By Our Special Correspondent in Dili
DILI, Timor Leste : At the crack of
dawn brigades of streetsweepers fan out across Timor-Leste’s capital, Dili. In
smart blue overalls and armed with brooms, they ensure that Dili’s main streets
can vie for cleanliness with Singapore’s or Tokyo’s. It is a project designed
to provide jobs for the city’s many unemployed. And it works.
Despite the many burned-out
buildings, the town feels less depressing than it did. But just off the main
roads, the squalor of extreme poverty still prevails, and large families live
in tiny shacks without water or sanitation.
Only two have a chance of winning:
the Congresso Nacional de Reconstrução de Timor-Leste (CNRT) led by Xanana
Gusmão, a charismatic former independence leader and now prime minister, and
the Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (Fretilin), the party
under whose flag the independence struggle was fought. Neither is likely to win
an absolute majority.
Fretilin, now five years in
opposition, has a hard core of support yielding up to 30% of votes. The CNRT aims
higher. It hopes its huge expansion of public spending, including cash-transfer
schemes, has bought it popularity. The budget has increased more than fourfold
since 2008.
If it fails to win outright, the
CNRT will reluctantly consider a coalition. But Mr Gusmão has tired of the
struggle to keep his present five-party coalition on the rails. Meanwhile his
government has been accused of widespread graft. His former finance minister,
Lucia Lobato, was sentenced in June to five years in jail.
The wild card in the election is
José Ramos-Horta, president until May and a former resistance leader-in-exile.
Since his defeat in the presidential election earlier this year, he has tried
to counterbalance the CNRT by supporting two smaller parties. He has made it clear
that he hopes to see Fretilin included in the next government.
Much is at stake. Just this month a
mass grave, holding dozens of bodies, was discovered in, of all places, Mr
Gusmão’s garden in Dili. They had apparently been there since the bloodshed surrounding
the end of Indonesia’s occupation in 1999, or even its invasion in 1975.
Mr Gusmão himself has always said
that economic development should trump the settling of old scores. Since then
Timor-Leste has become rich, at least on paper, from oil and gas, with the
income kept in a Petroleum Fund, which has swollen to $10 billion. Mr Gusmão
wants to use the fund for a big development plan covering multi-billion-dollar
infrastructure projects, including highways, new ports and an airport.
Mr Gusmão has been funnelling money
from the fund to buy off influential groups of resistance veterans with
generous pensions, and with development projects in rural areas seen as staunch
during the occupation. Lucrative contracts to build the power grid in the countryside
were awarded to the most loyal veterans.
But Mr Gusmão’s critics, among them
Fretilin’s secretary-general, Mari Alkatiri, say his government has been
spending unsustainably, bringing high inflation—an annual rate of nearly
18%—and risking emptying the Petroleum Fund within ten years.
They also argue that the huge
expenditure has benefited only a fifth of the population, even as over half
still live in the sort of poverty seen in the poorest parts of Africa.
Malnutrition among children is common, maternal mortality is one of the highest
in Asia, and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis-B are
endemic.
Despite all this, a lavish ceremony
was staged at midnight on May 20th to celebrate the tenth anniversary of
independence and to inaugurate the new president, Taur Matan Ruak, a former
guerrilla leader and armed-forces chief. He will play a crucial role in forming
a widely accepted government after the election.
If the vote goes smoothly, the
United Nations will end its assistance mission and pull out its people,
including 1,200 UN police, this year. A symbolic key to all the property it
will leave behind has already been solemnly presented to Mr Gusmão. This will
be the UN’s second withdrawal.
After it left in 2006, a breakdown
in security nearly led to civil war. Many Timorese are still nervous about the
potential for political strife after the election. But the smooth conduct of
this year’s presidential poll has built some confidence that democracy in
Timor-Leste has matured enough to shake off its violent past.
37 kits (round that up to 9 total quart and a half kits).
ReplyDeleteAlso, keep in mind that the ingredients for the mix should be bought from a home improvement store
to insure quality. And when we would cut for the plumbing work, I had to patch around that and make it solid.
Also visit my web page - concrete
Make sure you only use clean balls for playing on indoor simulator.
ReplyDeleteMost of us has a chance to experience the amazing adventure of some kind of aircraft
simulators. You must, however, practice auto-rotations at the flying field with the
help of an instructor. Flight - Simulator flight simulation features highly detailed time of day modeling and can track
the current computer clock time in order to correctly
place the sun, moon, stars, etc. If you are looking for a fun way to spend your weekends, aflight simulator games is one of the most fun things to have.