SPEECH OF H.E. KAY RALA XANANA GUSMÃO in London
The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House
London, 13th October, 2003

CHALLENGES OF BUILDING A NEW NATION IN THE MODERN WORLD

Sir Roger Carrick,

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is always a great honour to come here to Chatham House and have the opportunity to speak about Timor-Leste. I came here precisely four years ago, in October 1999, when my country was still burning from the devastation and destruction and the people were subjugated by pain and sadness.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am here today representing a small country, located at the crossroads of the South Asia and the Pacific, with little more than 19,000 km and a population of around 800,000.

It was under a prolonged period of violence, and by defying terror and repression, that the people seized their freedom. The Timorese were able to prepare themselves for the transitional process to independence, by answering with a clear commitment to the principles of freedom and universal values of human rights.

United, during more than two decades, with the main goal of gaining freedom, soon after achieving this, the Timorese immediately had the perception that only differences can constitute the substance of a pluralistic system, based on tolerance and mutual respect, on democracy and on justice. And the result of this tremendous awareness and maturity, was clearly demonstrated in the democratic and truly free two elections, which were held without any kind of disturbance, in August 2001 for the Constituent Assembly and in April 2002 for the President.

Nevertheless, it must be said that it was also within a scene of destruction and death, that the people felt and experienced the euphoria of victory in September, 1999.

A country which has emerged from a long conflict, is necessarily under psychological pressure from the wounds of the political violence of the past. It was and is in this context, that maximum attention was afforded to the need for reconciliation between Timorese, a process which we have been engaged in since the end of 1999 until today.

It has not been an easy task, to imprint again, in the minds of the people, that all and every sacrifice of the past of more than two decades, was extremely necessary to cement the long journey towards independence. It was also not easy to convince the people again not to forget, even more importantly, why they made the sacrifices, which they unequivocally accepted for the supreme ideal of freedom.

Today we are faced with the need for justice. And our concern is totally directed at not transforming justice into an emotional and psychological act to merely satisfy the feeling for revenge, but rather to guide justice as an act of justice itself.

We would not wish to lose the value of the most profound sacrifices consented by the Timorese, in their struggle for freedom. We would wish even that it be understood that the greatest act of justice, for the people of Timor-Leste, was to have their right to be free, their right recognized, to live as a people and a nation.

We would also wish that as an independent and sovereign State, born from the ashes, we, the Timorese undertake, in plenitude, the awareness that the greatest way of honouring all those sacrifices, is the ultimate obligation of working for true social justice, for the gradual and permanent improvement of the standard of living of the population.

Only when, from the rural areas onwards, the populations of Timor-Leste can enjoy the right to decent living, the right to clean water, the right to be free from hunger, the right to easy access to medical assistance, the right to a good network of communication and information, the right to active participation in the development of their communities, would the Timorese have paid their best tribute to their suffering.

But we are, today, the youngest country of the millennium, the poorest in Southeast Asia and one of the ten poorest in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In our view, only a system which guarantees the full respect for human rights, can sustain participatory democracy, so as to ensure the involvement of all segments of the population, in meeting their needs and improving their capacity to respond.

Only through a mechanism of active and conscious participation, can there be control over power from the bottom-up. Only a mechanism of democratic control, can impede individuals seizing power for decades and mismanaging national wealth in beautiful but superfluous projects, to the detriment of the already miserable conditions of the majority of the population.

Only democracy can allow an effective combat against corruption and abuses of power by State institutions, thereby allowing the Rule of Law to establish and flourish.

Only in a pluralistic environment of tolerance and mutual respect, only in an environment of living with respect for human rights, can a responsible society rise, fully aware of its rights and obligations, and capable of contributing towards the integrated and integral development of the country.

Ladies and gentlemen,

However, we are at the beginning of the process of building our State. Our wishes and the aspirations of our people constitute the unifying factor of our commitments, which we deem to be serious. These commitments are currently guiding our actions, which are obviously still insecure. Because of this, we must be motivated to develop our capacities, which are still, unfortunately, weak.

We began this process of building, only with minimum infrastructures, and with total dependency on the generosity of donors.

The statistics are shocking and defy our energies. For this reason, an important question emerges: the great challenge of globalization – world economy, poverty and sustainable development.

Our People have expressed their aspirations and conveyed their expectations on the benefits that independence should bring. And these aspirations are transcribed in what we call the Vision for the Year 2020. This Vision can be summarized in the eradication of illiteracy, in the improvement of education and vocational training, in accessible medical assistance to remote villages, in the need for good roads to rural areas, in the eradication of hunger, in the vital need for good and transparent governance, in the combat against corruption, in the promotion of gender and in the development of a democratic society, based on the rule of law. This Vision was achieved through a process of consultation with the population.

However, the actual disparity between the economies of the rich and poor countries is a source of concern for the future of this small nation, which is in search of opportunities for its own economic survival.

It became common to refer to poverty as a social factor that generates conflicts and promotes wars in under-developed or developing societies. And poverty is no more than the unjust or unequal distribution of wealth in the country or between countries.

The causes of poverty are many and diverse, ranging from illiteracy to less favorable potentials in some countries, ranging from less democratic political systems to practices of corruption by those in power, and ranging from financial inability to manage the country to lack of capacity to compete in the international market.

On the one hand, the existing world economic order dictated the rules of the game to which the under or developing countries must abide, in order to simply survive as a nation dependent on continued assistance.

We see big countries fighting with difficulties to manage the development of the nation and we see, on the other hand, small countries trying to breathe the hope of opportunities, which are becoming competitively, less and less.

Here we put forward another question on the sustainability of a process of economic development. Sustainability means the act of generating continuation itself, or in another assertion, of guaranteeing the capacity of ongoing self-sufficiency.

We are trying to understand ‘sustainable development’ by such standards that in some countries, the social and political aspects make it highly unsustainable. Inadequate and/or prolonged wide programs of economic development make as though ‘poverty reduction’ is seen more as a long lasting spectrum rather than a tangible act of the process of reduction of poverty.

On the other hand, we understand that there exists the pressing need for change in attitudes on the part of the politicians and those in power. This is extremely crucial to the democratization of societies. If on the one hand, we agree that the perpetuation of poverty results from the lack of educational level of the population, on the other hand, we believe that the democratic conscience of the people does not result from the absolute fact of knowing how to read and write.

Only the democratization of people can allow for societies to behave according to universal values of freedom, tolerance and democracy. When we ask for conscious and active participation of the people in their communities, we speak in terms of democratic perspective and not in an intellectual one, even though it may be important.

There are countries which export technicians and scientists but, at home, they still face the challenges of poverty reduction. There are countries which were considered successes or economic miracles, according to misguided statistics on ‘per capita’, however, the repressive regimes and the grandeur of the country were measured in the palaces and in the great cities, with the poor clustered together to steal or beg from the rich.

I believe that there must exist a better strategy for this great objective of the millennium – the reduction and I prefer to say, eradication of poverty. One of the conditions is not to have a universal standard when dealing with poor countries, as each country has its own particularities, both in economic and political terms and even cultural which demand more adequate measures.

There are various interpretations on the priorities of Timor-Leste on sustainable development as stated by experts on poverty reduction.

I read an interesting article in Business Week, of October 2002, titled ‘Global Poverty Hot Spots’, covering 8 countries of the various continents where the high percentage of Adult illiteracy ranged from 45% to 58%, in 5 countries. In Timor-Leste, I can affirm that we are not far from this number. The highest percentage of malnourished children was 43% and 46%, in two countries. In Timor-Leste, we are not much better off.

In Mali, for example, 73% of the population live under one dollar a day. In Cambodia, 57% of the population is under the poverty line and, as the poorest country in Southeast Asia, we are not able to present better statistics.

In Timor-Leste, the majority of the population live on less than 50 cents per day. And to send their children to school, they have to pay 50 cents monthly per child and the people simply cannot afford this.

If poverty is a factor which generates conflict, for Timor-Leste it is extremely necessary to create all the conditions needed in order to avoid breeding conflicts, taking into account that the people live in a post-conflict situation.

When speaking about post-conflict situations, in our case, I have to refer to a recent report released by Oxfam. It is somewhat incredible to know that there are 630 million arms around the world. I believe that more than half of these weapons were sold to poor and developing countries. How can we speak about poverty reduction, if there are no means to stopping the arms trade from developed countries to poor countries?

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are in the difficult beginning of building our nation. But let us continue to try to give what we can to better understand the best way to develop our country.

Most of the time, the policy on cooperation, lacks understanding of the reality of poor countries, leading them to accept assistance, only because they have no choice. While each country needs to find solutions for their own priorities and formulate their own trends for sustainable development, the leaders and nations of the south need to act in a concerted effort in order to achieve the critical goals of peace and social justice, on the basis of being mutually beneficial, by enhancing their cooperation at all levels: in trade, in health, in education, in the development of human resources and in skills-sharing.

In all the international forums of today, it has become a norm to hear and to talk about democracy, human rights, civil society empowerment, and about fighting corruption and nepotism. These are the new ideologies of the South. However, not enough emphasis has been placed on the question of whether poor countries can co-exist with viable democratic institutions, whether one can build a healthy democracy without money, to be able to meet the requirements of transparency, of human and material resources and of a small but effective administrative apparatus.

In order to obtain funding from the developed countries, we need to prove efficiency and transparency, but it is unrealistic to expect that a country will become self-reliant in terms of human and administrative resources, without a real and continuous external support.

We, Timorese, are conscious that independence does not just mean having a constitution, a flag, a President, a Parliament, a Government and all the administrative structure. Independence ought to, and should meet the needs of the people, to enhance the capacity of the nation to face potential drawbacks, to eradicate illiteracy and poverty, to build the foundation of trade and commerce, to promote foreign investment and to create stable employment for its citizens. Without these elements, independence has no meaning to the people and, therefore, both national and regional stability become endangered.

So how can Timor-Leste fit into this modern world, knowing that we are the tem poorest in the world? We can either accept that our fate will be determined by the dynamics of the global market economy or we can take the reigns of our country and confront the challenges posed by the international economy and transform our Nation into equal patterns with other countries.

If one cares to examine the world, it is inevitable to perceive globalization as a trend that deepens dependency of both the poor and developing countries on the developed ones, thus leaving them both in a perennial state of chronic debt. Similarly, the world is currently living in the era of globalization, yet, in some aspects, the poor countries have lagged behind in the era of chronic shortage of clean water and abject poverty. The world is currently living in the era of free market economy, yet the poor countries still lack the necessary human resources and infrastructures for them, even to be able to think about being competitive.

One positive emerging trait from all this is that we no longer perceive development, market economy and the fight against poverty being mutually exclusive. We can see a new trend of internationalism emerging in the world, not as a selective ideological tool, but as a mirror of the sense of humanity, which, until recently, had been concealed by the polarized and ideologically mapped Cold War era.

In order for the poor countries to surpass chronic debt and build competitiveness, the international community is still required to demonstrate a clearer commitment towards developing a new formula of cooperation.

On the one hand, the rich countries must accept the need to write-off the existing debt of the poor countries as being ‘sine qua non’ condition for them to arrive at the desired threshold. On the other hand, both the poor and the developing countries must commit themselves towards enhancing their democratic process in order to ensure the viability of their democratic institutions.

Fighting corruption and nurturing the seeds of good governance at all costs are too important to be underestimated. Otherwise, both the poor and developing nations are at risk of simply becoming dormant and missing the opportunity to break free from chronic poverty, thus co-existing with one another in a diminished status of viability as Nation-States.

For Timor-Leste to mature, it needs stability, both internally and regionally. Timor-Leste needs to be involved in the international arena not, of course, as an economic power, but, essentially, as an active partner in the process of building democracy, of promoting mutual understanding between nations, of developing appropriate tools for creative diplomacy.

Timor-Leste needs to embrace a new form of diplomacy, one whereby the principle of “non-interference” continues to be important but, at the same time, enables us to act together, to work together, as a family of nations, at the regional and sub-regional levels, for the purpose of enhancing mutual benefits. And I am pleased to note that in its recent meeting, ASEAN broke its ‘non-interference’ principle by discussing the issue of Myanmar. I believe this is a very good step forward.

And extending beyond our national borders, we need to reflect on the serious crisis our world faces today. We are in the era of the global village, with global distrust and global challenges. I believe that serious attention must be given to the need of developing a global common vision, one which enables all nations, big and small, rich and poor, to understand and to respect drawbacks, but also to be committed to work together for the sake of the overall global stability and peace.

Thank you very much.

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