DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA INTERVIEW - Wednesday 11th April, 2007
GEORGE NEGUS: Dr Horta, thanks very much for your time. At
this point we don't really know who's going to be the next president of
East Timor. How confident are you that you can go from prime minister
to president?
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I'm very
confident,
but I haven't lost much sleep over it. I never wanted to be a
candidate. I didn't do much campaigning in the last two weeks or so. If
the people decide to vote for me, I will accept the burden of the
cross, will carry it with honour and respect for five years. If they
have chosen someone else, well, I will honour that choice as well.
Which ever way, I feel I will be a winner. Winner if I win the
election, winner if I lose, because I win my freedom.
GEORGE NEGUS: It actually sounds like you've got mixed
feelings, but,
given your decades of campaigning for your country's independence, we
would've thought it would be a foregone conclusion that you'd win. Why
do you think there's any doubt about you?
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Well, I have had significant support
wherever I
went, in Dili particularly, the capital. Many people seem to be
trusting me and I accept their trust. I know I will do the job with
confidence, with integrity - I would not fail them, particularly in the
next five years it's so crucial to heal the wounds of the country. But
if they feel someone else can do it as well, equally well, I'll be
happy because I have a writing career for me waiting to start.
GEORGE NEGUS: Only a couple of days ago, your colleague Xanana
Gusmao
said East Timor is pretty close to being a failed state. That's a dire
situation to be in.
R JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Well, I would say that the country has
tremendous
potential to move forward. We have resources from the Timor Sea, more
than US$1 billion sitting in our treasury, waiting to be spent, spent
wisely on the people who need most, the poorest of this country, the
widows, the orphans, the children the youth. They are the future. We
must invest in them.
GEORGE NEGUS: Why hasn't that money been spent - that $1.2
billion
nest-egg from your oil royalties?
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Well, the previous prime minister, Dr
Mari
Alkatiri, he is a fiscal conservative. He does not believe in being
audacious, in being compassionate in being aggressive in tackling the
issue of poverty. He makes grand speeches on fighting poverty as a
national cause but he doesn't move, hasn't moved aggressively enough,
creatively enough with new ideas. I have argued that we can simply sign
off cheques to the tune of $40 million to the poorest of this country.
This way we are not responding to a moral and ethical challenge but we
are injecting money into the rural economy.
GEORGE NEGUS: So there's a serious split between yourself and
Mari
Alkatiri, your old colleague from the Fretilin days.
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Oh, definitely. When it comes to how to
manage the
economy, we have a profound differences. While Dr Alkatiri talks a lot
about the private sector, he doesn't do much about it. I have taken the
initiatives in the few months that I've been in office in for instance,
initiating radical reform of the entire fiscal system that would make
East Timor a fiscal paradise, next only to Hong Kong, that would
attract investors from Australia and the entire region.
The Asian Development Bank, in its latest report, only a week or so
ago, has already indicated that they are forecasting economic growth of
more than 30% in 2007/2008, based on oil revenues and my policies.
GEORGE NEGUS: You've certainly got a long way to go from one
of the
poorest nations on earth to this economic miracle that you're talking
about.
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Yes, obviously for economic growth for
progress,
material benefits to spread around, we have first to secure peace and
stability. For that we need Australian and New Zealand troops to stay
here until the end of 2008. I need the international United Nations
police force to stay here at least until 2012.
GEORGE NEGUS: Which is actually another disagreement between
you and
Mari Alkatiri. He would see Australian troops out of East Timor very
smartly.
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Well, interesting enough, he and Mr Lu
Olo
Guterres, his leader and parliamentary speaker and President Xanana,
they are the ones who signed a letter to Mr Howard back in May, asking
the troops to stay. But a few weeks or a few months later, Dr Alkatiri
was already claiming in the media that he never wanted foreign troops
here when he, in fact, took part in a meeting with me, with President
Xanana, with a brigadier, a commander of our defence force and all of
us unanimously agreed to bring in international security forces.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can I ask you this? If Fretilin doesn't have a
serious
role to play, isn't that a problem for your country's stability?
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Well, Fretilin would not be wiped out
politically
- it could be a formidable opposition in the parliament. That is what
democracy is all about. I would hope that the Fretilin leadership, in
particular Dr Mari Alkatiri, would be able to show to the country and
to the rest of the world that losing the election doesn't mean
necessarily that Fretilin would reject and become violent and be an
obstruction to stability in this country. Again, Dr Alkatiri and many
of his colleagues do not have a good reading of the mood of the
country. The simple fact that, Mr Fernando de Araujo of the Democratic
Party has done so well around the country is an indication of the
widespread frustration, disillusion, unhappiness and resentment with
the ruling party Fretilin.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can I read you something that was in the 'New
York
Times'? It's a pretty awful picture that they paint. Talking about East
Timor, they say, "Poverty and unemployment have led to be spread of
gangs and contributed to an atmosphere of instability and lawlessness.
Tensions remain between an older Portuguese speaking elite and a
younger generation educated during 24 years of Indonesian rule. The
failure of independence to bring prosperity has added to a sense of
futility and anger." Doesn't that mean that since those heady days of
independence you and Xanana Gusmao have failed to move your country
forward?
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: Well, of course, the 'New York Times' and
other
American writers, they have this sweeping black-and-white judgments
about anything anywhere in the world. They fail to forget that we are
only 4- or 5-year-old independent country. And in five years it's
impossible to transform an economy, transform a country that we
inherited in 2002 from the ashes, ashes of destruction, caused by the
Indonesian army and the militias in '99. And when the UN departed in
2002, what they gave us was only a skeleton, a sketch of a state.
And so in the last five years, and that is credit to Dr Alkatiri and
the others, we helped to build the state, its constitution and its
laws. So to say, given only less than five years, that we have failed,
I think is one of those typical, America, journalist jargons that see
everything in black and white.
GEORGE NEGUS: Dr Horta, good to talk to you.
DR JOSE RAMOS HORTA: My pleasure, thank you.