Fear, hope and three days in Dili - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 18: In the Neighbourhood
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Jim Chalmers
POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS AROUND THE WORLD ARE BECOMING more and more alike: more constant, more expensive, more personally negative, less relenting. Political seminars are becoming similar too, as campaigners gather to mutter darkly and nod knowingly about emerging certainties and enduring truths. The most popular observation, it seems, is that fear beats hope. In Australia it remains the chosen adage of the professional political class – the one that explains the last four federal elections and countless state campaigns.
So when accepting an invitation to participate in the Timorese seminar, my first thought was how to take these lessons and translate them across the Timor Sea to the parties of this young democracy. How to talk to these nascent political professionals about the lessons the more mature democracies have learned, but how to give them at the same time a message more aspirational, more positive than the victory of fear over hope. How to wrap up in the inevitable discussion of base political strategy and communication tools a message that professional participation can be, as Bobby Kennedy described generations ago, an honourable profession.
In one respect, politics is the same everywhere. On the first day of our trip we saw, at a gathering of all parties to sign the new code of conduct governing elections, a scene that would not have been out of place in Canberra or the other political capitals. Clusters of hangers-on, a pecking order of journalists, the constant flashing of cameras, radio microphones in front of those deemed newsworthy. Plus the confident strut of political leaders, in this case many of them the proud men of the revolutionary struggle and known to Australians: Jose Ramos Horta, Xanana Gusmao and Mari Alkatiri.
Politics is the same everywhere in another important way: it takes courage to participate. Only the brave volunteer and only the strong-willed persevere. It's the magnitude of that courage that differs, from the Timorese risking their lives and their families' safety at the extreme end, to the budding Australian politicians' courage in putting a hand up for a life separated from family and subjected to intense public scrutiny at the other. These challenges are not in the same league, but courage is required for both.
The 426,210 Timorese whose ink-covered index finger proved they voted in the legislation elections of Saturday June 30, 2007 provide us with the best available illustration and evidence that in, in politics, fear doesn't necessarily always beat hope. That 80.5 per cent of registered voters braved possible intimidation and ignored historical violence to front up with their registration cards is something that cannot be ignored. Nor can the fact that the first election conducted by Timor's own Commissao Nacional de Eleicoes, spread out over 708 polling stations to elect sixty-five deputies, went so successfully and without major incident. These are feats worth celebrating, no matter what the election outcome.
NOBODY CAN CLAIM TIMORESE POLITICS IS PERFECT, or all the challenges have been met or all the obstacles cleared. The media seminar next door to ours, for example, heard of a local press that fell well short of ‘free' and listened to anecdotes of government pressuring newspapers not to publish stories of famine, and of the bullying of journalists.
If anyone has a reason to distrust politics it is the Timorese. If anyone can be excused for not participating, for not dipping their finger into the ink well at the polling station, it's them. They could easily be forgiven for putting safety and experience above participation. But they're tougher than that. More hopeful.
As is often the case, going somewhere to teach means going somewhere to learn. This was no exception. There was little use talking to the East Timorese about fear and hope when they have better conquered it. When you're a big wealthy country in the neighbourhood with powerful friends, and when you have provided $570 million to countries like Timor in the eight years to now, it's tempting but dangerous to do more lecturing than learning. Tempting to think you have more to teach than to learn from the poorer and younger democracies like our Timorese friend to the north.
But in just three days in Timor I learned more about fear and hope in politics than in a decade at home. With all their challenges, if Timorese hope can beat fear in their national elections there's no reason why optimism and the future, can't trump handouts and backwards pessimism and the politics of lowest common denominators, in Australia as well.
Three days in Timor doesn't make you an expert on its politics, but it does teach you this. ♦