East Timor’s new president lauded the “maturity” of his young country’s democracy yesterday at celebrations marking 10 years of independence, which comes as UN forces prepare to leave at the end of the year.
“It was on this day 10 years ago that we took over the destiny of our country from the hands of the UN,” East Timorese President Taur Matan Ruak said in a speech, referring to the 1999 UN mandate that followed Indonesia’s 24-year occupation.
Ruak, a former guerrilla leader, spoke only hours after being sworn in shortly after midnight and said the peaceful elections he won testified to “the maturity of our democracy and bears witness to the stability” of East Timor, known as Timor-Leste in Portuguese.
Photo: EPA
His speech followed a minute of silence for fallen heroes of the resistance against Indonesian occupation, before invited guests who included Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and about 400 ordinary Timorese gathered outside the gates of the presidential palace in Dili.
After his speech, Ruak inaugurated a new Resistance Museum in the capital, saying now “our children will have the opportunity to learn about the most important legacy that previous generations have bequeathed unto them.”
The celebrations included traditional dances to be followed by an evening concert with local, Indonesian and Brazilian musicians.
In his inaugural speech earlier, Ruak urged his countrymen to work hard to lift the country out of poverty and turn the page on its bloody past.
East Timor, one of Asia’s poorest nations, has enjoyed several years of relative peace and is in a crucial period, with general elections due in July and UN forces stationed there since 1999 set to depart by the end of the year.
However, despite having left bouts of major unrest behind it, the half-island country of 1.1 million people remains hobbled by extreme poverty and corruption.
Ruak, 55, took over the presidency from Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta in an emotional ceremony at the beachfront area of Tasi Tolu near Dili, where East Timor declared its independence exactly 10 years ago.
“There was a time in the past when blood and fighting spirit was what was demanded from us,” the ex-army chief said, to loud applause from thousands of people. “Today, what is required from us is sweat and hard work.”
Ruak also called for the country to diversify its economy — more than 90 percent of state spending currently comes from oil and gas earnings.
“It is imperative to change the essence of the economic system on which the country is currently based,” he said at Tasi Tolu, calling for “the diversification of our economy” and “reducing our dependency from abroad and from oil.”
The nation first declared independence on Nov. 28, 1975, after Portugal ended four centuries of colonial rule, but was immediately invaded by Jakarta’s forces.
Up to 183,000 people died from fighting, disease and starvation under the Indonesian occupation.
Since independence, the nation has endured a political crisis in 2006 that killed 37 people and displaced tens of thousands, and Ramos-Horta was lucky to survive an assassination attempt in 2008.
“Our history is a narrative of struggles and of hard work,” said Ruak, who spent decades in the mountains fighting Indonesian forces.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS