Reflections on East Timorese elections and politics

Max Lane - August 13, 2007

No leaderships with a national-scale authority

The recent Presidential and parliamentary elections have been very revealing. They have showed that no political institution or figure from the period of the national liberation struggle has developed a political following based on program, ideology, ideas or leadership. No figure or institution scored more than 29% in either the first round of the Presidential elections or the parliamentary elections.

In the parliamentary elections both CNRT, the umbrella organization the Resistance (and de facto the only operating structure) and FRETILIN, the organization that lead the movement in the 1970s and proclaimed Independence with the support of the majority of the people, scored less than 30%. FRETILIN scored 4% more than CNRT: 29 to 25%. The Democratic Party (PD) and the ASDT led by a pre-1999 student leader and a founder of FRETILIN respectively scored less than 20%.

While press releases issued by the parties and appearing on blogs and distributed to the media did explain policy platforms in different areas, most reports appear to indicate that campaigning on the ground was personality based, with little ideological or programmatic content. The voting patterns indicate that local loyalties played a significant role. In Dili, where local clan, village and locality ties are weaker, the situation seems more fluid. Frustration with high levels of unemployment and housing problems produce higher levels of frustration with the incumbent government.

Socialist vote declines

Another, smaller but significant, reflection of the low ideological and programmatic content of political life was the reduced vote of the Socialist Party of Timor (PST) compared with its vote in 2001. The PST has been the only party trying to build a party based on a clear ideological platform and on organizing and mobilizing people at the base through cooperatives, trying to develop a politics of self-organisation. Six years of such efforts, and some strong bases in some areas, gave them lesser results than in 2001.

In an interview I did with the PST's, Secretary General, Avelino da Silva, he explained that one way the PST will be responding to these results is tightening its norms of membership, insisting on more strict dues paying, participation in political education and taking on of responsibility as organizers. The aim is to consolidate the commitment and quality of its cadres. This is likely to result in a smaller organization in the short term.

The PST's vote in the parliamentary election was also significantly less than the vote for Avelino da Silva himself in the first round of the Presidential elections just a few weeks earlier. This is consistent with the general pattern of voting where personality looms larger than ideology, programme or platform.

While da Silva has not been a central figure of the national liberation movement, he has been for some time the central figure on the far Left. His competence and energy has meant that, despite being outside the mainstream party coalitions, he has been asked to take on key movement responsibilities by the mainstream leadership. In the 1990s, Xanana Gusmao asked him to organise an armed force inside Indonesia, which he did until his headquarters were raided in Semarang and he sought refuge in a foreign Embassy. After the referendum, he was asked to join the CNRT leadership council (which included FRETILIN also.) After Independence, he was asked to be part of the State Council, a constitutionally mandated advisory body to the President. His personal authority is greater than the authority so far won by the PST.

The nature of elite divisions

The main division is between Xanana and Horta on the one hand and the Alkatiri leadership group of FRETILIN on the other. Gusmao and Horta initiated the move to form CNRT in the 1980s as way to unite FRETILIN and its old rival, UDT, against the Indonesian occupation. In the process, Xanana and Horta, both of whom left FRETILIN as part of this process, emerged as the most recognized leaders of the national liberation effort, overshadowing the FRETILIN leaders overseas. After the formation of CNRT, new organizations emerged, especially among youth, such as RENETIL, who no longer had any ideological connections with the movements of 1975. Since the forming of CNRT, the main colour of the ideological outlook of new organizations was one that reflected heavy influence of the diplomatic struggle, ie. emphasising the necessity of unity over ideological clarity and reflecting the United Nations manifestos and documents on human, social and economic rights.

Meanwhile, the overseas FRETILIN activists spent 20 plus years in political environments influenced by very conservative Eurocommunist, Labour Party and one-party state environments. This produced a moderate social democratic political outlook very similar to that of Gusmao and Horta, but articulated in a more Left sounding rhetoric. In Australia, for example, while FRETILIN fought the Australian government in close alliance with the far Left Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), as soon as this struggle was no longer a priority it forged a close alliance with the ALP.

Abandonment of the historical claim by FRETILIN to leadership is at the base of the primary conflict within the Timorese elite. Secondary issues, such as generational change, explains the emergence of a party such as PD. Other parties, such as ASDT and PSD, while having some slight ideological colour, are primarily based around the authority of individual personalities.

The weak authority of the leadership was not so clearly revealed in the 2001 elections. This was because the divisions among the leadership and their respective popular support was not tested in 2001. In the 2001 Presidential elections, FRETILIN did not stand against Xanana nor campaign against him. In the 2001 Parliamentary elections Xanana and Horta did not establish a party to stand against FRETILIN, as they have done this time. In this situation, where the size and character of each group's support was not challenged in a head-on competition, Xanana was elected with 80% of the vote and FRETILIN won 60% of the vote in the parliamentary elections. These most recent elections, where they went head-to-head, have given a more accurate measure of the situation.

The relative weak, fractured and more personal than political, authority of the leadership was not so clearly revealed in the 2001 elections

History, class and politics

History

The weak, fractured and apolitical authority of the leaders and institutions of the national liberation movement are a result of low levels of mobilization and ideological content during the movement. The Indonesian military occupation was so intense, with such a high ratio of soldiers to civilian population, that any open political organization was impossible.

This was especially the case after 1991, following the Dili Santa Cruz massacre, which was in fact aimed at ending a period of open mobilization that had begun at the time of the Pope's visit in 1990. Many youth activists went into exile in Australia in the years after 1991. Organisation was restricted to ensuring the delivery of medicines, food and so on the small band of guerillas in the bush, harassing the Indonesian military. What political mobilization did take place was in Jakarta, with a series of occupations of foreign Embassies. However, the organizations leading this were part of the CNRT generation who had been convinced by their elders to abandon ideological debate in the name of unity. The exception to this was the very small group of students, led by Avelino da Silva, who adopted socialist politics.

Internationally, Ramos Horta as the highest profile diplomatic spokesperson and organizer, achieved a profile in East Timor as a result of the Portuguese radio broadcasts that could be heard in the country. However, this is also a fragile base upon which to build a national political authority. Xanana, in prison, led the Jakarta protests symbolically and reinforcing the tactic, but did not write and therefore win any substantial ideological authority. His authority remained, essentially symbolic.

Class

The absence of serious ideological conflict is a reflection of the absence of class-based politics. The broad elite, comprising returning small property owners, politicians, intellectuals as well as long-term property owners, bureaucrats, technocrats and so on, all share a similar outlook. This is characterized by the acceptance of a capitalist development strategy, with a strong role for the private sector, but with social democratic welfare style state intervention, as well as state intervention to assist in modernizing the economy.

The PST's outlook has always accepted some aspects of the necessity of capitalist development in East Timor, but has also emphasized the necessity and potential of politically conscious mass mobilization in both politics and economic development through cooperatives. This is a qualitatively different stance between an administratively and market driven development strategy; it is a strategy based on direction from a mobilized society. The PST's small vote, however, has revealed the difficulty in winning a hearing for this perspective.

The problems relate to the class structure. East Timor remains essentially a subsistence society, with most of the population only slightly connected to a market economy. The lack of national economy (market) integrating the population into a single economic unit is paralleled by a social dispersal with people still living relatively isolated from each other. A media system that can help overcome this is only at a very early stage of development. There is no print media with a serious national coverage or circulation. Localised patron-client political networks predominate over either pro-capitalist national ideological structures as well as class based, even if moderate (reformist) structures.

In Dili, the lack of any industry is reflected in a large reserve army of educated labour going in and out of jobs, as clerks in officers, shop assistants, drivers and other similar work. There is some stable work around the harbour, but this involves small numbers. (I am not sure of the situation among civil servants and teachers.) While this has created some basis for union organizing and labour rights advocacy, the fluid nature of employment and the intense rivalry for work also acts countervailing tendencies. A class basis for even a moderate (reformist) labour movement is weak.

While these circumstances remain, personality and personalities are likely to loom large in political life.

Post-elections

After an attempt – futile from the start – to establish a government of national unity, a government has been formed based on the Alliance for a Parliamentary Majority (AMP), head by Xanana Gusmao. The AMP is based around CNRT, PD and ASDT/PSD. Xanana Gusmao is now Prime Minister. The President of he PD was elected as speaker of the parliament. FRETILIN is now in opposition.

Xanana's outline of programme is a conventional moderate, social democratic developmentalist perspective. Of course, it is words on paper at the moment.

Meanwhile, FRETILIN has declared that it considers the government unconstitutional and boycotted the swearing in of the new government. It's argument is that the President (Horta) should have sworn in a Prime Minister and Cabinet chosen by the party which won the most votes in the election, i.e. Fretilin, 29%. Horta's argument was that he also had the constitutional right to appoint a coalition if it had majority support in parliament, which the AMP has.

Following Horta's announcement, attacks on houses and buildings, including burnings, took place. These have been reported as carried out by FRETILIN supporters. Meanwhile, all party leaders, including from FRETILIN, have called for a halt to these actions. This includes Alkatiri who also noted that he understood the rioters' frustrations.

FRETILIN has also announced that it will challenge the government through various, as yet unspecified, legal channels.

It is difficult to assess what will happen next. I do not think there are substantial policy differences between AMP and FRETILIN – although there may now be a dynamic to find some and accentuate them. During the Presidential election campaign Horta criticized FRETILIN for keeping too rigidly to the financial model proposed by the IMF, involving minimizing calls on oil and gas revenues deposited in special accounts. The IMF and the World Bank had praised the FRETILIN government for its fiscal responsibility. However, some supporters of FRETILIN have claimed that they too were prepared to draw on this money if the so-called absorptive capacity was there. (While trying to establish a bourgeois state with a professional civil service, starting from nil and eschewing a mobilizing approach, the absorptive capacity, i.e. ability to identify, tender and implement projects is likely to remain limited.) Some FRETILIN supporters also strongly defended this policy as proof of their fiscal responsibility.

In the end, this may turn about to be a difference of degree, or no difference at all. The source of the conflict (which has always had deep personal rivalries attached to it) remains FRETILIN's opposition to and refusal to accept the abandonment of the historical claim by FRETILIN to leadership and state rule.

Socialist in cabinet

Another interesting development was the acceptance of the post of State Secretary for Energy Policy in the new cabinet, by PST, Secretary-General, Avelino da Silva. In this post, he will be responsible for such areas as electrification of villages.

During the last several years, the PST has been sometimes in alliance with FRETILIN, such as on the issue of religious education in the schools. However, since the unrest of April, 2006, PST has been increasingly critical of FRETILIN. While the attempt to solve political problems in the Army through excessively administrative means by Alkatiri may have been an earlier cause of this criticism, the PST has been critical both in terms of (1) the economic strategy it was defending (especially the low prioritization of agriculture and formal position of minimizing drawing on saved gas revenues) and (2) what the PST saw as an increasingly undemocratic and repressive attitude to its opponents, manifested in intimidation during the election campaign.

During the election campaign, as Horta increasingly appealed to he poorer sectors of society, promising more money for agriculture, welfare and pensions, the PST gave critical support to Horta. During the parliamentary elections, the PST ran its own campaign increasing the Left content of its ideological explanations. At the same time, Avelino da Silva stated in an interview that the PST Central Committee also decided that five of its members, including its single sitting member of parliament apply to have his name entered on the CNRT list. He was elected to Parliament.

It is likely that the PST's calculation is that until this very new Cabinet has been fully tested in the eyes of the people, and while the eyes of the people are on it, there will be scope for a PST leader to further prove himself and his politics, providing a platform from which to project their profile. The emphasis on agriculture, increase on pensions and so on are very similar to what the PST had advocated – minus the emphasis for conscientization through a politically mobilized cooperatives movement.

According to de Silva, he was invited to join the cabinet on an individual basis and retains the right to speak out freely on public issues. The PST has not joined the AMP, but works in an alliance of smaller parties that did not win seats in the parliament, on a general platform of social justice. (I haven't seen their joint statements, so far.)

This step is, of course, full of dangers. The PST is a very small party now embarking on a consolidation that will, in the first stage, make it smaller. The environment is not conducive to a radicalization among youth along socialist lines, as noted earlier. Da Silva, as Secretary General, will have substantial demands on his time in his new post. The next layer of cadre will need to step forward quickly. There will be also extreme pressure on Da Silva to accommodate to the more conservative atmosphere of government, with some fairly conservative people in the Cabinet – although many appear to be younger people with minimal political background but appointed on a skills basis.

What contradictions might arise from a serious attempt by the new government to use oil and gas money to develop East Timor to benefit its people but within a capitalist framework and without any interest in mobilizing its people will be revealed, I would think, within 12 months or so.

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