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muriel....@gmail.com
Nov 23, 2008, 8:24:58 PM11/23/08
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The Sydney Morning Herald
November 22, 2008
East Timor has gone on a spending spree to try to buy civil peace, but
it's stirring its own unrest. Lindsay Murdoch reports from Dili.
Joni Marques can't believe his luck. "Kill them all," he yelled to his
militia subordinates on September 25, 1999, precipitating the massacre
of nuns and priests in one of the more heinous crimes in the aftermath
of East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia.
Sister Erminia knelt and prayed as she was slashed with a machete. She
was then thrown into a river and shot twice. Petrol was poured over
three of the car's passengers and they were set alight. As one ran,
Marques shot him dead. Another was tied to a tree and mutilated.
Indonesian-trained Marques, who claims to have acted on the orders of
unnamed Jakarta generals, pleaded guilty at a United Nations tribunal
in 2001 and was sentenced to 33 years' jail. But in June, to his
surprise, Marques received a presidential pardon and is now the
beneficiary of an unprecedented spending binge by the coalition
Government in Dili.
When released from jail, Marques went to live with his wife in a Dili
refugee camp. That made him eligible for up to $US4500 ($7339) - a
payment from the Government to families that agree to leave the camps.
Marques couldn't believe his luck again.
Because his wife is a public servant, Marques's family receives free
rice each month. She's also about to receive a month's salary as a
Christmas bonus. And now Marques and his family live rent free in a
house built with foreign aid. There seems no end to his good fortune,
particularly measured against his past.
The Herald interrupted Marques's afternoon nap and found that the
contrast was not lost on him, either. "I don't want to talk about my
life because people might take things away from me," Marques says.
Six years after gaining independence, East Timor's Government has
thrown away the rule book for developing nations and is spending some
of its oil and gas wealth that had been earmarked for future
generations. Since 2005, its budget has increased 450 per cent to
$US800 million, mostly in the name of peacemaking.
"We had to make policies to buy peace," said the Prime Minister,
Xanana Gusmao, in a recent interview.
Most of the 100,000 refugees forced from their homes amid the 2006
violence have taken the Government's money and gone on spending
sprees. Motor bikes and cars jam pot-holed streets, and DVDs and
televisions are emptying out of stores.
The Government's largesse is spread throughout the half-island
country. People aged 55 or older, most of whom have only ever lived in
hand-to-mouth poverty, get a pension of $US20 a month - unheard of in
most developing nations.
Every village chief's office is getting a satellite television: every
village one or two hand ploughs; every police station a new computer
and laser printer. Hundreds of Timorese students will study overseas
on government scholarships.
Disgruntled soldiers sacked in 2006 for striking have each received
$US8000 to peacefully return to their villages. Soldiers and police
are wearing new uniforms and equipment. Politicians have new laptops
and vehicles.
In the past four months, the Government has spent $US58 million on
making rice more affordable for the poor. Government workers are
sweeping once rubbish-strewn streets. There are plans for a $US250
million five-star resort hotel, a new parliament house on Dili's
outskirts, a Singapore-style shopping mall and a luxury boat marina.
Trees are being planted, parks are being created and restaurants are
opening. The Government has awarded scores of contracts totalling more
than $US130 million for roads, schools and clinics. Ministers justify
dipping into the $US4 billion petroleum fund established in 2005 by
saying Timorese have a right not to live in poverty, even if the
prosperity of future generations suffers.
But Fretilin, the main opposition party that ruled the country until
elections last year, is attacking the spending. "The Government thinks
everything can be solved by throwing money at problems," said the
former prime minister Mari Alkatiri, Fretilin's secretary-general.
"They have an incapacity to manage the money - they are blowing it for
nothing."
Alkatiri, who is locked in unquenchable mutual loathing with Gusmao, a
former Fretilin leader and war hero, says: "After our 24-year struggle
for independence, they are just creating a culture of dependency at a
time the Government should be focusing all its efforts on creating
jobs, educating the young and providing services like health and
sanitation."
Sixteen opposition MPs challenged the spending in the Constitutional
Court and won, escalating political tensions in Dili. Gusmao made no
secret of his contempt for Portuguese judges who ruled that doubling
the budget this year was illegal because the Government had not given
Parliament a good enough reason for doing so.
His Government disputes Fretilin's interpretation of the ruling and
insists its actions have been lawful. But if the ruling is upheld, the
Government will have $US390 million less to spend and, from its point
of view, that threatens to renew civil unrest.
Concerns about the spending go to other issues of fiscal rectitude.
Mario Carrascalao, an elder statesman and member of the governing
coalition, says the way the Government is awarding contracts is open
to corruption.
Alkatiri is more blunt. "There is corruption," he says. "We have facts
and will soon reveal them."
Carrascalao insists on overseeing the awarding of contracts if he is
to accept Gusmao's invitation to serve as one of two deputy prime
ministers. "The practice of single-source tendering has to be stopped
immediately," he says.
Most concern is over the clandestine $US400 million contract to the
China Nuclear Industry 22nd Construction Company to install two heavy
oil power plants, which are originally from the Three Gorges dam.
Analysts say these plants do not meet even Chinese environmental
standards.
The Dili-based La'o Hamutuk, a non-government organisation, claims
East Timor is without the resources needed to keep the apparently
second-hand plants operating, let alone ensure they run cleanly and
safely.
Critics want to know if the company was given preferential treatment
in return for China spending tens of millions of dollars building East
Timor's foreign ministry building and presidential mansion.
The Government is under further fire for turning over to a little
known Indonesian company more than a sixth of the country's arable
land for a $US100 million sugar plantation and ethanol plant.
Production of export ethanol could further threaten food security in
this agrarian country.
Controversy also surrounds contracts for two Chinese-built patrol
boats and a biodiesel processing plant by built by Enviroenergy
Developments Australia. La'o Hamutuk says the latter project violates
a law prohibiting foreign companies buying East Timor land and relies
on standards unenforceable in East Timor.
Among East Timor's elite and business foreigners in Dili there is an
emerging consensus that East Timor is at a crossroads. Potentially
volatile issues are unresolved. The police force is dangerously
divided and the military is badly run, while a sort of peace is
maintained by 1500 United Nations police and about 800 Australian and
New Zealand soldiers.
Inflating rumour is the absence of public explanation of motives and
organisation of the attacks seven months ago on East Timor's top
political leaders - Gusmao and the President, Jose Ramos-Horta, who
was shot by rebel soldiers, with life-threatening consequences.
Angelita Pires, the Timor-born Australian lover of the rebel leader
Alfredo Reinado, who was killed in the attack on Ramos-Horta, is being
held in East Timor without charge, while 22 of Reinado's men are in
jail awaiting action.
Ramos-Horta says people should not mistake civil calm and smiling
faces as proof of the consolidation of peace. "Peace remains fragile,"
he says. A Nobel Peace-Prize winner who became prime minister at the
height of the 2006 upheaval, Ramos-Horta knows that the roots of his
country's problems are buried partly in battles and betrayals in the
decades before the 2002 independence.
On Wednesday evening at his waterfront office in Dili, Ramos-Horta
told a small group of government officials, diplomats and other guests
the time had come to try to bring warring political leaders together,
particularly emerging leaders. He signed an agreement that will allow
mediators from the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue to
establish a permanent secretariat in Dili to "facilitate informal
dialogue between the country's leaders on issues identified by them as
being of national importance".
The centre laid the groundwork for peace in Aceh and for more than 12
months discreetly attempted to mediate a peace deal with Reinado and
the disgruntled former soldiers. Some diplomats in Dili are sceptical
the organisation will be able get Gusmao and Alkatiri to bury the
hatchet. Previous attempts have failed to resolve their hatred but
they at least can talk with each other in both public and private,
acquaintances say.
Alkatiri says success of dialogue "depends on whether everybody is
willing to co-operate".
Ramos-Horta sought the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue's permanent
presence, he says, because it could bring ideas that could help draw
leaders together, particularly emerging leaders.
Carrascalao says reconciling bitter enemies will be difficult. "The
political elite here is less than 100 figures - a very small number.
Mari Alkatiri and Xanana Gusmao will have to be sincere in searching
for common ground … it won't work if they embrace publicly and then
start playing games behind each other's back."
East Timor, Carrascalao says, must foster a new generation of leaders
who do not carry the past's bad blood. "Any solution must also involve
the Catholic Church, the most credible institution in the country."
A 30-minute drive west from Dili along a winding road that hugs the
coast, Marcelino Roza is ending a 15-hour day filtering water through
mud and then boiling it to obtain salt. Helped by his eight children,
the 52-year-old needs days to collect a small bucket of salt, which he
sells for $US6.
"I thought when independence came my life would be improve," Roza
says. "I hear other people are getting benefits but we have got
nothing. Please tell the Government people to be fair to all of us. I
cannot earn enough to feed my family. Life is very hard."
Lindsay Murdoch, the Herald's Darwin correspondent, is a veteran
reporter on East Timor.
November 22, 2008
East Timor has gone on a spending spree to try to buy civil peace, but
it's stirring its own unrest. Lindsay Murdoch reports from Dili.
Joni Marques can't believe his luck. "Kill them all," he yelled to his
militia subordinates on September 25, 1999, precipitating the massacre
of nuns and priests in one of the more heinous crimes in the aftermath
of East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia.
Sister Erminia knelt and prayed as she was slashed with a machete. She
was then thrown into a river and shot twice. Petrol was poured over
three of the car's passengers and they were set alight. As one ran,
Marques shot him dead. Another was tied to a tree and mutilated.
Indonesian-trained Marques, who claims to have acted on the orders of
unnamed Jakarta generals, pleaded guilty at a United Nations tribunal
in 2001 and was sentenced to 33 years' jail. But in June, to his
surprise, Marques received a presidential pardon and is now the
beneficiary of an unprecedented spending binge by the coalition
Government in Dili.
When released from jail, Marques went to live with his wife in a Dili
refugee camp. That made him eligible for up to $US4500 ($7339) - a
payment from the Government to families that agree to leave the camps.
Marques couldn't believe his luck again.
Because his wife is a public servant, Marques's family receives free
rice each month. She's also about to receive a month's salary as a
Christmas bonus. And now Marques and his family live rent free in a
house built with foreign aid. There seems no end to his good fortune,
particularly measured against his past.
The Herald interrupted Marques's afternoon nap and found that the
contrast was not lost on him, either. "I don't want to talk about my
life because people might take things away from me," Marques says.
Six years after gaining independence, East Timor's Government has
thrown away the rule book for developing nations and is spending some
of its oil and gas wealth that had been earmarked for future
generations. Since 2005, its budget has increased 450 per cent to
$US800 million, mostly in the name of peacemaking.
"We had to make policies to buy peace," said the Prime Minister,
Xanana Gusmao, in a recent interview.
Most of the 100,000 refugees forced from their homes amid the 2006
violence have taken the Government's money and gone on spending
sprees. Motor bikes and cars jam pot-holed streets, and DVDs and
televisions are emptying out of stores.
The Government's largesse is spread throughout the half-island
country. People aged 55 or older, most of whom have only ever lived in
hand-to-mouth poverty, get a pension of $US20 a month - unheard of in
most developing nations.
Every village chief's office is getting a satellite television: every
village one or two hand ploughs; every police station a new computer
and laser printer. Hundreds of Timorese students will study overseas
on government scholarships.
Disgruntled soldiers sacked in 2006 for striking have each received
$US8000 to peacefully return to their villages. Soldiers and police
are wearing new uniforms and equipment. Politicians have new laptops
and vehicles.
In the past four months, the Government has spent $US58 million on
making rice more affordable for the poor. Government workers are
sweeping once rubbish-strewn streets. There are plans for a $US250
million five-star resort hotel, a new parliament house on Dili's
outskirts, a Singapore-style shopping mall and a luxury boat marina.
Trees are being planted, parks are being created and restaurants are
opening. The Government has awarded scores of contracts totalling more
than $US130 million for roads, schools and clinics. Ministers justify
dipping into the $US4 billion petroleum fund established in 2005 by
saying Timorese have a right not to live in poverty, even if the
prosperity of future generations suffers.
But Fretilin, the main opposition party that ruled the country until
elections last year, is attacking the spending. "The Government thinks
everything can be solved by throwing money at problems," said the
former prime minister Mari Alkatiri, Fretilin's secretary-general.
"They have an incapacity to manage the money - they are blowing it for
nothing."
Alkatiri, who is locked in unquenchable mutual loathing with Gusmao, a
former Fretilin leader and war hero, says: "After our 24-year struggle
for independence, they are just creating a culture of dependency at a
time the Government should be focusing all its efforts on creating
jobs, educating the young and providing services like health and
sanitation."
Sixteen opposition MPs challenged the spending in the Constitutional
Court and won, escalating political tensions in Dili. Gusmao made no
secret of his contempt for Portuguese judges who ruled that doubling
the budget this year was illegal because the Government had not given
Parliament a good enough reason for doing so.
His Government disputes Fretilin's interpretation of the ruling and
insists its actions have been lawful. But if the ruling is upheld, the
Government will have $US390 million less to spend and, from its point
of view, that threatens to renew civil unrest.
Concerns about the spending go to other issues of fiscal rectitude.
Mario Carrascalao, an elder statesman and member of the governing
coalition, says the way the Government is awarding contracts is open
to corruption.
Alkatiri is more blunt. "There is corruption," he says. "We have facts
and will soon reveal them."
Carrascalao insists on overseeing the awarding of contracts if he is
to accept Gusmao's invitation to serve as one of two deputy prime
ministers. "The practice of single-source tendering has to be stopped
immediately," he says.
Most concern is over the clandestine $US400 million contract to the
China Nuclear Industry 22nd Construction Company to install two heavy
oil power plants, which are originally from the Three Gorges dam.
Analysts say these plants do not meet even Chinese environmental
standards.
The Dili-based La'o Hamutuk, a non-government organisation, claims
East Timor is without the resources needed to keep the apparently
second-hand plants operating, let alone ensure they run cleanly and
safely.
Critics want to know if the company was given preferential treatment
in return for China spending tens of millions of dollars building East
Timor's foreign ministry building and presidential mansion.
The Government is under further fire for turning over to a little
known Indonesian company more than a sixth of the country's arable
land for a $US100 million sugar plantation and ethanol plant.
Production of export ethanol could further threaten food security in
this agrarian country.
Controversy also surrounds contracts for two Chinese-built patrol
boats and a biodiesel processing plant by built by Enviroenergy
Developments Australia. La'o Hamutuk says the latter project violates
a law prohibiting foreign companies buying East Timor land and relies
on standards unenforceable in East Timor.
Among East Timor's elite and business foreigners in Dili there is an
emerging consensus that East Timor is at a crossroads. Potentially
volatile issues are unresolved. The police force is dangerously
divided and the military is badly run, while a sort of peace is
maintained by 1500 United Nations police and about 800 Australian and
New Zealand soldiers.
Inflating rumour is the absence of public explanation of motives and
organisation of the attacks seven months ago on East Timor's top
political leaders - Gusmao and the President, Jose Ramos-Horta, who
was shot by rebel soldiers, with life-threatening consequences.
Angelita Pires, the Timor-born Australian lover of the rebel leader
Alfredo Reinado, who was killed in the attack on Ramos-Horta, is being
held in East Timor without charge, while 22 of Reinado's men are in
jail awaiting action.
Ramos-Horta says people should not mistake civil calm and smiling
faces as proof of the consolidation of peace. "Peace remains fragile,"
he says. A Nobel Peace-Prize winner who became prime minister at the
height of the 2006 upheaval, Ramos-Horta knows that the roots of his
country's problems are buried partly in battles and betrayals in the
decades before the 2002 independence.
On Wednesday evening at his waterfront office in Dili, Ramos-Horta
told a small group of government officials, diplomats and other guests
the time had come to try to bring warring political leaders together,
particularly emerging leaders. He signed an agreement that will allow
mediators from the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue to
establish a permanent secretariat in Dili to "facilitate informal
dialogue between the country's leaders on issues identified by them as
being of national importance".
The centre laid the groundwork for peace in Aceh and for more than 12
months discreetly attempted to mediate a peace deal with Reinado and
the disgruntled former soldiers. Some diplomats in Dili are sceptical
the organisation will be able get Gusmao and Alkatiri to bury the
hatchet. Previous attempts have failed to resolve their hatred but
they at least can talk with each other in both public and private,
acquaintances say.
Alkatiri says success of dialogue "depends on whether everybody is
willing to co-operate".
Ramos-Horta sought the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue's permanent
presence, he says, because it could bring ideas that could help draw
leaders together, particularly emerging leaders.
Carrascalao says reconciling bitter enemies will be difficult. "The
political elite here is less than 100 figures - a very small number.
Mari Alkatiri and Xanana Gusmao will have to be sincere in searching
for common ground … it won't work if they embrace publicly and then
start playing games behind each other's back."
East Timor, Carrascalao says, must foster a new generation of leaders
who do not carry the past's bad blood. "Any solution must also involve
the Catholic Church, the most credible institution in the country."
A 30-minute drive west from Dili along a winding road that hugs the
coast, Marcelino Roza is ending a 15-hour day filtering water through
mud and then boiling it to obtain salt. Helped by his eight children,
the 52-year-old needs days to collect a small bucket of salt, which he
sells for $US6.
"I thought when independence came my life would be improve," Roza
says. "I hear other people are getting benefits but we have got
nothing. Please tell the Government people to be fair to all of us. I
cannot earn enough to feed my family. Life is very hard."
Lindsay Murdoch, the Herald's Darwin correspondent, is a veteran
reporter on East Timor.
Vincent
Nov 24, 2008, 7:13:26 PM11/24/08
to Diligroup
Interesting article... especially the bit about chinese investment...
seems like there's lots of investment coming from China... is this
tied to possible access to oil resources for China?
seems like there's lots of investment coming from China... is this
tied to possible access to oil resources for China?
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