Multidimensional identity construction: Challenges for State-building in East Timor
p. 19-30
Texte intégral
1The main goal of this article is to demonstrate that identity construction of one State is a structured and multi-dimensional process, with no hegemonic bases and single explanations, which – in the case of East Timor – took place in the post-Cold War new and uncertain configuration of forces and actors. In addition to this framework, it will also take into account East Timor’s historical scenario, in which cultural roots are juxtaposed by colonial influences (Portuguese and Indonesian) and by the UN international administration. These structures and forces led to the formation of nationalism and to the willing of building a State and a national identity.4 Let us start by conceptual precision, in order to establish a genealogy for East Timor. In fact, I tend to perceive the formation of identitary structures – especially if national identity is under scrutiny-in a dynamic perspective. National identity is a long term political process with unforeseen results. However, organized political power used to establish a program to feed the development of national feelings. The State capacity to fulfill its basic goals-security, justice and socio-economic welfare-usually compromises the success of this program. This is the point where this text deals with the state-failure concept, trying to point out some of the difficulties in fulfilling the basic goals named above. However, it is not my purpose to label East Timor as a failed-state, only to share my worries – “challenges” in a more positive sense.
2Following a constructivist approach, let me try a reflection on identity matters, keeping in mind the inputs of colonial history and international relations changes will be analyzed and connected in order to explain the creation of East Timor.5 There is nothing new or even original in recognizing the importance of colonization: it gives a territorial basis for the creation of a nation-state and offers the nationalist ideology to the ‘native’ elite. The same assertion is valid taking into account international relations evolution and actors involved. There is probably no need to write a dissertation on this topic: the various actors involved, States, individuals, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, solidarity networks, public opinion, media’s impact, extension of UN’s mandate, only to mention a few of them, were influenced by the Cold War and post-Cold War architecture. In addition, the pre-eminence taken by new emergent nationalisms or the growing impact of globalization (in its economic and technological aspects) was highlighted in this particular case.
3How then, was East Timor born? This is a very easy question to ask. The answer, on the contrary, is complex and underlines the multidimensional nature of East Timorese nationalism.6 This gestation motivated the proposal for describing the constituting project of this State’s identity, highlighting the following issues. These issues are going to be developed in the three parts summarized infra:
Boundaries and cultural roots, especially the traditional concept of sacred house and its socio-political influence is a key to understanding what is happening in East Timor today;
Pre-Independence Ways and means of collective mobilization, in which we can include the following points: mythology, nationalist propaganda and the Resistance, the role of Catholic Church, national language choice, youth movements, “heroes” and personality cults, formation of people’s stereotypes, like “Povo Maubere” or the distinction between “Kaladi” native Westerners and “Firaku” native Easterners (Loromonu/Lorosae). All this points have ambivalent effects, simultaneously uniting and fracturing;
Post-Independence Diffusion and inculcation of the representations of a national project: The following aspects will be taken into account, in which were being tested, the efforts of inculcating a national project: the movement of national unity – CNRT, education system and armed forces, elections and system of government, foreign policy and regional relationships with Australia and Indonesia. Economic aspects, such as oil dossiers or unemployment are also important issues which help us to understand the present situation in East Timor. Special attention will be paid to the period after 2002 because of its importance as a test to the fragilities of a state-building process with the contingencies named above.
1 - Boundaries and cultural roots
4The three steps mentioned above are an outline of what we intend to describe as the architecture of East Timorese nationalism, which is obviously a political process under construction. A very simple conceptual explanation is due to the reader of this first part of the essay. I understand nationalism as the usual programme for giving sense to a political unit made up of colonial (and post-colonial) spoils. In fact, I am trying to follow the gestation of East Timor by starting to map the territory and its common socio-cultural patterns. That is what I have called boundaries and cultural roots. For boundaries, I mean the existence of a political unit, defined by Portuguese colonization not without a tremendous effort to pacify all the kingdoms in the Eastern part of the island. The frontiers were convened with the Dutch only in 1916 and following a long process of diplomatic negotiations which lasted for 60 years. The question is still under controversy as the borders are still being defined, with acute difficulties with Australia.7
5What I figure as a fundamental concept concerning the Timorese cultural roots is that of sacred house (uma lulik, in Tetum language), which is a fundamental reference of the traditional socio-political system (Hohe, 2002). In fact, the Sacred House is still a stable institution in the present political context as a common house of all the Timorese people (an intuitive translation for nation). The Sacred House is also a source of political legitimacy based on a hierarchical and aristocratic model of society, in which belonging to certain lineages is still important. The Sacred House is not only a cosmogony but also a metaphor for a dual organization of society, which distinguishes sacred from civil power. This diarchic and complementary model establishes the distinction and hierarchy between spiritual and political power and orders the ruling leaders for both powers as well as the system of alliances with other political units. I would like to underline, however, that the uma lulik is not a specific feature of East Timor; what is really a unique pattern is the one the Portuguese rule made in establishing a relationship with the indigenous socio-political structure8.
6The polarization between religious and civil transposed to a “modern” democratic system is a source of tensions, as showed by the chronology of events since 2002. The clash between the Government and the Catholic Church or between Xanana Gusmão and Mari Alkatiri is more understandable in this picture, which relates the local paradigms to the imported ones.
2 - Pre-Independence Ways and means of collective mobilization
7Let us start the second part of this essay, according to the summary above. This second step points out the birth of a kind of collective will supra kingdom or ethno-linguistic levels. I should start underlining what “collective will” is supposed to mean in this context. I am not talking about an organized nationalist movement yet, but of a collection of socio-political movements as a pre-consciousness configuration of sentiments belonging to East Timor as a whole.
8Here two parameters can be established, one which recalls the myth of the crocodile as the island’s founding ancestor, which is common to several ethno-linguistic groups (with non-relevant variations) and the other, historical, we would like to develop further in this paper.
9Let us focus on a flash of events that somehow prefigure a kind of collective sentiment beyond kingdom or ethno-linguistic levels. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Manufahi Wars, led by Liurai D. Boaventura, presumably showed evidence of a division between the natives, but was, in a way, an anti-colonialist and proto-nationalist sign inspired by some assimilated urban Timorese natives, some of them affiliated to the local Freemasonry.9 The Japanese invasion during the Second World War produced an organized resistance supporting both Portuguese colonial rule and Australian soldiers. In the late fifties, the upheaval against the colonial order in Viqueque (1959) took place and then, in the sixties, the Malay-Indonesian inspired nationalist movement, União da República de Timor.10
10The most significant key moments are undoubtedly the end of Portuguese colonization and the formation of the political parties followed by the Indonesian invasion in 1975. The main political parties, namely UDT, FRETILIN and APODETI; all of them were created in 1974, all of them grouping the different sensibilities within the East Timorese elite and giving birth to deep fractures that are still remaining and still have ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ causes.
11The twenty-five year Indonesian occupation was, however the most prominent mobilization factor for the deepening of an East Timorese sentiment and for the development of a nation-building project. Two forces with a remarkable strength and energy fought the intruders: the Resistance movement and the Catholic Church. Both of them were able to get support from outside and to be internationally recognized. With great effort and often with feelings of dispair, I should note.11 Indonesia’s political weakness, following the East Asian financial crisis, made the agreement for an auto-determination referendum possible, leading to end the last foreign power who have formally ruled in East Timor. A significant proportion of the people (79%) voted for independence.
12It is not possible to forget the importance of the social forces that dynamically influenced this evolution and the genesis of a political collective will, some of them pointed out above. The Catholic Church was not only the lasting institution during the Indonesian rule, but also the vehicle for the survival of the Portuguese and the Tetum languages; its role in denouncing the human rights abuse was crucial. The clergymen from East Timor were strong defenders of East Timorese “cultural identity”, recognizing and diffusing the idea of its uniqueness. Their resilience had some echo in Vatican and, despite all the diplomatic difficulties, the Pope, John Paul II, visited East Timor in 1989. The number of Catholics, below 30% in 1973, has risen, during the Indonesian rule, to almost 95% in 2002.12
13What is also significant were the young students who, during Indonesian rule, established a connection not only with those who were in the mountains, but also with those who were abroad, in Indonesia or in Australia (also counting on the support of the refugee’s communities), creating and reinforcing a solidarity network which strengthened the global support to the cause. These young people constitute the new nationalist generation that now is competing politically with the old Portuguese-styled generation.
14The Resistance also used typical propaganda techniques such as the promotion of a personality cult around Xanana Gusmão or Nicolau Lobato. Xanana was the liurai of the liurais, the hero, the model for the homo timorensis, the Southeast Asian Che, and was finally victimized when he was captured and imprisoned, also obtaining a kind of Mandela’s aura. The need of using a stereotype for people, maubere literally meaning very poor, was a way of uniting people due to the pain and grievances they had suffered during colonial rule, especially the Indonesian rule. Maubere People was a selected image in the nationalist discourse, used as a tool for forging an East Timorese identity. East Timorese, not the Mambai or the Fataluku (ethno-linguistic groups), were the ‘Maubere People’ who were victimized for centuries by Portuguese and then Indonesian colonization.13
15The historical picture cannot be dissociated of these mobilization forces that more or less worked concertedly to take advantage of the internal and international environment in order to attain their goals: the survival of an imagined community in the eastern part of the island of Timor..
3 - Post-Independence Diffusion and inculcation of the representations of a national project
16The third part of this essay will be focused on the development of the nationalist project since the moment that the idea of independence was seen as viable.
17From the emerged political parties with divergent programs and political methods in 1975 to the creation of Conselho Nacional de Resistência Timorense (CNRT) in 1998, the Resistance evolved significantly, not only in ideological terms but also strategically. The Resistance leaders finally perceived that the only way to succeed was to act as a united front. A fragile united front, we must recognize, which split into dozens of new and restored political parties after 1999. Some of the CNRT members participated in the UNTAET administration until the first elections to the Constituent Assembly in August 2001, won by FRETILIN.
18After the announcement of the results, Vieira de Mello formed the first government with a majority of FRETILIN members, and after May 2002, without legislative elections, this party assumed full control of the government and parliament14. The hegemonic FRETILIN had regular fighting with president Xanana as a result, not only from old and domestic political differences but also because of the Portuguese inspired semi-presidential system15. This formally established a dual leadership that was one of the main institutional sources of disruption, even if the causes of divisions between the President and FRETILIN were older than the decision of a semi-presidential system.16
19The end of the UN’s transitional administration showed to the world how the newborn State had to face several challenges, not only in terms of socio-economic conditions, but also in terms of the political institutions would function. This issue, in particular, has been critical. Since May 2002, two moments of tension, the first one in December 2002 and the other starting in 2005 and climaxing between January-June 2006, showed how hard an independent status could be. The weak East Timorese economy guaranteed the country’s position in the countries ranking below the poverty line. Most worrying is perhaps the divisions within the ruling elite. Those divisions, with serious security implications, gave the opportunity for another foreign intervention in which Australia, in a gendarme’s role, has the most important position.
20The elections of 2007 confirmed the changes in the political spectrum and two main consequences: Xanana left the presidency with his charismatic image eroded due to his leading of the constitutional crisis that led to Alkatiri’s resignation in 26 June 2006; FRETILIN is no longer hegemonic and needs to establish an agreement to rule with stability.
21This series of events in which collective political will was tested seems to prove that an East Timorese consciousness is in fact a longue durée process and that various types of constraints remain for the existence of a State capable to assure security, justice or socio-economic welfare to its citizens. Of course, we do not intend to prophesize a State failure; it is very early to recognize East Timor as filling the variable prerequisites of a failed State even if many symptoms of State failure are clear. The concept is everything but unanimous and it is not the intention of this text to develop its particular background, for which a review of literature would be needed and perhaps to try the spectre of comparisons.17
22In fact, it would be very useful to try the identification and mapping of social, economical and political indicators of state failure (refugees, the legacy of vengeance, gang violence, underdevelopment, poverty, low human development index, unemployment, weak law enforcement mechanisms, failing judicial system, low human security, among others). It would also be extremely important to evaluate the institutional shortcomings and how the democratic regime functions, as well as the judicial system. Another exercise of great relevance would be to put the Timorese political evolution into perspective. The political crisis started in 2005, opposed by the Church and Government and reached its most critical level during January-June 2006, when the “Peticionários” episode showed serious institutional problems. This crisis has a number of symptoms, trends, evolutions and actors:
the political/constitutional system;
the divisions of the elites;
the security and defense forces issue;
political exploitation of ethnic identity (the tensions between Lorosae/Loromonu);
the Catholic Church's involvement in the crisis;
The role played by paramilitary groups (militias, martial arts groups, and others).
23In this same framework, foreign policy is at front and centre as a key tool to reinforce the country multilaterally and bilaterally at international and regional levels, giving special emphasis to international aid and cooperation programs, the attraction of foreign capitals and the Timor Gap agreement.
24This cartography requires a deep and long research fieldwork to be developed. In this text, I am taking the risk of presenting a dilettante perspective. Without going further into a detailed analysis based on precise data, four of the main tasks of the State-education, security, foreign policy or economy-are still, to a certain degree, a mirage.
25As far as the educational system and the armed forces performance is considered, the situation reveals a sad picture. Progress in the educational system is slow: the Portuguese language, chosen as a national language, is far from a widespread reality and a severe limitation to an efficient education. Regarding the armed forces, the picture is even worse. The Reinado’s adventure is the clearest sign that there is only a simulacrum of Army and that there is a serious security problem in East Timor. The Army and the Police are unprepared and not cohesive. Command obedience is non-existent. The peticionários claim their rights, for which they fought with pro-government troops (May 2006). Weapons are circulating with no control. This is one of the main factors of instability that urged the Australian intervention and the continuity of the United Nations mission.
26Foreign policy, on the other hand, is one of the main bases for sovereignty. East Timor needs to play in several scenarios, multilaterally and bilaterally. However, this still is not sustainable. The country is not able to do it accurately. The Timor Sea dossier, conducted by the former Prime Minister Alkatiri, was, according to several opinions, the only foreign policy exercised with some limited success. The Australia factor tends to be a geopolitical fate for East Timor and the continent-island is pursuing a policy of attracting East Timor to the category of the Pacific islands. The comparison with Solomon Islands or with Papua New Guinea is recurrent.
27Of course, the economic aspect is crucial and overwhelmingly important in State-building. Not only because of the bad indicators, such as the human development rate, but also because of the huge unemployment in Dili which especially affects young people, or the oil and gas off shore exploration, and the great expectation for the country’s happy future. Australia intends to avoid disorder nearby its influence area18. Moreover, it seems that oil reserves in the Timor Sea are significant and the negotiations between the two countries were beneficial to East Timor.
28Not all of these pessimistic remarks are sufficiently conclusive regarding the need to classify East Timor as a failed state. It is very difficult to diffuse and inculcate a national project, a rather abstract and strange reality even to the country-fragmented elite.19 I think I am not being politically correct saying that East Timor is a weak state. Five years after the independence, the nationalist project has been under constant pressure. A happy conjugation of events led to reality what many people felt as an unattainable dream. Nevertheless, the dream has not been accomplished.20
Concluding remarks
29Being East Timorese is certainly not an easy human condition in current times: giving a sense to it requires a full exercise of citizenship that is not automatic; it can take decades to make people know how to act and react in order to support a sustainable sovereignty in this poor country. The most recent events, since 2006, show us a serious constitutional crisis in which the powers of the president and the parliament were noticeably misinterpreted. The alliance between the Xanana’s newborn CNRT with other parties (PSD, PD and ASDT) to get parliament’s majority and the nomination of Xanana as Prime Minister (8 August 2007) of a coalition government is polemic bearing in mind that FRETILIN was the most voted party. This kind of arrangement, with clear approval of Australia and the United States, may cause a renewed instability, which is a real danger for the survival of democratic institutions.
30Indeed multidimensional, with a complex genealogy and an even more intricate structure, this paper intended to fix some images of East Timor’s formation. Trying not to amalgamate these images, these three steps – territory mapping and cultural framework, emergence of nationalism and other ways of collective mobilization and finally the wide spreading and consolidation of the nationalist project – are an unfinished process. Too many questions remain in the air and the most worrying one is to know if the East Timorese people’s will is enough to sustain this project with peace and stability.
Notes de bas de page
4 Guedes (A.M.) & Mendes (N.C.) 2005, Ensaios sobre nacionalismos em Timor-Leste; Mendes (N.C.) 2006, Como nasceu Timor-Leste.
5 Gunn (G.C.) 2001, “Língua e Cultura na Construção da Identidade de Timor-Leste”; Mattoso (J.) 2001, “Sobre a Identidade de Timor Lorosa’e”.
6 Anderson (B.) 1992, “Imagining East-Timor”; Sousa I.C. de) 2001, “The Portuguese Colonization and the Problem of East Timorese Nationalism”; Guedes (N.C.) 2005, “A Complexidade Estrutural do Nacionalismo Timorense”.
7 Munton (A.J.) 2007, A Study of the Offshore Petroleum Negotiations between Australia, the U.N. and East Timor. East Timor-Indonesia Boundary Committee continues to meet, survey, and delimit the land boundary, but several sections of the boundary especially around the Oekussi enclave are still under discussion; Indonesia and East Timor contest the sovereignty of the uninhabited coral island of Palau Batek/Fatu Sinai, which prevents delimitation of the northern maritime boundaries. East Timor and Australia continue to meet but disagree over how to delimit a permanent maritime boundary and share unexploited potential petroleum resources that fall outside the Joint Petroleum Development Area covered by the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty; the dispute with Australia also hampers the creation of a southern maritime boundary with Indonesia (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0902237.html).
8 The Portuguese produced to a certain extent a symbiosis in which they exerted civil power, not sacred, simultaneously internalizing the local alliance system. Portuguese flags, considered as lulik objects, symbolically expressed the existence of pacts. Another important measure, which is complementary to the above mentioned, was the cooperation of the Timorese elites in the Portuguese Army. This was an alliance and, at the same time, a sort of loyalty guarantee for the colonizers. This sort of consensus made the almost nonexistent Portuguese presence in military and civil terms possible.
9 Gunn (G.C.) 1999, Timor Loro Sae, 500 anos.
10 Fernandes (M.S.) 2005, “A União da República de Timor: o atrófico movimento nacionalista islâmico-malaio timorense, 1960-1975”. Other aspects contributed to the development of nationalism ideals such as media impact (newspaper in 1938 and radio in 1950), the influence of deportees and Portuguese officers, growing level of education for local elites and contact with African nationalisms, especially in Mozambique.
11 Boavida (J.F.) 1993, The Fusion of Religion and Nationalism in East Timor: a Culture in the Making; Carey (P.) 1999, “The Catholic Church, Religious Revival, and the Nationalist Movement in East Timor, 1975-97”; Kohen (A.) 2001, “Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers”; Durand (F.) 2004, Catholicisme et protestantisme dans l’île de Timor: 1556-2003.
12 Durand (F.) 2004, op. cit.
13 Seixas (P.C.) 2006, “De Maubere a Kafir e Mais Além: o Meio-da-Terra em Movimento”.
14 Two and a half years of United Nations administration in a monstrous task of nation and state-building with unequal results and surely with a contested success, allowed East Timorese people to elect a Constituent Assembly and a Head of State. The political involvement and participation was considerably high. The people seemed to be motivated to try the democratic very strange reality.
15 The defined functions of the President are essentially symbolic, but the Constitution’s article 86 gives him the power of dissolving parliament and the government. In a way, this disposition institutionalized the tension between Gusmão e Alkatiri.
16 Feijó (R.G.) 2006, Timor, Paisagem Tropical com Gente Dentro.
17 Cotton (J.) 2007, “Timor-Leste and the discourse of State-failure”
18 The Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea was signed in Sydney on 12 January 2006. The revenue derived from production will be shared equally between Australia and East Timor (Munto (A.J.) 2007, op. cit.).
19 Feijó (R.G.) 2006, op. cit.
20 Kingsbury (D.) & Leach (M.) eds, 2007, East Timor beyond Independence.
Auteur
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Nuno Canas Mendes
Nuno Canas Mendes holds a Ph. D. in International Relations and is an Assistant Professor at The Advanced Institute for Social and Political Sciences at The Technical University of Lisbon. He is also a Research Fellow at the Orient Institute where he co-ordinates a research project on "State-building/State-failure debate in International Relations: The Case of East Timor" financed with a grant from The Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. His main research interests are International Relations, foreign policy and international relations history, East Timor and Southeast Asia. He has published and co-edited five books on these subjects. Contact: ncanasm@gmail.com
Coordinator of the Research Project “State-building, state-failure debate in International Relations: the case of East Timor” (PTDC/CPO/71659/2006), sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
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