Geoffrey Barker – Prime Minister John Howard's offer of extra aid to East Timor's police and judicial services was a necessary but hardly sufficient response to last week's violence in Dili.
Australia has a vital security interest in a stable East Timor and a neighbourly obligation to help the fledgling democracy entrench the rule of law after years of violence, and Howard was right to offer Australian help.
But the causes of the rampage during which dozens of buildings were burnt and looted only seven months after East Timor celebrated its hard-won independence will not be addressed only by more Australian aid for the country's inadequate police and legal services.
Those causes are deeply embedded in economic, political and social conditions which Australia has little, if any, capacity to address, and which East Timor's Fretilin government shows little inclination to address. The riots had been waiting to happen, and they are unlikely to be the last, unless things change.
The fact that the rioters burnt three houses owned by the Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, is a strong indication of how comprehensively Alkatiri has failed to communicate and to build public support since he became Prime Minister. It is also an indication of how quickly and how conspicuously East Timor's leaders have moved to hog the spoils of power.
East Timorese public affection is reserved mainly for President Xanana Gusmao, a political independent, who Alkatiri has tried to reduce to a figurehead.
There is widespread disillusion at the performance of Alkatiri and his clique of old Fretilin leftists, who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing since their days in Mozambique's failed socialist state more than 30 years ago.
The background to last week's riots was obviously rising frustration with increasing poverty since the withdrawal of the main UN interim administration, lack of economic progress and opportunity, government incompetence and corruption, and the country's long history of violence – a history that predates the bloody Indonesian era. Other issues included the drought affecting eastern East Timor and the imposition of the Portuguese language of the old gang from Mozambique.
No less significant was the immediate lead-up to last Wednesday's riots. Five days earlier, on November 28, the government trucked hundreds of Fretilin veterans into Dili from rural areas to celebrate Fretilin Day. Many were bitter that police and army jobs had been given to younger men and women rather than to veterans of the "liberation struggle".
Last Tuesday demonstrations occurred when – outside the main government and parliament buildings and opposite a high school where hundreds of students were sitting exams – Dili police charged in and arrested a student suspected of a crime. Protesting students were joined by other demonstrators hostile to the police, especially the police chief, Paulo Martins, a hold-over from the Indonesian era.
On Wednesday, as burning and looting intensified, Gusmao made a surprise speech accusing Alkatiri's government of laziness and calling for Martins' resignation.
In the aftermath of the riots, Alkatiri and Gusmao voiced their concerns at the events, called for order and pledged to investigate the causes. But their remarks demonstrated, above all, the fragility of their relationship.
There seems little doubt that UN peacekeepers and civil police were slow to respond to the riots and that underlying resentment towards the large (and significantly Australian) foreign population led to the destruction of the Australian-owned Hello Mister supermarket, where foreigners buy goods far beyond the means of the impoverished locals.
For Australia, as opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd noted last week, the riots are a sharp reminder of the endemic instability across Australia's near-neighbourhood. They are a reminder of what could happen in Papua New Guinea if efforts to revive the deeply depressed economy do not quickly show results.
It is, of course, too soon to write off East Timor as a failed state, doomed to aid dependency and the political corruption of power and clan loyalties.
But last week's riots will shake what little international confidence there might have been in East Timor, and set back the country's hopes for progress.
So what to do? If Alkatiri cannot lift his game and manage East Timor effectively, he should make way for somebody who can.
The President is a national hero, a modest and decent man, who communicates effectively with East Timorese and international figures. Xanana Gusmao should be more than a national figurehead in these critical circumstances.