O’NEILL FAREWELLED NOT WELCOMED AT PANGUNA
By ARNOLD JAMESON So much was said in the media about the Prime Minister, Peter O’Neil’s ‘Good Will’ visit to the No-Go-Zone area at Panguna, with a bunch of media personals as his eyewitnesses to report back to the world, so that’s pretty much what the world heard and read. What the media doesn’t know, and so won’t tell you is that Mr O’Neil was not welcomed but rather fare-welled upon arrival at Central Bougainville’s Panguna mine site area. This, as everyone else and the ‘big men and women chiefs’ on the ground said is because Mr O’Neil probably couldn’t understand or read the sign that said ‘No-Go Zone’ which after three meetings the night before, nagged his way into Panguna. He was given permission to pass through the checkpoint at 1am on that day. Now pay attention. A normal Central Bougainville welcome is as follows; For any ordinary new comer, the people will dance and splash water onto that person(s), then rub their faces with the famous local Kieta delicacy ‘tamatama’. In the