The Bougainville Constitutional Planning Commission began its two-week long induction this week in Arawa following the swearing in of Commissioners last month.
Secretary for the Department of Law and Justice, Kenneth Nanei, when delivering the President’s message to the Commissioners, called on them to learn as much from the sessions while upholding the six benchmarks set by the Toroama-Nisira government as this would help them to tailor the constitution for a new Bougainville.
“We have to learn from our past, work together at gauging views from the public and write up this home-grown constitution for a new Bougainville,” he said.
‘Giving voice to Bougainville Citizens’ is the theme of the induction and the induction presentations will cover:
- Political road map of Bougainville
- Hierarchy of the law (understanding a constitution)
- Terms of Reference (T.O.R)
- Guiding principles
- International standard in constitution making process
- Understanding a constitution and characteristics of sovereignty
- Lessons learnt from current arrangement
- Consultation process
- Administration and operation
These induction topics were put together by the BCPC Secretariat following questions and comments raised by the Commissioners as to how the BCPC was to conduct its roles and responsibilities.
Dennis Kuiai, a member of the Secretariat, whilst addressing the commissioners during the opening of the induction, stressed the importance of the workshop, stating that Bougainville is now in the hands of the commissioners.
“Bougainville now going forward is in our hands –this is the first task and to deliver the first task, we will be talking to people and that is the second task,” he said.
He added that commissioners will do a lot of analysis on the views collected and in order to do so, the inductions would set the pace and the vast experiences that each commissioner has would also play an important role for them to deliver a home-grown constitution for Bougainville.
Meanwhile, two new members were sworn into the Commission early this week by the Senior Provincial Magistrate, Bruce Tasikul. Commissioner David Maliku was sworn in replacing Martin Miriori and Commissioner Televita Faite replaced Simon Kenehe.