Papua New Guinea Sports Foundation CEO Peter Tsiamalili Junior says Photo: Facebook / Papua New Guinea Sports Foundation
One of the latest aspirants to lead Bougainville says the most important task for the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea is to achieve unity.
Former PNG Sports Foundation head, Peter Tsiamalili, has long had business interests in Bougainville, centred on growing cocoa.
He said uniting Bougainville had to be the critical first step and the way to achieve this was through the promotion of agriculture.
"If we keep them focussed on something that is common amongst everyone, everyone will feel that sense of unity, because everyone has something in common that they are doing across the island and the one thing that is so common across the island is agriculture."
Mr Tsiamalili said any discussion on a return to mining could not happen until there was unity.
He said this would happen when people no longer spoke of, north, south and central, but simply Bougainville.