Ending poverty must for E Timor stability

from The Peninsula Online

East Timor, a fragile young democracy rocked by assaults on its two top leaders last week, must work to overcome grinding poverty and a divisive politics to achieve stability, analysts say.

Renegade soldiers launched shooting attacks on President Jose Ramos-Horta, leaving him critically wounded, as well as Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who fled unharmed, in the latest violent twist in the nation's six-year history.

Rebel boss Alfredo Reinado was killed during the attacks and analysts said his death eliminated a key obstacle to peace.

But the struggling, impoverished nation must target the root causes of disgruntlement among its one-million-strong population if it is to emerge as a stronger state in the future, they warned.

Reinado joined a rebellion that started two years ago with the mass desertion of around 600 soldiers from western districts who were upset over easterners allegedly being given preferential treatment.

Though he was not part of the original group of deserters, the former army major helped stoke unrest that left 37 dead and deepened regional schisms. But the east-west divide goes much deeper than Reinado, analysts said. "He was very flashy and charismatic, but he was more the symptom than the cause," said John Miller, a campaigner with the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network.

More intransigent roots of the schisms were "poverty and joblessness: the East Timorese have not been able to recover from the Indonesian occupation, from the destruction the Indonesians left behind," he said.

Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and ruled brutally until a 1999 referendum saw the East Timorese vote to break away.

Unemployment remains high in Dili, at 23 percent, jumping to 58 percent for the 15 to 19 age group, according to 2004 figures.

But East Timor's cut-throat politics are also to blame for fostering regional divisions, said sociologist and East Timorese politics expert Helen Hill, from Australia's Victoria University.

The east-west divide had its genesis in Portugal's long colonial occupation of East Timor and it had been a sleeper issue, she said.

Under Portuguese rule, those from the east came to be known as "faraku" � meaning "fight back" � because of their resistance to the colonisers, while westerners were known as "kaledi", meaning "subservient", Hill said.

In the post-independence era, Hill said, politicians have relied on regional identity to shore up their support bases.