East Timor elections: The unfinished coup rolls on

The Guardian 18 April, 2007 Peter Symon
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve07/1315et.html

There is a wise saying that "What goes around comes around". It is certainly true of politics.

Mark Aarons has contributed an article in Murdoch’s Australian on the East Timorese elections which makes a swingeing attack on the East Timorese liberation organisation Fretilin and, in particular, on the former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

Mr Aarons’ article simply repeats the allegations made for some time by the Australian media, including the ABC, and by Downer and Howard.

Mari Alkatiri is said to be "arrogant", "blind", was "inept", resorted to "dirty tricks" and so on. In a sentence, Mari Alkatiri was responsible for everything that went wrong or was claimed to have gone wrong, in the five short years since East Timor won its independence in a savage struggle against Indonesian occupation.

Aarons simply dismisses the claim that East Timor was (and still is) the victim of an Australian inspired and a US-backed coup. He asserts that Fretilin’s (and Alkatiri’s) response to last years’ disturbances was to claim that "it was the victim of malign and conspiratorial forces among the opposition, the church and the West who had engineered a coup against the democratically elected government".

Dancing with glee

Mark Aarons is obviously dancing with glee claiming that the current presidential election is a "devastating blow delivered to the ruling Fretilin party".

He comes down decisively on the side of the Australian Government’s favoured figure for President Jose Ramos-Horta and the leader of the so-called Democratic Party Fernando Araujo. Araujo has, ever since independence, done his best to disrupt the work of the Fretilin government.

What his article shows is that Mark Aarons is fully on the side of the most reactionary forces in Australian politics and is barracking for the success of Australia’s imperialist plans to turn East Timor into a colony once again with a government that will fulfil the neo-liberal economic, political and social policies called for by the Howard Government.

If the coup plotters get their way East Timor would be turned into a military and naval base as yet another step towards the ultimate objective of surrounding China and eventually bringing about "regime change" there too.

But all this escapes the writings of Mark Aarons — not because he does not know it. To include some of the very obvious facts in the present situation would be a disservice to those who today have no hesitation in using his name as a figure who may be able to push some of his readers into the arms of Australian imperialism and against the genuine progressive forces in East Timor.

Digression

A small digression into some not so ancient Australian communist history may not be out of place here.

Mark Aarons is the son of Laurie Aarons who was for a time the General Secretary of the former Communist Party of Australia. Another son is Brian Aarons. The family has one "achievement" to its credit for which the Australian ruling class will be forever grateful — they pushed the former CP off the rails and led some of the Party’s members into supporting the liquidation of that party in 1991. It raises a legitimate question: Was this part of the Aarons family ever communist?

The destruction of the CPA was done under the umbrella of forming a "broad left" party and such a party was launched in the early 1990s. It had a short life of a couple of years when it too disappeared off the face of Australia’s political scenery.

This is a policy that Mark Aarons would like to impose on East Timor — let all the disparate forces irrespective of the role they have and are playing into some "united" government. The result would be the watering down of the present policies of the Fretilin Government if not their replacement with the policies demanded by the Australian Government.

But back to East Timor …

The eventual outcome of the East Timor elections is by no means clear, but it is to be hoped that the East Timorese people will be able to retain the gains of the heroic struggle for independence and the gains starting to be made in the living standards of the East Timor people. It is only now that some significant income is flowing to the government from the rich oil resources in the Timor Sea. It was Alkatiri that negotiated the deal over the oil resources and stood up to the bullying of Alexander Downer in the process.

The East Timor Government also refused to accept loans with economic and political strings attached from the IMF and the World Bank. In what country have IMF and World Bank loans done anything more that intensify the poverty of millions of people?

Mark Aarons claims that the Alkatiri government "failed to deliver the basic needs of their people for education, health, jobs, roads, electricity and clean water". To demand solutions to all these needs in only five years, during which the government had to put up with constant disruption, is either crass ignorance or arrogance.

Oil resources

In any case the real truth is reflected in the budgets of the Fretilin government. Budget allocations for 2005-06 were US$89 million but as soon as oil revenues started to flow it was raised to US$315 million for 2006-07. Writing in the magazine Australian Socialist, Peter Murphy — also of the Search Foundation and a member of the former CPA — says that East Timor had "economic growth every year since the devastation of September 1999".

This development which would have led to the consolidation of the Fretilin government was a compelling reason for a coup. A progressive government on Australia’s doorstep is too much for the Australian government to tolerate.

On the elections Peter Murphy writes: "We are about to witness an intense effort to split and displace Fretilin as the country’s major political party."

The Fretilin government also took the unforgivable step of inviting Cuban doctors to work in East Timor (how many doctors has Australia sent?) and hundreds of East Timor students are now studying in Cuba’s medical schools.

Another unforgivable decision was East Timor’s application to join the Association of SE Asian nations (ASEAN) which suggests that it is looking to Asia as its future trading partner.

Last years’ disturbances created by the rampage and killings perpetrated by Alfredo Reinardo gave the Australian government the excuse they were looking for. Its response was to send in a large contingent of heavily armed military troops and police whom the Australian Government refuses to put under UN command.

Alfredo Reinardo, is a cowboy adventurer whose family lives in Australia. He was trained at Canberra’s military academy. The close liaison between Reinardo and the Australian authorities was demonstrated by the ease with which he (and about 50 of his supporters) just walked out of a Dili jail under the noses of the Australian authorities. Reinardo was awaiting trial for alleged murder.

The same working relationship was again shown when an Australian troop contingent staged an attempt to recapture Reinardo. It is no surprise that when the Australian troops arrived at his allegedly secret hideout he had slipped away.

Reinardo is once again being treated with silence by the Australian media — no doubt to come into the open again and stage more riots should Fretilin win the elections.

In the meantime the media and political onslaught directed against Fretilin will go on both inside East Timor and in Australia. As already mentioned, the Australian government will never tolerate a progressive government in the strategically placed and potentially oil-rich young state of East Timor.