Tales of Assassination and Corruption in Timor-Leste

Lately, the news coming out of Timor-Leste is quite reminiscent of the political reality drama, that was Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines – corruption, assassination plots, and intrigue in abundance.

On Monday July 13th, the 27 people accused of the February 2008 “assassination attempt” of  East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta, began trial.   The case is a puzzling conclusion to a long meandering rebellion, and perhaps more importantly, a struggle of wills between the rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, a former military-police commander, and successive Timorese political leaders.  Reinado was killed along with one other rebel during the conflict at Ramos-Horta’s home, but the story is not quite finished.

Because the rebels were mostly composed of former military personnel,  East Timor’s Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, described the incident as a coup attempt, which prompted a temporary declaration of martial law.  Since then, under the new leadership of Gastao Salsinha, the rebel group surrendered to the government in April of 2009.  The rebels were mostly a rag-tag group of disaffected ex-military from the eastern areas of the country who claimed discrimination after being made redundant by East Timor’s former Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri.  Their initial uprising became known as the 2006 East Timorese Crisis.

The events that occurred in the aftermath of the crisis, which led up to the current trial, may not be so straight forward.  Many believe, and the defendants will argue,  Reinado and his men were intentionally lured to Ramos-Horta’s residents to be ambushed.  Conspiracy theory or fact, the reality is that Ramos-Horta and Reinado had an odd and complex relationship:

“After he [Reinado] had taken up arms against the elected government, and killed several security force personnel in a vicious ambush in Dili, Gusmao wrote Reinado a friendly letter encouraging him to withdraw his men from the capital. The president subsequently paid for Reinado’s hotel bill when the soldier stayed in the central town of Ailieu for six weeks. During this time the “rebel” held talks with high-ranking Australian military personnel…”

The conspiracy theorist believe that after Gusmao and Ramos-Horta stopped the official government manhunt for Reinado in 2007, the Australian military began exchanging information concerning rebel and Australian troop movements through, Angelita Pires, a duel Australian-East Timor citizen, who was also the lover of Reinado.  She is currently one of the 27 being tried.  An unofficial detente would be an odd situation to place one’s self in if one’s goals was to overthrow the government by assassination – or maybe a clever rouse.

In January 2008, Reinado released a DVD accusing PM Gusmao of orchestrating the 2006 Crisis; further, he threatened to provide additional evidence at some undetermined point.  Conspiracy theorist believe that Reinado’s statements caused a breakdown in the governments negotiation with the rebels over the terms of their surrender.  In turn, this brought further instability to the prime minister’s weak coalition government.  The defense plans to call over 100 witnesses to support their premise, that it was Reinado who was assassinated; as a result, the trial will likely last several months.

Meanwhile, PM Gusmao is already fighting other allegations, this time for corruption, for what is becoming a growing scandal, dubbed, “Rice-Gate“.  Mr.  Gusmao authorized a US$3.5 million contract between the government and a  Prima Food, a company of which his daughter was a significant shareholder.  The company was one of many that was contracted to import millions of tons of rice in order to head-off potential famine.  So far, President Jose Ramos-Horta firmly supports Gusmao; however, the opposition Fretilin Party is calling for his  resignation.  Gusmao contends he did nothing wrong, because his daughter never owned more than 10 percent of the company, which would make his actions legal under East Timorese law.  It appears his case will be the first major one taken up by the nation’s new anti-corruption commission.  But, the watchdog groups, the East Timor’s Constitutional Committee and La’o Hamutuk, are concerned that the corruption committee can not deal with this matter effectively.

The East Timor Ombudsman’s office has also  launched an investigation into the Ministry of Tourism, Commerce and Industry as there activities relate to deals authorized by Mr. Gusmao.  Even if it is found that there is enough evidence against Gusmao for the  Prosecutor General’s Office to receive the case, there is already a backlog on corruption cases. In fact, the last 28 cases sent to the office have yet to be forwarded to the courts.