Dili – It is easy to be optimistic about East Timor's future when you are sitting at the villa of its de facto king – UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello.
As a staffer served wine to visiting journalists sitting in new rattan furniture on de Mello's spacious front porch, the Brazilian chief of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor painted a pretty picture of its performance in preparing this stife-torn territory for independence. The Timorese, de Mello said, are being thoroughly trained by international UN staff to run the country's administration, finance and banking sectors.
The false "bubble" economy created by the infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and wildcat businesses catering to expatriates will not burst after the UN begins pulling out later this year, he assured his guests. And most importantly, the Timorese people, who have only known colonial occupation by Portugal, Japan and Indonesia for the past 500 years, are grasping the complexities of democracy just ahead of their first-ever election scheduled for Thursday, de Mello said. "[The election campaign] is testing the political maturity of the Timorese people – I think they have passed the exam," he said optimistically. "I think that is the best guarantee that what we're building will have a strong foundation."
It is a different story 1 kilometre down the street of the capital Dili, where three Western businessmen sat on plastic chairs behind a local supermarket, drinking canned beers. "When the UN pulls out, this place is going to end up like Somalia," said one of them. "Without the UN here to run the economy, there is no economy."
The businessmen, who openly admitted they had become disillusioned by the UN's performance, told horror stories of endless red tape and arbitrary regulations that hurt their companies, and incompetent UN staff who are here only out of self-interest and treat the Timorese with contempt. There is no commitment to building democracy, little law enforcement and few signs that things are getting better, they said. "The only interest the UN has here is to promote their self-interest," said an Australian who works in the commercial finance sector. "They're not building democracy. They're here to promote themselves and have a good time."
A quick look around Dili is proof enough that the foreigners are having a good time: numerous restaurants and bars, Range Rover vehicles, and two luxury floating hotels with discotheques blasting house music across the city's port.
But the real problem is outside the capital, where most of the territory's 800,000 people are living on less than 1 dollar a day. Unemployment is rampant, hospitals and clinics nearly non-existent and illiteracy commonplace.
The UN's arrival 19 months ago, and promises by Timorese independence leaders of multi-party democracy, has given the population something to look forward to. But it has also created extremely high, naive expectations that democracy will instantly translate into jobs, houses and a better life. "There's going to be these expectations – 'Where are our roads, our schools, our jobs'?" said Johanna Kao of the US-funded International Republican Institute, a democracy-building group. "It's going to be a lot of hard work, and there hasn't been discussion on how much hard work it's going to be." But Kao said there was room for optimism that East Timor will make it as the world's newest democratic nation, considering where it was only two years ago.
A prime example that the Timorese were grasping democracy, de Mello said, was the peaceful election campaign for seats in an 88- member constituent assembly. The new body will draft a constitution, set a date for a presidential election and then become East Timor's first parliament. Among the 16 parties running are old battlefield enemies from the territory's civil war that preceded Indonesia's invasion in 1975. "Some of you were predicting instability, violence, blood during the election campaign," he said. "[There was] nothing – eight incidents."
A few months ago, a poll found that the vast majority of Timorese did not think multi-party democracy was a good idea because it could led to confrontation, but de Mello said most how understand and have embraced the process. He said the UN was on schedule to train a Timorese civil service for a government, police and armed forces, and that the seeds of democracy have been properly planted, unlike past UN missions including Cambodia 10 years ago.
As a back-up, international peacekeepers, UN agencies and dozens of international aid groups will remain in East Timor indefinitely to assist the new country. "The bottom line is we will not let them down, and we will not pull out on independence day," which could come next March, de Mello said.
The biggest concern and challenge will be the economy. The East Timorese will have to rely on coffee production and other agriculture to replace the money being pumped in by the international community. The territory will also eventually receive hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from off-shore oil and natural gas deposits that will be exploited in the coming years. "I don't think there will be any implosion," de Mello said.
Sedaliza Santos, a 73-year-old Timorese woman from Ermera, said she was happy to see independence after growing up under Japanese occupation and raising 12 children during the Portuguese and Indonesian regimes. But unlike some of her compatriots, she has no illusions about the tough road ahead. "It will be better living under democracy, but we still need time," she said. "The economy is not there yet."