15 - 21 November 2001
Issue No.560
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560 |
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Great expectations
The UN's baby is all grown up, but is it ready to strike out on its own? Nyier Abdou looks at East Timor's painful birth
For the manifold United Nations organs, non- governmental organisations (NGOs) and international election monitors crowded into the East Timorese capital of Dili in late August, the nation's first free elections were a happy anticlimax. Human rights groups, refugee organisations and international aid groups poised for an ugly repeat of the fledging nation's original plebiscite on self-rule two years before breathed a collective sigh of relief when the vote passed without incident and with remarkable aplomb.
The vote -- held exactly two years after the woeful UN-organised referendum in favour of independence from Indonesia -- was billed as a cathartic exercise for a nation still suffering from the trauma of its troubled birth. The UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which has administered the country since the bloodbath that followed the 1999 vote, was able to use the auspicious moment to trumpet its achievements.
But with the advent of the 11 September terrorist attacks and the US-led war in Afghanistan, speculation is rife about a post- Taliban leadership in Kabul. The United Nations, burned so many times before in troubled hot spots like Sierra Leone and Somalia, has been loath to step up to the plate and moot the possibility of a UN transitional government in Afghanistan. Diplomats and political analysts, however, have been less cautious, repeatedly referring to a broad coalition government under the auspices of the UN. With so many question marks about the viability of such an endeavour, the earnest emerging government in East Timor is perhaps both a model and a warning: nation- building is a mighty bold risk.
Much was said lauding the peaceful manner in which East Timor's elections were conducted and a great deal of legwork by the UNTAET's civil education campaign and election monitoring staffers went into making it all possible. People were so aware of the possibility of things taking a bad turn that even the candidates running for the 88-member national assembly played down their differences until their political platforms became virtually indistinguishable.
Jeremy Hobbs, the election monitoring team leader with Oxfam Australia in East Timor, agreed that the platforms of the parties did not adequately address the main task ahead of the future assembly -- drafting the country's new constitution -- but nonetheless expressed his satisfaction with the "sensible and mature approach" displayed by the candidates and the electorate. "This is a traumatised population that has had very mixed experiences of elections," Hobbs told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Given the obvious frustration of the last two years -- lack of resources, employment, etc., it would not have been surprising if some tensions had split over into the elections. It is a significant achievement."
The point was echoed by Anthony L Smith, a former observer of the 1999 referendum and an expert on East Timor at the Singapore based thinktank the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). While recognising lacklustre political debate as a fundamental problem in East Timor's emerging democratic polity, Smith notes that this is often the way with nation's new to democracy. "Much like the Indonesian elections of 1999, people will vote for personalities and themes, not policy and complex constitutional issues that they do not understand," Smith told the Weekly. It was an enormous step to convince people to vote for what they believed, he said, "rather than being told for whom they had to vote."
In the run-up to the election, the civic education campaign stressed the message that violence by candidates and supporters was unacceptable, but Damian Kean, of the UNDP electoral Assistance Programme in East Timor, told the Weekly that voters were well already well aware of the significance of their vote. A constitutional commission travelled the country taking people's suggestions and opinions about the new constitution and Kean noted that more than 30,000 people took part in these consultations. But Kean admits many observers recognised an intransigence on the part of candidates to address pressing issues. "Many were campaigning on the 'what a great bunch of revolutionaries we were' ticket -- and largely ignoring the serious issues," says Kean.
The 1999 Indonesian pull-out, after 25 years of occupation, launched weeks of violence and rioting during which pro-Jakarta militias (armed groups who opposed separation and were backed by the Indonesian military) wreaked havoc, killing indiscriminately and razing the capital, Dili. Many were forcibly deported to Indonesian-controlled West Timor and more than 80 per cent of the country's basic infrastructure was destroyed. Some 2,000 people died before an Australian-led peace-keeping force arrived, and some 300,000 people -- more than a third of the country's population -- were displaced. Of the estimated 200,000 people who ended up in refugee camps on the border in West Timor, some 60,000-80,000 remain.
Though widely expected to sweep the polls, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) -- the political wing of the country's 25-year-long resistance to Indonesian occupation -- did not manage the overwhelming majority it had expected. Fretilin scored 55 seats out of the 88-member assembly that will likely become the country's parliament after the handover. While a clear majority, it is not enough for Fretilin to write the country's constitution on its own.
Former guerrilla leader and resistance hero José Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao who was imprisoned in 1992 and released after the referendum, is widely tipped to slip into the country's presidential spot -- although until the constitution is written, this post does not exist. But former resistance movements do not historically breed savvy political leaders. Though many people identify Xanana with the resistance -- comparisons to Nelson Mandela are prevalent -- many others recognise that "charisma alone cannot solve the problems of East Timor", to use the words of Maria Bernardino, an East Timorese aid worker with the UK-based developmental NGO Plan International. But, warns Bernardino, "We need a strong leadership who will seriously address the chronic problems."
Expectations are high for Dili's new administration, expected to take over by mid- 2002. John M Miller, media and outreach coordinator of the New York-based East Timor Action Network (ETAN), contends that despite limited direct experience with self-government, he is confident the East Timorese will do just fine. "The UN has as often gotten in the way of self-governance as it has helped in the transition to it," Miller told the Weekly, noting that UNTAET's "learning curve" was slow, and its ability listen to the East Timorese, especially outside Dili, "varied".
In many ways, however, the UN has been playing god in Dili. It took on the burdens of East Timor in order to build a country from the ground up and there is something almost manufactured, something unnervingly arrogant, about the UNTAET's mandate. This point has been driven home by the way money is spent there. Some $65 million is spent on rebuilding East Timor, while more than five times that goes towards housing and supplying almost 10,000 peacekeepers and some 1,000 bureaucrats in ways they are accustomed.
Most people are edgy about the question of tensions regarding UN and foreign presence in East Timor. "East Timor is a far better place because of the UN," says the ISEAS's Smith, who notes that his first trip to East Timor exposed an occupied territory, with a "terrorised" local population. "This terrible situation has been lifted." But Smith also points out that the UN can often sacrifice efficiency for demographic representation. "How can you run a department of agriculture when there is a multinational crew with different working methods, few of whom know anything about rice cultivation?"
Meredyth Tamsyn, of the Asia Support Collective Timor Lorosa'e, a Darwin-based NGO made up of long-time East Timor activists supporting grassroots development projects, admits that last year there was a lot of resentment towards international staff, "who were seen to be behaving in an ostentatious way, with large incomes and large new cars, when the average person had literally nothing," she told the Weekly. "There was a sense of being re-colonised, in a way. I think some of this has dissipated, but there is still a feeling that people will be glad when the UN presence leaves and they can simply nut it out themselves."
"Let's be clear: the UN did not save the Timorese," declares Plan International's Bernardino. "First, we had to save ourselves." Bernardino cites countries like the US, Australia, Britain and Japan as having ignored the plight of the East Timorese and failing to act on UN security council resolutions passed in favour of East Timor. "In fact, these nations were involved in the genocide of our people by providing money, military equipment and training to Suharto's regime, knowing very well that it was used on the Timorese."
"What the UN and allied countries are doing in East Timor is not only their moral obligation, but also a moral duty to help in the rebuilding of what they helped to destroy," Bernardino added.
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