Polling has been running very smoothly so far in Bougainville, says the head of a Commonwealth observer team monitoring the referendum.
People queue at a referendum polling booth in Buka as voting gets underway in Bougainville for the autonomous PNG region's referendum on possible independence. Photo: RNZ Pacific / Johnny Blades
A two-week polling period began at the weekend for Bougainville's non-binding referendum on whether to have independence or greater autonomy within Papua New Guinea.
Anote Tong, who is a former president of Kiribati, said the Commonwealth observers had been impressed with the harmonious spirit of events so far.
"Certainly, what we saw was extremely emotional, and the people were emotional. Even the people who came to observe were, I think, affected by the emotion.
"So far, things have been very smooth in running extremely well so far."
Mr Tong said the Commonwealth had teams in each of Bougainville's three main regions of Bougainville and should be able to give a good overall reflection of what happened when polling concludes around 7 December.
Photo: RNZI / Koro Vaka'uta
Meanwhile, Mr Tong said he couldn't make comment at this time about recent political events placing strain on democracy in his home country Kiribati, but did note he had deep concerns about it.
"Maybe worthy of Commonwealth observation in the future," he said.
