougainville’s cause for self-rule and independence.
“I have observed in my formative years as a young Bougainvillean the infamous Navidakoi Navitu Association (NNA), an early movement for political dissent against foreign intrusion.
“History holds that NNA became the voice of an all-women protest front of the local Rorovana community who fearlessly confronted Australia’s colonial administration that supported BCL’s early entry into Bougainville and de-stabilised and upset the communal matrilineal landownership rights by discriminately clearing out Loloho-Rorovana beachfront to prepare the ground for BCL’s major copper concentrate holding and shipping wharf.
“This special part of our history emboldens my conviction as I seek the high office of the Presidency to give equity in political leadership to the plight of Bougainville women and girls. History proves, women and girls took the first fight of liberation – not us men. When men got involved, Bougainville lost its way and went into deep darkness.
“I am hardened with such historical real-time knowledge of the people’s struggle for land rights and against external suppression and domination.
“I am inspired by such history to serve the future of Bougainville and its people, especially women and girls more confidently better than most of my rival candidates, many were not born at that time in Bougainville’s invaluable history.
Unwavering loyalty to Pangu
“My Pangu loyalty is unwavered to this day. In fact, like in a flash of Bougainville’s history, how gratifying and proud I have been in standing tall on this side of the millennium, witnessing a Pangu-led young Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea freely consenting to a United Nation’s supervised Referendum for Bougainville.
“My loyalty I believe places me in a unique position of leadership posture to create and serve as the golden bridge to work with the Government of PNG to fast track PM Marape’s commitment to the people of Bougainville in Arawa when he warmly received the result of the referendum vote and his full political and economic independence commitment for Bougainville.
“I am embracing this vision by the PM’s platform to create a sustainable, self-sufficient economy toward economic independence.
“Look after yourself first before independence instead of crying all the time to Waigani,” Nerau says would be the only sensible means to set the stage for the final transfer of political power from Waigani.’
Pen has a new developmental narrative for Bougainville.
“People must form the core of development and political planning and management to start from there. The people are the reason for development.
“Companies are pieces of paper. It is the people who deliver the growth potential of the company and its development aspirations for profit in the commercial sense and in the governments’ sphere, the delivery of services and infrastructures, including social deliverables, and that is from someone who knows what he is talking about”, Nerau says.
Hannett, as second premier of PNG’s first provincial government and founding chairman of the province’s iconic business arm, the Bougainville Development Corporation (BDC) was a visionary. He could see the rich spin-offs flowing from BCL’s Panguna copper mine and that a business case was necessary to be in place to capture the spoils.
He rushed off to Australia to force Nerau into a compromise agreement to return to Bougainville to conceptualise and establish the BDC business structure for the then North Solomon’s Provincial Government.
Imagine the weight of sacrifice and compromise in selfless giving confronting a young indigenous intellectual Bougainvillean and legal trailblazer, having to decide on a future he hardly imagined possible.
Hannett’s visionary intuition had Bougainville’s eyes set on Nerau, only 27 years old then to take on the challenging offer before him.
His wife Pauline, matriarch of Lamuai village in Buin was there to encourage her husband, like any Bougainvillean woman would do when faced with a male spouse whose selfless decision to sacrifice his and the young family’s personal interest and ambition ahead of that of the Bougainville people at large.
Hannett succeeded, thanks to the Nerau’s high sacrifice.
The lawyer surrendered his and his family’s lucrative tidings by partnership with one of Australia’s largest law firms, Mallseons Stephen Jacques and set sail home to Bougainville to attempt the challenge laid before him by Hannett.
Through Hannett, Nerau found himself in the lead of Bougainville’s third-tier crop of pioneering leaders that would found the core of technocrats to build Bougainville’s early corporate and business class. Such was also necessary to help assure Hannett and Momis’ politics gain for the province of PNG.
At a mere age of 27, Nerau was appointed managing director for BDC, that skeptics at that time, including colonialists working the Bougainville Copper Mine in Panguna thought would collapse right at its start.
Pen proved skeptics completely wrong, however.
He built the most successful business arm of all provincial governments in PNG on record.
BDCs quality corporate governance was of first class or world standard in those days.
Annual company reports were published and printed in gloss paper, circulated widely in PNG and in CRA’s Australian boardrooms around the world including to shareholders. Annual general meetings (AGM’s) were held in compliance with the
Companies Act and the Auditors, Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) never expressed a disclaimer opinion on all of BDC’s annual accounts and reports.
Now that was just a few years into PNG’s political independence and the work of a 27-year-old Bougainvillean native.
“At age 68, it has taken me almost my entire life to prepare myself for this moment to run for president of Bougainville at this election.
“I appeal to those running the race to see how much difference quality, knowledge and practical high level corporate and diplomatic experience one requires to have to adequately and proudly represent the Bougainville people at the level of leadership in governance and business.”
He made Bougainville a world class nation – then.
A smart Bougainvillean brain fathered the PNG constitution. Another one, innovated BDC as a template that 19 other PNG provinces emulated – but all failed except his own.
BDC, the business Bougainvilleans innovated to underwrite and insure a future economy was killed – they killed it themselves.
Thriving business class crucial
“We cannot have political independence without having a thriving independent business class and critical infrastructures forming an early, commercial, manufacturing and industrial base for the Bougainville economy,” Nerau says.
“We ourselves and for our own sake, placed the provision for referendum in the PNG constitution which we went back to invoke to give us that elusive independence we had sought for over 44 years.
“We fought a war in peacetime PNG and Pacific. We brought United Nations to our shores, to supervise and referee our own game we desired long ago.
“PNG is our own game we must now have a duty to reciprocate investing in trust-building, partnership, high level diplomacy and strategic thinking, business acumen and smartness.
“The quest for Bougainville Presidency is not for the light-hearted, nor is it for 27-year-olds and below,” Nerau says ultimately.
Retrospectively, an in stark contrast with how even some of PNG’s Kumul Group of Companies in today’s 21st century PNG perform, these are unable to match nor come anywhere close to Nerau’s then BDC’s corporate governance standards he had pitched for both Bougainville and PNG.
The future vision of the pioneering class of Bougainville’s political and social order echelon has attained its nationalistic conscientious desire – a free Bougainville from suppression, domination and the exercise of her inalienable right to self-determination.
The Bougainville war has denied political and economic development uniformity as well as continuity.
Nerau is concerned and troubled in knowing a generational gap in education, knowledge, experience and skills and exposure as result of war exists today. It is agonising and confronting to even think back on how worse off Bougainville has become, Nerau regrets.
“Most if not all Bougainvilleans of this generation do not know where we had come from, why we went down on our knees and suffered the obvious resource curse”, Nerau says.
Here needed is a leader that has traversed Bougainville time and space.
Pen is fully aware of the life and blood sacrifices of 20,000 lives lost as offerings by both Bougainvilleans and Papua New Guineans on both sides of the Bougainville conflict.
“Sadly, we had laid down on the grand altar of sacrifice, these offerings. We have a common duty therefore to find the dividend of such a massive sacrifice. Only good leadership will enable us gain from these priceless offertories,” Nerau says with a remorseful shrug.
The most challenging call before Bougainville voters during this critical period of searching out a leader with a well-founded knowledge and experience bank is a key trigger toward the emancipation of Bougainville’s renaissance.
Negotiating effectively, and quickly with the PNG Government for fast-tracking the Parliamentary vote and ratification of the overwhelming referendum outcome further poses challenges to the future leadership of Bougainville.
The central Marape-Steven government in Waigani has, in principle, pronounced acceptance of the referendum vote outcome. Waigani owes Bougainville a due K500 million or more in financial support.
Intra-Bougainville financial corruption and pork-barreling political behaviours of the past have introduced a trust-deficit between PNG and Bougainville that must be reconciled.
PM Marape wants as requisite for Parliamentary ratification of Bougainville’s willingness to accept Waigani’s investment in economic and social infrastructures, as well as a special economic zone (SEZ) development for Bougainville. A tough Bougainville negotiator leader is required for this challenge as well.
Nerau’s credentials and leadership profile are unmatched.
As a lawyer, top-class corporate leader in business negotiation, strategy and management and high profile diplomat representing PNG in the post of consul general in Brisbane, in the Australian state of Queensland, he has prepared himself well post-BDC.
On return, he was appointed by the Government as chairman of the Kumul Consolidated Holdings Ltd. He resigned following his revelation of the now controversial Manumanu land deal involving political heads of the organisation.
He took upon himself, perhaps PNG’s largest philanthropy act, chairing recently, a team of high energy enthusiastic young Papua New Guineans in netting PGK1.8 million toward the Australian Bush Fire Appeal 2020 which PM Marape had given recently to his counterpart Scott Morrison of Australia.
His diplomatic profile enabled him to secure with Queensland State Government agreements for PNG and Bougainville on Technical and Vocational, Educational Training (TVET) for skills development. This opportunity exists for Bougainville’s secondary andtertiary school leavers who want to upgrade and receive world-class qualifications to effectively participate in global labour mobility programmes
The presidential leadership candidate believes in national content and labour mobility for his people as necessary human capital backbone to support a country that could potentially earn Bougainville the remittance dollar that has been missing since PNG’s independence.
Questions are being asked about Nerau’s handling of the assets of the defunct BDC. He will be out to explain to those critics, many of whom are candidates themselves and their supporters.
Nerau says such questions naturally occur in circumstance like this but adds with sympathetic grin that BDC is a watershed, a basket-case we’d rather not talk about.
“It (BDC) is dead, its source of life and energy drawn from the economic life of Bougainville Copper Ltd is dead too, with the mine.
“It is more positive and progressive that Bougainville’s future must not rely on talking too much about dead investments.
“It is economic fact that investment in dead estates accrue for those seeking its fortune no real economic, social, political or financial dividends. Its dead investment and the BDC ghost is all around us,” Nerau quipped.
Nerau’s enigma and brand personality is the only investment Bougainville has standing, though he represents and symbolises ‘the only one’ if the Buin dialect meaning of the name is true. Nerau – the only lone Bougainvillean of old – left standing to be judged at the last post.
Criticisms and the demand to know what happened to the assets of the BDC are welcome but who among the political skeptics and critics is able to do what Nerau was able to do at age 27?
Nerau ran BDC Group that had 19 subsidiaries. These included the following: Plantations; construction; hardware; fuel service stations; workshop, catering; printing; real estate; airline (BougAir); travel services (Coral Sea Travel Services), real estate; camp services; international shipping (New Guinea Express Lines), limestone mining at Manetai in Bougainville, the only limestone mining and lime plant ever established in PNG and the Pacific Island region.
Had it not been for the crisis, BDC would have been the multi-billion business house in PNG corporate citizenry today.
It was Nerau, whilst chairman of PNG’s Kumul Consolidated Holdings Ltd (KCHL) that first raised the alarm on the Manumanu land deal. He resigned in protest thereafter.
He is no doubt an experienced high level corporate negotiator, having negotiated and obtained very good outcomes with BCL for the benefit of the BDC representing the provincial government at that time and the people of Bougainville.
His track record is intact when it comes to dealing with global multinational companies such as BCL for the attainment of equity for all.
Bougainville’s future war
Bougainville will require him for one other global competition that is going to challenge it due to its strategic geo-political and geographical location on the Asia and Pacific map.
The future war is already on Bougainville, oblivious to many people of the island region. Bougainville, its people and government will find themselves confronting a new war much more terrifying than WWI or WWII.
Not many candidates in this presidential race know but given Bougainville’s strategic geographical location in the Asia and Pacific region at large, the island region is subject to superpower contest for the PNG, Bougainville and the Pacific space.
Like Guam, Caroline Islands (Federated States of Micronesia [FSM]), and Manus (Lombrum) in PNG, Bougainville sits directly from Wake Island (US Pacific territory) and Nauru on WWI and WWII military structured third approach that the Western military alliance, including Australia had designed during the war of ‘Democracy-Free Enterprise verses Communism (Russia and China)’.
The US, Australia and New Zealand (Anzus Alliance) are militarising the Pacific region to contain China’s advance into PNG and Bougainville region as well as Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in Melanesia.
After Manus-Lombrum, Bougainville looks sure to be the next target that the Alliance will want to set up a military-naval base. With China’s direct investment interest in the Bougainville Copper Mine and Australia’s scrambling counterweighting in containing Chinese advancing influence through its development aid and loan mechanisms, signs are already clear that Bougainville is facing the eye of a cold war storm of the 21st century Indo-Pacific region.
With the current geopolitical and military scenario, the next Bougainville president will have to be someone of high diplomatic and global stature to be able to effectively understand, deal with and defend Bougainville’s national interest, including economic interest.
Most importantly though, its future constitutional sovereignty and independence.
This future kind of leadership scenario that is required is certainly not for those that are young and ambitious by heart and without the skills, knowledge and exposure. It requires a ‘black bone’ Bougainvillean to the core of intelligentsia and collective will whose national, regional and global profile could stand in the way to caution external interest against patronising, suppressing and domineering attitudes toward and against a Bougainville government and people’s interest.
Nerau, the lone colossal Bougainvillean, born under the satin midnight sky of Emmanuel-Christmas 68 years ago in Buin, is standing alone in this grand leadership contest to secure the mandate of the good people of Bougainville in taking on the current and future challenges for his island regional abode.

• Dominic Sengi is a freelance writer.