Peles Sankamap!!

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Comment by Jackie on October 24, 2008 at 11:31pm

hi....
Apologies... this comment is not for those previous posts about Mr Kabui....and politics....haueva...

Im not one of them... but I am a really gr8 fan of the BUKA tribe... I love it so wits for their bamboo performance...I wish to tok to many lain in here...tok to me...mi blo souths blo PNG....not highlands...but the islands...haha

Comment by Ritts on October 12, 2008 at 1:58pm

Soorrry if i am so late in tuning in, however, i think that the late president Sir Joseph Kabui was a man of courage and humble strength, with his honor and power, he was the back bone of what bougainville is today, The Autonomous Region of Bougainville... To all my dear bougainvilleans, never forget about where you come from, if you have what it has to develop Bougainville, please support it in ne way,


Will return back home!

Comment by Asunta Jean on September 27, 2008 at 7:55pm

did you all see the Presidential debate today on CNN? what do yu all think of it.

Comment by Asunta Jean on July 16, 2008 at 2:15pm

these a are some pretty nasty jokes my friend.
try and post some mice ones that make us laugh and not ones that are stupid. on ya joke!! you think women are only good for their "south side'
my bro these are kind of jokes yu share with ya male friends on ya drinking parties. not with ladies like me and Cate!!
Cheers
Still Friends.
AJ

Comment by Asunta Jean on June 21, 2008 at 4:49pm

Hello Friends. have you seen this transcript of the interview with J Kabui a week before his death?


Bougainville - The Killer Deal
Broadcast: 17/06/2008
Reporter: Steve Marshall
Transcript

MARSHALL: Joseph Kabui was a President under pressure. Just over a week ago he died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-four. This was the last journey President Kabui made into the heart of his homeland. He had grand plans for his so-called “treasure island” with its wealth of precious metals underground.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: I’d like to see Bougainville become a Kuwait of the Pacific. That’s my dream.

MARSHALL: Only weeks before his death, the President gave this Australian businessman rights to much of the island’s mineral riches.

LINDSAY SEMPLE: [Businessman] In terms of integrity, in terms of character, he was a giant amongst men.

MARSHALL: But who will get Bougainville’s billions, now the President’s gone?

FRANCESCA SEMOSO: And for those that are trying to sell Bougainville in that deal, you might has well pack up and go.

MARSHALL: Deep in the heart of the Bougainville jungle, the reminders of a painful past. In its day, the huge Australian owned Panguna copper mine was one of the richest in the world. It accounted for nearly half of PNG’s export earnings until civil war destroyed it.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: [Autonomous Bougainville Govt] I mean we slaughtered one another, a mother against mother, a father-in-law against son-in-law, a brother against brother, a sister against sister – that’s what we went through.

MARSHALL: Joseph Kabui was the political mastermind behind the independence movement.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: [Archive footage, Four Corners 1991] Ever since God created the universe, all of Bougainville has been separate.

MARSHALL: More than ten thousand lives were lost in the civil war, sparked by landowners after a bigger share of the mining company’s profits.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: I mean had they done simple things like providing roads into villages, providing electricity into the villages, providing, you know, educational facilities you know for landowners, those sort of things had they done that, could have led to avoiding the sort of problems that we went through. So I think that was the biggest mistake.

MARSHALL: As part of the peace process, the PNG Government gave Bougainville limited powers to govern itself. Three years ago, Joseph Kabui was elected President of Bougainville but the region remains financially dependent on Port Moresby.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: Funding has been our biggest enemy, you know number one enemy all along.

MARSHALL: Two months ago President Kabui pulled off his greatest achievement in office, persuading the PNG Government to give Bougainville control over its own resources.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: You got the money, you got the funds, the sky is the limit.

MARSHALL: Bougainville is open for business so we head out to see the once mighty Panguna copper mine. The journey takes us south where rebel fighters refuse to join the peace process, an obstacle in the President’s plans for progress.

GENERAL CHRIS UMA: If anybody crosses this river just shoot it, and report it to me what you’ve done.

MARSHALL: Chris Uma made a name for himself as a rebel who chased the Australian miners out of town nearly twenty years ago. The self-style General Uma, now heads up what he calls the Royal Kingdom of Meekamui. His officials work out of a ransacked mining company house. General Uma believes his people should govern Bougainville, not the autonomous Bougainville Government, the ABG.

GENERAL UMA: That government called ABG belongs to a small group of people who are influenced by white men. They have formed the ABG government. All people with tradition and culture, they support Meekamui.

MARSHALL: The Meekamui people live in poverty. There’s been no progress since the crisis ended. No money to even remove the ruins. Chris Uma’s ambition to rule Bougainville might be hard to take seriously, but the same can’t be said for his guns. He controls the Panguna mine site.

We’re now heading up to the checkpoint, which stops outsiders going through to the Panguna Mine. Basically since the crisis happened, very few people have been allowed past this point - PNG Government officials, Bougainville Government Officials, police, soldiers and especially the mining company.

We have permission from the General of the Meekamui Defence Force to pass through so we’re on the last leg to the Panguna Mine.

During eighteen years of operation, the Australian Mining company now called Bougainville Copper Limited or BCL and owned by Rio Tinto, dug its way to more than three million tonnes of copper and gold. It was an around the clock operation, employing three thousand locals and hundreds of ex-pats.

The riches that are still buried in the soil have not been forgotten by the outside world. The mine could have at least twenty years of life left in it.

PETER TAYLOR: Yes I’d love to get back and have a look, ah very fond memories for me Bougainville and working at the mine.

MARSHALL: Based in Sydney, BCL’s Chairman, Peter Taylor, hasn’t set foot at the mine since the crisis but with today’s copper prices at a high, he wants back in.

PETER TAYLOR: [BCL Chairman] If you assume that we were producing about a hundred and seventy thousand tonnes of copper a year and about half a million ounces of gold, you’re talking probably a billion and a half dollars.

GENERAL UMA: I think development can come first then mining can come later.

MARSHALL: Chris Uma and his people are prepared to have BCL back as long as their living conditions improve. But President Kabui had other plans. He told BCL’s major shareholder, Rio Tinto, the company wasn’t welcome.

PRESIDENT KABUI: The best way for Rio Tinto with a big trouble of what we went through is perhaps for Rio Tinto to withdraw or BCL to withdraw and allow new players to come in.

MARSHALL: To find out who these new players are, you need to talk to this man. [In boat with man] In the space of a few years, Sam Kaouna went from rebel army commander to President Kabui’s key financial adviser and he’s not even on the government payroll.

SAM KAOUNA: [Former rebel soldier] We have to, as Bougainvillians take full control of that resource, and that is why I am, I have come up with an arrangement which I’m very special, very genuine interested persons from abroad.

MARSHALL: This is one of them, Lindsay Semple, an Australian based in Canada.

SAM KAOUNA: Lindsay Semple out of hundreds of interested investors that came into Bougainville turns out to be that person, that special person who is genuine, who is able to listen to the way people think. Look although hundreds, I have chosen Lindsay because in my heart I feel that he’s the person Bougainville needs.

MARSHALL: Sam Kaouna and Lindsay Semple created a company called Invincible Resources and offered the President a deal he couldn’t resist.

SAM KAOUNA: It’s the best arrangement ever.

MARSHALL: It’s free money.

SAM KAOUNA: It’s free money! That’s why Invincible is top!

MARSHALL: What he’s talking about is an eight million dollar payment made from Invincible to the Bougainville Government.

PRESIDENT KABUI: Invincible is a company that was prepared to risk itself. It is a company that took, in fact it gambled when they decided to come and help at a time when Bougainville, the ABG for that matter, was really you know, cash strapped.

MARSHALL: Overweight and suffering from heart disease, the President dipped in to the Invincible payment to keep himself alive. He spent well over a hundred thousand dollars on medical treatment, including a heart bypass operation in Cairns.

Invincible got its quid pro quo and then some. It set up this gold processing lab and got the President’s approval to export sixteen million dollars worth of Bougainville’s … gold, doubling its initial eight million dollar up front payment.

And how much gold do you think you’ve collected so far since you’ve been over here?

LAB WORKER: We’ve made two exports already.

MARSHALL: President Kabui’s courtship with Invincible goes back more than three years. The company donated eight thousand dollars to Mr Kabui’s election campaign, even though it’s illegal for candidates to accept donations from foreigners.

Six weeks ago they went public with their secret business arrangement. They took out a full page in PNG’s main paper to announce a new deal, effectively giving Invincible a 70% share of the island’s resources for up to five years. The agreement excludes the Panguna Mine.

FRANCESCA SEMOSO: [ABG Deputy Speaker] It’s just a deal that’s unconstitutional. It was not voted by the House. What person in his or her right frame of mind, would go along with that, with a deal like that? It’s like you have somebody from Mars who comes here and says hey Bougainville, I want 70% and you get 30%.

MARSHALL: Francesca Semoso is the Deputy Speaker of the Bougainville Government. Her interest is more than political. On Bougainville, the land is passed down through the women.

FRANCESCA SEMOSO: If it was a good deal, why wasn’t there any transparency when it was handled from the very beginning? There are Bougainvillian women, there are Bougainvillian men and you that are asking the same question.

MARSHALL: Amid growing outrage, President Kabui was forced to head out and sell Invincible to the people. He told us he hated these road trips as the bumpy ride caused him pain.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: I believe the decision will provide the medicine which will really heal our people in all corners of Bougainville.

MARSHALL: The local landowners weren’t buying it, calling Invincible, Invisible.

LANDOWNER: Can you come out clear, and tell the people of Bougainville, especially the people of Timputz and Wakanei, who are the foreign investors?

MARSHALL: No wonder Bougainvillians are angry, they’ve already had one war over foreign investment and now they feel their land has been sold from under them again.

LANDOWNER: You’re wasting money of the people of Bougainville.

FRANCESCA SEMOSO: So much lives has been lost over this issue that we are trying to repeat again. Is history going to repeat itself? And again. We let this company from nowhere, that doesn’t even feel Bougainville, that doesn’t look Bougainville, that doesn’t smell Bougainville, that doesn’t believe Bougainville, they come into Bougainville and they say we are the white people for you. Mr President, we’ll give it, we’ll give you the best. There’s the best deal for the people of Bougainville. Who the hell are they? You tell me.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: We’re dealing with people that are very successful businessmen, not only successful but we’ve seen them to be good people. I mean you can have a, you can be in a position to see from their body language, just maybe can have a, a general idea of what sort of a man you are dealing with. You know somebody that is not honest and somebody that is not genuine, you can have a fair idea of him.

MARSHALL: For a man who’d been revered as an astute leader, the people started to question the President’s state of mind.

FRANCESCA SEMOSO: That is not good leadership. That is not good decision making. You cannot judge a company by the vibes they bring across to you. That is totally no, no, no, no, no – no!

MARSHALL: Lindsay Semple promotes himself as a financial facilitator based in Vancouver. His relationship with the Papuan New Guineans began during his Rock Hampton Grammar School days. To find out more about Mr Semple’s past business dealings, we tracked down landowners just outside Port Moresby.

EUGENE HORAVAY: We’re in the land where Lindsay came in with his operations – took out all the round logs for export…

MARSHALL: Eugene Horavay’s people signed a logging deal with Lindsay Semple and his foreign backers eight years ago and claim they were offered an upfront payment.

EUGENE HORAVAY: Lindsay came in holding some money in a briefcase, tried to hand it over to the directors to get them to go back to the city to sign the agreement.

MARSHALL: It was meant to last ten years but the project turned soured after just a few months. The landowners claim they were owed royalties and the promised community developments never came.

The company contracted to remove the logs, says it was left almost half a million dollars out of pocket.

LUKE FALLON: [Logging contractor] Well it cost us a lot of money and also made us look stupid which in this country is a big issue. You know we had a lot of egg on our face you know? We pride ourselves on our reputation.

MARSHALL: Luke Fallon’s attempt to track down the money proved fruitless.

LUKE FALLON: We pursued it was much as we could I’m sure, but they disappeared very quickly from the country and one of the Canadian backer’s sons actually ran an offshore bank and they had you know set this up as a professional distant sort of business thing isolating themselves and we’d be chasing them all over the place. It would cost us too much money.

MARSHALL: Lindsay Semple refused to speak on camera about the allegations but vehemently denies them. He said he left the company before its demise and even brought the landowners a new car.

The National PNG Government is now demanding answers about Bougainville’s deal with Lindsay Semple. A leaked draft audit into what happened to Invincible’s eight million dollar up front payment is damning. Cash payments of more than a million dollars to individuals and almost fifty thousand dollars spent on repatriating the President’s brother back from overseas.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: I mean if people are worrying about corruption, there’s other places far more corrupt and I think in Bougainville you don’t see any real corruptions here in Bougainville. There are probably some elements of it you know, we’re trying to get rid of those sort of things in here, but it’s nothing compared to what is happening in Port Moresby, what is happening in other Third World countries.

MARSHALL: In the face of growing opposition from his people, President Kabui refused to back down on the Invincible deal. He sacked key critics including a Cabinet Minister and was preparing to fight off a motion of no confidence when he died.

In the hours leading up to his death, President Kabui received a letter from the PNG Prime Minister asking for an explanation. Bougainvillians are deeply shocked over the loss of their President. They describe him as a ‘true son of the island’ who led them through difficult times.

The President may have gone but the Invincible deal remains alive. It’s impossible to say how much support there really is, speaking before Mr Kabui’s death at least one of the deal’s critics was determined that Bougainville wouldn’t once again be sold out to foreigners.

FRANCESCA SEMOSO: If ever it gets passed in Parliament, I will question and I will say what’s happened to Bougainville? Have we sold ourselves to the dogs?

MARSHALL: Right up until his death, President Kabui was adamant he only wanted the best for his people.

[Shaking hands] Thank you very much. Good to see you again…

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: Thank you Steve. I’ve got nothing to hide. I think you know everything that I’ve done is with all honesty, for the good of my people. Nothing under the table – nothing!

MARSHALL: I hope it works out for you sir, I really do.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH KABUI: I’m confident it will work out. It will work out. I am confident about that.

Broadcast: 17/06/2008
Reporter: Steve Marshall
LEAD STORY
SERIES 17
EPISODE 40
Synopsis
Just days after the sudden death of Bougainville’s President Joseph Kabui, the future of the autonomous island’s lucrative mineral resources is in doubt.

The President, who died of a suspected heart attack on June 7, was about to face a vote of no confidence in the Bougainville parliament over a secret deal with Australian businessman, Lindsay Semple.

The deal gives the entrepreneur a 70% share of Bougainville’s untapped mineral wealth as well as fishing and forestry rights.

Two weeks before the President died, PNG correspondent Steve Marshall travelled with him through the island as he investigated the President’s relationship with Semple’s company, Invincible Resources.

Marshall and his crew are the first westerners in more than a decade to film in the giant Panguna copper mine. It closed 18 years ago in the midst of a civil war triggered by landowner dissatisfaction over royalty payments. Rio Tinto, which owns the mine’s license, is keen to re-open it but the company has yet to be given the “green light”.

Invincible Resources appears to have had the inside running. Steve Marshall reveals that the company paid eight million dollars to the Bougainville Government and that President Kabui, accessed approximately $200,000 to pay for a heart bypass operation in Cairns and to repatriate his brother from overseas. Withdrawals totalling more than a million dollars were also made by unnamed individuals.

On the mainland Marshall interviews local landowners who claim they were ripped off in a logging deal brokered by Lindsay Semple. The locals say they didn’t get the agreed royalties and that the promised school and other community developments were never built. The contractor hired to remove the logs says Semple’s company owes it almost half a million dollars but Semple claims to have left the company before the money was due.

With the President dead and many Bougainvilleans outraged over the terms of the secret business arrangement, Steve Marshall asks whether the dead President’s deal still stands.
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