Timor Leste crisis confounds the critics of FRETILIN
by Peter MurphyAustralia=s Howard government pulled off its first regime change between April and July last year, on the tiny new country of Timor-Leste (East Timor), with full and open support from US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
The demonised Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri - blamed for everything that has gone wrong - was forced to resign on 26 June, 2006, and the pro-US, pro-Australian Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, was installed as a figurehead Prime Minister on July 10. However, the FRETILIN government itself managed to retain power. The stage is therefore now set for an intense struggle in the campaign for the April B May 2007 parliamentary and presidential elections.
Prime Minister Horta has nominated to run for President on April 9, 2007, and the current President, Xanana Gusmao, is about to launch a new political party to be named National Congress of Timorese Reconstruction B to contest the parliamentary elections, on a date yet to be announced. CNRT was the acronym of the united front that won the independence referendum in August 1999. FRETILIN has nominated its own president, Francisco >Lu-Olo Gutteres, to run for President of the Republic against Horta. Xanana himself intends to be Prime Minister, the executive position he found he did not have as President. FRETILIN will oppose him.
1)We are about to witness an intense effort to split and displace FRETILIN as the country=s major political party. Predictably, the Australian media is tipping a win for Horta and Xanana...
East Timor=s fast-growing population is now estimated at 950,000. The economic mainstay is is agriculture and the main cash crop is organic coffee The unofficial minimum wage, set by the UN administration prior to May 2002, is US$85 per month. Since independence, East Timor=s budgets have relied on donor funds held in trust by the World Bank, but it has refused loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in order to avoid neo-liberal conditionalities. The budget for 2005-06 was just US$89 million. However it has had economic growth every year since the devastation of September 1999, and with new revenue streams from oil and gas, its 2006-07 budget was boosted to US$315 million.
ThePlot unravels
FRETILIN analysed the violent upheaval as an attempted coup d=etat, and that it was continuing through ongoing destabilisation into 2007. It chose to deal with this attempted coup d=etat by preparing to win the imminent national elections, taking legal action to protect their record in government, and urging the international security force to cooperate with the Timor Leste army (F-FDTL) which remained loyal to the government.
First of all the Court of Appeal ruled in October 2006 that the elections at the FRETILIN Congress in May 2006 were legitimate.
Next, in January 2007, the Prosecutor-General declared that there was no evidence against former Prime Minister Alkatiri to support a charge that he had armed civilians.
Then in March 2007, the judgement in the trial of former Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato stated that there was no evidence that Lobato had armed a >Fretilin Hit Squad= as was alleged by Commander Rai=los to ABC TV Four Corners. (Lobato was found guilty of arming the Rai=los group and for manslaughter of four of Rai=los= fighters in a clash with the army on May 24, 2006. He is appealing.)
Furthermore, rebel Major Reinado=s move in late February 2007 to capture police automatic weapons with the intention of delaying the national elections precipitated a major break between Reinado and his sponsors on the one hand, and President Xanana, Prime Minister Horta and the Australian military on the other.
The Australian media rapidly reassessed Reinado as a >rambo= rather than the >hero= they had promoted for so many months, after a botched attempt to capture him on March 4.
In March 2007, the Australian military agreed that F-FDTL troops could protect government buildings in Dili.
The basic case made out in the Australian media and endorsed by Prime Minister Howard and Foreign Minister Downer B that Alkatiri and FRETILIN were to blame for all the trouble B has fallen apart.
The Howard government=s hostility to the FRETILIN government may have been fuelled by the rancorous Timor Sea negotiations, but that was no reason to support destabilisation. Early in 2007, both parliaments ratified the controversial agreement on the seabed boundary and petroleum revenue sharing.
The geo-political situation provides a more plausible explanation. Both the United States and Australia wanted to normalise relations with the Indonesian military (TNI) as part of the >war on terror= and to contain China. However, the TNI see their loss of Timor Leste as proof that they can never trust the US or Australia.
Normalisation required a demonstration of good faith by these two governments that there would be no repeat of Timor 1999. Then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Jakarta in June 2006 to implement the normalisation which was only formally signed in November 2005.
The Bush Administration would have taken an adverse view of the deployment of 250 Cuban doctors to Timor-Leste in 2005-06.
The progressive FRETILIN government was from the beginning in 2002 undermined by violent movements associated with the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party, who did not accept the results of the 2001 elections. FRETILIN had won 57.3% of the votes then, and an even bigger vote in local elections in 2005.
Howard and Bush=s hostility was exposed in New York on 5 May, 2006, when East Timor=s Foreign Minister Ramos Horta, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and almost the entire UN Security Council, were ready to vote to extend and strengthen the UN Office in East Timor, with a new mandate lasting to 20 May 2007. Australia=s Ambassador, the former Defence Minister Robert Hill, and US Representative William Brencick opposed the extension - and got their way. The mandate was extended just one month.
This article is Peter Murphy=s personal account and does not necessarily represent the views of his employer, the SEARCH Foundation.