Women and children first
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 14: The Trouble with Paradise
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Kirsty Sword Gusmão
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Kirsty Sword Gusmão's biography and other articles by this writer
Rosalina Ximenes' eyes were downcast as I leaned forward to kiss her lightly on both cheeks. I caught the smoky scent of the firewood she had used to cook her last meal as I pressed the envelope of money into her hand. Rosalina was surrounded by her six children and a gathering of curious onlookers. The grimy face of her second youngest child, Arris, betrayed fear at the sight of me, but none of the horror and pain to which his mother had been subjected over the last month since the murder of her husband.
At three, Arris will only learn of Timor-Leste's krizi politika and the circumstances in which his father lost his life when he is older. Paulo da Costa was one of a group of police officers gunned down with weapons belonging to the nation's army on May 25, 2006. The money and material assistance I had to offer seemed inconsequential in the face of the magnitude of Rosalina's loss. When she and her children finally leave this refugee camp – a once tranquil and pristine convent that is still home to 1,300 displaced people – they have no house to return to. In the circumstances, it was all I could offer. Yet the tiniest flicker of a smile from Rosalina as I took my leave told me that it was a gesture of some significance to her – the first she has received from a public figure or member of the government since her husband's death.
Rosalina is one of fifteen women widowed by the recent conflict with whom I have met since May. In my capacity as first lady, wife of the President of Timor-Leste, I have distributed money gathered by a Rotary Club and a group of surgeons in Adelaide, and established a scholarship fund to guarantee that, at the very least, the women's children will receive an education. I am lobbying the police and other government authorities to commit to providing regular, ongoing payments to the widows. Like the 140,000 internally displaced people facing months of hunger and boredom in the dusty, overcrowded camps spread across Dili, these women are innocent victims of a dangerous conflict not of their making, which is to a large extent incomprehensible to them.
SO WHAT WENT WRONG? On the surface, all was proceeding so well with the nation-building process. Timor-Leste was held up by the United Nations and many donor nations as the post-conflict success story so anxiously awaited by the rich, aid-giving countries of the world. Timor-Leste's first four years as an independent nation were marked by the establishment of all the major institutions of state and, importantly, by political stability and peace.
These are no minor achievements. The country was almost totally destroyed by the Indonesian military and its militias in 1999. The people carried deep psychological scars as a result of twenty-five years of political violence. There was an exceedingly low human resource base, particularly at the level of middle and senior management. Members of the clandestine resistance movement – some fresh out of university, others newly released from Indonesian jails – found themselves made members of parliament, government officials, even senior department heads. The learning curves were brutally sharp. "Capacity-building" was the catch-cry of the United Nations-led period of transition to independence, and it continues to be a key concern across government and within civil society organisations today.
Four years is a short time to overturn and redress this legacy. Nobody expected the government of Dr Mari Alkatiri to work miracles. My husband, Xanana Gusmão, made regular and consistent appeals to the people throughout the early period of independence. He urged patience and understanding of the arduous process of nation-building being undertaken by the new government.
By early 2006, however, frustration at the slow pace of development, the concentration of government spending and resources in Dili, reports of widespread corruption, and what most people perceived to be the unresponsiveness – even arrogance – of government in the face of worsening poverty was coming to a head. Families who, in Indonesian times, had been able to purchase seeds to plant home gardens in order to stave off hunger and malnutrition found they could no longer do so, due to widespread unemployment and the adoption of the US dollar as the nation's currency.
It was little wonder then that, when a few hundred soldiers bearing a grudge after being dismissed from the nation's army took to the streets to protest in April, a trigger of national proportions was squeezed.
I will perhaps be taken to task for expressing these views. I was roundly criticised in some circles in Australia and elsewhere for commenting in the Australian media on the worsening crisis unfolding around me in May 2006 – the wife of a president is not expected to have opinions and certainly not to express them on issues of a political nature, even when these issues impact dramatically on her life, the life of her family and the lives of the women with whom she engages every day. So what is the role of a "first lady" if not that of political commentator? What is expected of her?