"On April 28 there were hundreds of fully operational police in Dili. As an institution, PNTL was fully intact and operational. Nevertheless, only a small number was sent to the government building knowing fully well that they would be unable to fully control hundreds of people demonstrating there."
My dear Ed, Paulo Martins, on orders from "someone", deliberately sent in an inadequate number of police to control the demonstrators. The police also allowed many of the demonstrators to bring in molotof cocktails and other weapons. This "someone" wanted to "teach" Marii Alkatiri a "lesson." An expensive "lesson" that cost dozens of lives and at least 150,000 refugees in IDP camps.
On the theory that FRETILIN was planning to launch a violent coup is just plain rubbish. FRETILIN had control of the Parliament and the government. FRETILIN had access to the Petroleum Fund. And the next election was at least one year away.
Instead of using violence, FRETILIN could use its powers to "buy" votes in the next election. With the power in Parliament, FRETILIN could draw as much money as possible from the Petroleum Fund to spend in the 2006/7 fiscal year, providing free school, free meal, accomodation, free health care, new infraestructure (road, hospital, schools, etc.), increase salary of the public servants, you name it. This would not only bring in lots of badly needed service to the electorate, but it would also create thousands of jobs. This would pump millions of dollars into the economy boosting the economy into a levels comparable to the UNTAET period. If you notticed, these types of spending are on the Marii's government budget for 06/7 anyway. Marii pledged to grow the economy from a negative growth to 9% in just one year. This came about not as a coincidence. Marii was preparing the ground for the 2007 elections. This type of strategy occurs in every democratic country in the west. This is also the strategy of modern political parties: they are market driven electoral machines.
By 2007 election, these policies will have been implemented bringing in a false sense of prosperity and security among the electorate. The electorate will have FRETILIN to thank for and FRETILIN will certainly have won a much greater majority. The fact that the number of seats in the parliament will be reduced from 88 to 55 to 65, would also put a lot of pressure on smaller parties, making FRETILIN virtually unchallenged and East Timor a virtual one party state, for the next five years. This certainly would have many East Timorese elites contemplating on ways to get rid of FRETILIN, even through violent means. And they most definitely did it. So the plans to split the FFDTL began to take shape, starting with a group of FFDTL soldiers complaining of east/west discrimination and their desertion; Xanana giving them his tacit support; petitioners rejection of various attempts to resolve their grievances, even to readmiting them back to the force, the protest that ended in violence, desertion of Alfredo Reinado, attack against unarmed FFDTL soldiers by Reinado, attack on FFDTL HQ in Tasitolu then in Dili, desertion of Paulo Martins, break down of PNTL, distribution of PNTL armoury, murder of unarmed police officers, murder of Rogerio Lobato's family, accusations that FRETILIN's leadership is illegitimate, burning, looting and murder in Dili even after the international force had arrived as a way of pressuring the government to step down and the parliament dismissed hence handing complete power to Xanana, you name it.
What we must ask in the end is, at what cost?
.
sábado, agosto 19, 2006
Dos leitores
Subscrever:
Enviar feedback (Atom)
2 comentários:
“My dear Ed, Paulo Martins, on orders from "someone", deliberately sent in an inadequate number of police to control the demonstrators. The police also allowed many of the demonstrators to bring in molotof cocktails and other weapons. This "someone" wanted to "teach" Marii Alkatiri a "lesson." An expensive "lesson" that cost dozens of lives and at least 150,000 refugees in IDP camps.”
Exactly my point!! That “someone” was Rogerio Lobato in accordance with the plan to create a reason to call in the troops. As for the lesson being taught, I was under the impression that it was in fact Mari who thought he was going to teach the petitioners a lesson when he set the army upon them. And to aggravate the matter he did it in contravention of the laws in force.
”On the theory that FRETILIN was planning to launch a violent coup is just plain rubbish. FRETILIN had control of the Parliament and the government. FRETILIN had access to the Petroleum Fund. And the next election was at least one year away.”
Again these were important points considered by Fretilin which lead to the plan they devised to delay the 2007 elections. Let take a closer look shall we.
Although Fretilin had control of Parliament and government they had less than one year in power. The current situation in the country was such where people were living in far worse conditions since the withdrawal of UNTAET’s mission. There was increased poverty and the higher unemployment rate creating a lot of frustration in the people. In general there was a lot of public discontentment at the living conditions in the country.
The livings conditions had to be substancially improved in order for the people to regain confidence in Fretilin’s government. To deal with that, as you correctly pointed out, Mari increased the state budget substancially in order to provide some very visible improvements for the people to see.
There was however a huge obstacle to such an increased budget and one that has been aflicting Timor for as long as Timor became independent. That is the low budget execution capacity of the line ministries which results from inadequate levels os skills in the administration and the highly centralised finance system of procurement . The government and the economy itself had been severely impaired in the past 4 years by a very weak budget execution capacity that has resulted in many ministries achieving a less than 50% budget exectution rate with comparatively much smaller state budgets for those periods.
This low capacity would have been much more noticeable with a far bigger budget Mari was proposing for FY2006/07. This means that the government required more time to fully implement the budget in order to achieve the aims of providing visible improvements in the living conditions thus gaining the people’s confidence and boosting Fretilin’s approval rate at the next election.
So something had to be done to push back the election schedule and Mari himself was already warning before the crisis that it was possible that the election could very well be delayed since the prerequisite electoral laws and the electoral comission laws were not in place nor were the logistical preparations for the election on schedule.
However the delaying of the elections could not have been done just at the governments whims. There had to be reasonable grounds on which to base such delay and a situation of instability would create an environment not conducive to free and fair elections which would have to be delayed until as long as nedeed until conditions improved. The presence of a large cache of illegal weapons in the country fits also very well with such plan. The presence of unidentified armed civilian groups around the country is a testament for that.
What was not part of the plan was the way events unfolded after the incident of April 28 in Tasitolo. The government did not foresee the reaction of Alfredo and other army majors that saw the situation get out of it’s control. The infamous claim that Alfredo had ambushed “unarmed” F-FDTL soldiers has long been exposed by David Oshea’s coverage of the incident. Similar to the Santa Cruz massacre that took place in 1991, Alkatiri’s government were oblivious to the fact that an SBS journalist was in position to record that alleged “ambush” by Alfredo on “unarmed” soldiers. The film of the gunfight that ensued proves beyond reasonable doubt that the government’s claims were a fabrication and that not only the F-FDTL soldiers were not unarmed but they also caused casualties on Alfredo’s group.
Other unplanned developments were the breakdown of the PNTL but this was more an unintended consequence of the April 28 incident in Tasitolo. Given that the F-FDTL had been reduced to soldiers that were predominantly from the EAST as the result of the bulk dismissal of the solldiers from the WEST (petitioners), the Tasitolo incident did not auger well for the “Lorosae-Loromonu” issue. In fact by moving a “Easterner” army against the “Westerner” ex-soldiers, the government gave a new life to the much talked “lorosae-loromonu” division.
If that division had not yet resulted in a generalised high level of animosity between the two groups thus far, that perceived division was gravely escalated when Alkatiri decided to make use of lethal military force. From that moment onwards that division gained a new impetus and it spread uncontrolled like a malignant cancer through the remaining ranks of the security forces with the defection of Alfredo and the other majors and the desintegration of the PNTL along the same east-west devide.
The desintegration of PNTL also affected by other internal issues such as old divisions between “nationalist” police against their collegaues who had served under the indonesian regime, the police comissioner being one of them, and the rivalries between the F-FDTL and PNTL that culminated in the fatal army attack on the Police HQ resulting in the cold blooded murder of unarmed police officers.
On the issue of the “buying” of votes, it could not work as well in a general election as it could in a party congress election. Firstly, the numbers of people involved far far greater and, secondly, there could be not regulation put in place to make people vote by a show of hands. With a secret vote, it would have been virtually impossivel for Fretilin to verify that they were getting in fact what they had “bought”.
So although the form in which this crisis developed was not the way the government intended but it resulted from a plan being played largely in the background to serve Fretilin’s bid to guarantee itself a victory in the next general elections.
HTB
Tradução:
Dos leitores
"Em 28 de Abril havia centenas de polícias completamente operacionais em Dili. Como instituição, a PNTL estava intacta e operacional. Contudo, somente um pequeno número (de polícias) foi enviado para o edifício do governo sabendo-se bem que não seriam capazes de controlar as centenas de pessoas que lá se manifestavam."
Meu caro Ed, Paulo Martins, às ordens de "alguém", enviou deliberadamente para lá um número inadequado de polícias para controlar os manifestantes. A polícia também permitiu a muitos manifestantes levarem coktails molotof e outras armas. Este "alguém" quis "ensinar" uma “lição” a Marii Alkatiri. Uma “lição” cara que custou dúzias de vidas e pelo menos 150,000 deslocados.
A teoria de que a FRETILIN estava a planear lançar um golpe violento é um simples disparate. A FRETILIN tinha o controlo do Parlamento e o governo. A FRETILIN tinha acesso ao Fundo do Petróleo. E a próxima eleição estava a um ano de distância.
Em vez de usar violência, a FRETILIN podia usar os seus poderes para “comprar” votos na próxima eleição. Com o poder no Parlamento, a FRETILIN podia tirar quanto dinheiro fosse possível do Fundo do Petróleo para gastar no ano fiscal 2006/7, providenciando educação gratuita, refeições gratuitas, instalações, cuidados de saúde gratuitos, novas infra-estruturas (estradas, hospitais, escolas, etc.), aumentar os salários dos trabalhadores públicos, e outros. Isto não só levaria muitos serviços necessários ao eleitorado, mas também criaria milhares de empregos. Isto injectaria milhões de dólares na economia elevando a economia a níveis comparados com o período da UNTAET. Se reparou, estes tipos de despesas estão no orçamento do governo de Marii para 06/7 de qualquer modo. Marii prometeu crescer a economia de um nível negativo a 9% em somente um ano. Isto não é uma coincidência. Marii preparava o terreno para as eleições de 2007. Este tipo de estratégia ocorre em todos os países democráticos do ocidente. Esta é também a estratégia dos partidos políticos modernos: são máquinas eleitorais guiadas pelo mercado.
Por altura das eleições de 2007, estas políticas teriam estado implementadas criando um falso sentido de prosperidade e segurança entre o eleitorado. O eleitorado teria que agradecer à FRETILIN e a FRETILIN ganharia com certeza com uma muito maior maioria. O facto de o número de lugares no parlamento vir a ser reduzido de 88 para 55 ou 65 lugares, poria também mais pressão nos partidos mais pequenos, tornando a FRETILIN virtualmente sem desafio e Timor-Leste um Estado virtual de um partido, nos próximos cinco anos. Isto certamente pôs muitas elites Timorenses a estudar maneiras de se livrar da FRETILIN, mesmo através de meios violentos. E fizeram-no definitevamente. Assim começaram a tomar forma planos para dividir as F-FDTL, que se iniciou com um grupo de soldados das F-FDTL a queixarem-se de discriminação oeste /leste e a sua deserção; Xanana a dar-lhes o seu apoio tácito; a rejeição pelos peticionários de várias tentativas para resolver as suas queixas, mesmo readmitindo-os de volta às forças armadas, o protesto que acabou em violência, a deserção de Alfredo Reinado, o ataque contra soldados desarmados das F-FDTL por Reinado, o ataque ao quartel-general das F-FDTL em Tasitolu e depois em Dili, a deserção de Paulo Martins, a ruptura da PNTL, a distribuição das armas da PNTL, o assassinato de oficiais da polícia desarmados, o assassinato da família de Rogério Lobato, as acusações de que a liderança da FRETILIN é ilegítima, os fogos postos, pilhagens e assassinatos em Dili mesmo depois das forças internacionais terem chegado como um modo de pressionar o governo para sair e o parlamento demitido entregando então o poder total a Xanana, você nomeou-o.
O que devemos perguntar no fim é, a que preço?
Enviar um comentário