Resolving Timor-Leste’s Crisis
Jakarta/Brussels |
10 Oct 2006
The worst period in Timor-Leste’s short independent history is not over but there is general agreement on the elements of a resolution – the problem is getting a dysfunctional government to implement them.
Resolving Timor-Leste’s Crisis,* the latest report by the International Crisis Group, examines the origins of a crisis that seemed to begin with the dismissal of nearly a third of the defence force last March. Its roots, however, lie further back: in battles and betrayals during resistance to the Indonesian occupation, poorly implemented demobilisation of guerrilla fighters, politicisation of the police and rivalry between a largely powerless president committed to democratic pluralism and a ruling party with authoritarian tendencies.
“Add to this the in-bred nature of a tiny political elite with 30 years’ shared history, and you have a recipe for disaster”, says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Project Director.
The report documents the unfolding of events from January 2006, when a group of disgruntled soldiers submitted a petition to the president alleging discrimination, to the arrival of international forces in late May to help bring violence in the capital under control. It examines the political struggle that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Alkatiri in late June, and the agreement of the UN Security Council on an expanded mission. Today, the country is tense, its politics in limbo, waiting for the results of the UN-appointed Independent Special Commission of Inquiry.
Those results, to be released later this week, are both critical to moving forward and potentially explosive. Expected to name names of those behind the worst incidents of violence in April and May, the Commission report could spark demands for instant justice which Dili courts are ill-equipped to provide.
Resolving the crisis will depend on comprehensive security sector reform and better oversight of the courts. But with elections due in May 2007, it will also depend on reform within the dominant party, FRETILIN, and on the willingness of key political actors to sit down together and agree on solutions. One consequence of the crisis has been a deepening rift in Dili between people from the west (loromonu) and people from the east (lorosae) but reconciliation will be next to impossible unless it takes place at the top as well.
“This crisis escalated in part because there were no checks on individuals with personal interests and private power bases”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “The way out is through institution-building, precisely so that the actions of individuals will not carry so much weight”.