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Making modernity in Timor-Leste.

Article Excerpt
Graffiti on a wall of a burnt-out shop reads 'iha ne'e la simu firaku'--we don't accept Easterners here--as a group of young men sit near the end of a side road made up of burnt-out buildings and car bodies. The young men identify themselves as Loromonu, coming from the West of Timor-Leste. They are watching the other end of the street intently, and begin to produce slingshots to shoot rocks over the houses. Within a minute there is a group of Lorosa'e, or Easterners, at the other end of the street, and the two groups begin rock-throwing in earnest. More serious weapons are produced and we are told to run.

This was daily life in Dili, capital of Timor-Leste, midway through 2006. A walk-out earlier in the year by nearly 600 soldiers--known as the petitioners --triggered dramatic fighting in a factionalised security force, which in turn gave way to large-scale violence in the capital between Easterners and Westerners, crossed with different gangs. In recent months the violence has become more-or-lessregularised and contained, and the recently held presidential and parliamentary elections were seen by many commentators as a way to correct what was hoped had been an aberration in the post-independence history of Timor-Leste.

The focus given to the elections by non-Timorese, both in terms of resources and also analysis, was staggering. Teams of observers and innumerable journalists and commentators joined seemingly hundreds of UN staff members in a massive exercise of eye-witnessing and interpretation. Across email lists and in the op-ed pages of Australian dailies, commentators of different political persuasions battled it out trying to save one party in Timor-Leste from another, or taking the rather glib line that 'democracy would be the winner'.

It is not hard to see why international commentators saw the elections as important. In an immediate sense they gave a clear idea of the political terrain, notably which personalities had survived the crisis and to what...

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