Timor-Leste: Next five years are all-or-nothing time for nation – president

The president of the Republic of Timor-Leste wants the politicians in the future parliament and government to know how to distinguish between party and national interests, considering the next five years crucial for the nation.

“It is now, without a doubt, the moment for our politicians and political parties to act with the integrity and ethical maturity that the people deserve,” writes José Ramos-Horta in a text sent to Lusa.

“The next five years mark a crucial period for the future of our nation. The way our actions and policies proceed may, in the end, represent all or nothing for the future of the nation,” he said.

In the publication, in addition to his speech on Monday announcing the legislative elections for May 21, José Ramos-Horta criticized the way politics has been conducted in Timor-Leste and stressed that the country expects more from its leaders.

“I hope that the political parties will go into the next elections in a mature way. I expect them to engage in policy debates and not just repeat tired ‘slogans’. I expect them to present people with real information and choices and not just endless debates about personalities, flags, founders and the like. The people deserve better than that,” he writes.

“The next five years are the all-or-nothing time for our nation. We face tough decisions in building our nation and our democracy for the future. If we make the wrong decisions, we risk losing everything,” he stresses.

Calling for integrity, independence and the rejection of dogmatism that “simply repeats slogans” of political leaders, Ramos-Horta considers that the public interest does not lie in “simply voting for a party flag or slogan.

“When politics becomes simply about parties, jobs, positions, cars and laptops, parliaments can turn into an improper and self-interested circus. The result is that people become increasingly dissatisfied and dismayed. They become cynical about all political parties and their promises,” he said.

“And, as we have seen in many places around the world, when voters distrust and despise their representatives, democracy itself is at risk,” he maintained.

Ramos-Horta analyses the country’s party political system, designed to allow some competition of ideas and policies, but questions to what extent options for the country are actually discussed in the national political space.

“We should all start thinking about the current state of our democracy, our political parties and the best interests of the nation. In the coming years, Timor-Leste needs to develop a vision of the kind of politics it wants for the future. Create the necessary policies to develop and keep the nation united, with a common vision, inclusive and sustainable”, he said.

The head of state referred to the public perception, “which contains an element of truth”, that political parties in Timor-Leste are only “vehicles for party members to get jobs and positions of power”.

Many political forces, he said, “do not have real goals or policies developed, and not always, when they gain power, implement their own policies”, opting to make statements that are nothing more than “inconsequential banalities”.

As an example he cites the case of a party advocating “peace, a good life and justice”, without detailing at any time what, in concrete terms, this means, what concrete measures they will implement and what goals they hope to achieve.

The country’s own Strategic Development Plan is a statement of objectives that “everyone can easily agree with”, but detailed policies for achieving the objectives and how they will be implemented are left unexplained.

He also points out situations in which the laws passed in Timor-Leste seek to respond to external concerns and not to the “realities of the nation and its people” and in which reports, analysis and recommendations “are left in a drawer”.

“International organisations and NGOs and our governments spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and reports. But once written, even if they are adopted, these reports, policies, memoranda and laws are often left in a drawer, and only taken out for the purpose of monitoring and evaluation, or to show that the incumbent has met international or donor obligations,” he says.

The problem may be due to a lack of capacity to understand, develop and implement policies, he argues, or even to people being “lazy or simply not interested” in these issues.

Perhaps this is why, he believes, debates in Timor-Leste stop being about public policies and end up becoming just debates about “personalities, their historical legacies or mere exchanges of accusations of corruption”.

The Timorese leader, one of the historical generation of the fight for independence – the so-called “generation of 1975” – also refers to the transition to the younger generation.

“We, the generation of 75, the generation of historical leaders of the resistance and of independence, are simply getting older. But generational change requires more than new political party leaders. To build our common future, we need effective mechanisms for people to express themselves on issues of politics and public life,” he writes.

To the smart young people in the ranks he asks for humility and for them to help build the foundation of a “trained technocratic public service”, ensuring that the answers needed go beyond “their university textbooks” seeking to be cemented in the general interest.

“They must always, first and foremost, owe their allegiance to the nation and the people. They must not be dogmatic. They must always be open to new solutions, and not just guided by what they have been told can work and which, until now, here or elsewhere, have not worked,” he stresses.