East Timorese journalist
Raimondos Oki with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon during a recent visit to
New York.
East Timor’s slide towards autocracy is being hastened by new Prime
Minister Rui de Araujo.
Despite coming
into the job as an apparent cleanskin, Dr de Araujo seems to be exploiting the
country’s draconian media laws with a defamation action that could send a
journalist to jail.
Dr Aruajo is
suing over an article in the Timor Post by Raimondos Oki who
reported on the awarding of an $18 million contract to install computers at the
20,000sq m Finance Ministry.
Should Dr de
Araujo succeed, the action will focus attention on the winding back of
democracy in East Timor. Former prime minister Xanana Gusmao introduced a press
council that controls who can work as a journalist, while the penal code makes
defamation a criminal offence.
The benefits
accruing to a small elite connected to senior politicians, and massive spending
on dubious projects, have put the government and President Taur Matan Ruak on a
collision course.
Mr Ruak is
associated with the newly formed Peoples Liberation Party that plans to
challenge the cosy government of national unity created by Mr Gusmao, who last
year appointed Dr de Araujo as Prime Minister even though he was a minister in
the former Fretilin party. He also put the former Fretilin prime minister Mari Alkatiri
in charge of special economic zones, a role that involves massive spending. Mr
Gusmao remains a cabinet minister.
In a fiery
address to parliament late last month, Mr Ruak effectively described East Timor
as an autocracy that serves the wealthy elite, where political unity was used
for “power and privilege” and regretfully “family and friends of brother Xanana
and brother Mari have benefited both from state contracts”.
“The State of Timor-Leste
is far too centralised. It centralises skills, power and privilege. It excessively
squanders resources. It creates first-class citizens and second-class
citizens,” he said.
Mr Rauk has been
alarmed by the planning for more costly and grander white elephants, while
spending on health and education has been cut.
On the south
coast, the government has budgeted about $US1.6 billion ($A2.14bn) for oil
infrastructure, even though it is almost impossible to build a pipeline from
the Timor Sea in depths of 2500m.
Other fiscal
black holes are the state oil company Timor GAP and a special economic zone in
the Oecusse enclave, in the north, which has a budget of $200m for this year
alone. The Oecusse project is of sentimental value because it is where the Portuguese
landed in the early 1500s. Mr Ruak ridiculed the plan to build an international
airport in a place with a population of 65,000.
PLP’s support
comes from Timorese who grew up during the Indonesian occupation. Some were
even educated in Indonesia and unlike the Gusmao generation, they are less
enamoured with East Timor’s association with Portugal and the Portuguese
language.
For example PLP
interim president Aderito de Jesus Soares is a lawyer who helped write the
nascent nation’s constitution and more recently served as the head of the
Commission Against Corruption. He is now completing a doctorate at the
Australian National University.
The line-up so
far includes Demetrio Amaral, who founded the environmental group Haburus and
has been awarded the Goldman award (known as the Green Nobel), and Jose Belo, a
former resistance fighter turned newspaper editor.
PLP’s views on
education and Indonesia set it well apart from the prevailing consensus. Mr
Soares, who studied in Indonesia, says Bahasa Indonesia should be taught in
schools, along with English and Portuguese.
“It has to be
taught in the school as an option. Junior and senior high school should teach
Bahasa Indonesia. How many families can afford to send kids to Brazil or
Portugal, or Australia? But many can afford to send their kids to Indonesia,”
he says.
East Timor’s
worrying trajectory does not seem to concern the Australian advisers who are
close to the government.
Former Victorian
Premier Steve Bracks, who has served as a special adviser to the prime minister
since 2007, said he had never criticised the projects condemned by Mr Ruak.
“The government of Timor-Leste is entitled to determine its own priorities,” he
said.
He declined to
comment on the media law and the criminal penalties for defamation.
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