MARTINE PERRET/AFP

Portuguese troops as part of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force patrolling Dili on February 11.

A “BULLET can wound a President but never can penetrate the values of democracy”. This is how Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao summed up the “spirit” of his tiny nation on February 15, four days after the assassination attempts on him and President Jose Ramos-Horta in Dili, the capital.

Gusmao was speaking in the presence of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shortly after their crisis talks. For a variety of geopolitical and historical reasons, Australia provides the former Indonesian province with a security lifeline. And Gusmao, once regarded by Indonesia as a guerilla activist to be wary of, has traversed a long distance since his country’s independence at the turn of this century, towards becoming a sub-regional statesman.

It is, however, a measure of ethnic and other divisions in Timor-Leste, formerly known as East Timor, that Gusmao’s undoubted charisma is insufficient to keep the young and impoverished country together in spirit and on a steady path of development.

Few doubt the relevance and resourcefulness of Gusmao in the present circumstances. In a sense, the fact that he escaped unhurt, when the vehicle he was travelling in was ambushed and targeted in February, has reassured many that the Prime Minister may not have lost his old touch as an alert leader.

And, while talking about the violence-resistant values of democracy, Gusmao laced his statement with an observation on the relevance of his country to the Australasia sub-region of Greater East Asia. He said “the protection of our democracy is central to establishing a climate of peace and stability” in the region. With that remark, he thanked Rudd for the “unwavering support” that Canberra had extended to neighbouring Timor-Leste from the time of its transition to total independence under the tutelage of the United Nations.

GARY RAMAGE/REUTERS

Xanana Gusmao (right) with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Dili on February 15.

It was Australia which took the lead in 1999 to goad the United States into supporting a U.N. initiative for East Timor’s independence from Indonesia. And maintaining that level of interest throughout subsequent years, Australia today is the predominant power, in every sense of the term, in Timor-Leste under the overall auspices of the U.N.

Rudd had rushed to Dili to empathise with Timor-Leste after Ramos-Horta was critically wounded in a rebel “raid” on his residence, a few hours before Gusmao was ambushed.

A Nobel Peace laureate, Ramos-Horta was admitted to a hospital in Darwin in Australia. He had suffered serious chest injuries besides being wounded in the stomach. Doctors reckon that he was lucky to have survived the critical bullet-inflicted wounds.

Over a week after the incident, no conclusive “reconstruction” of the circumstances in which Ramos-Horta was critically wounded was made either by Timor-Leste’s national security forces, which were “protecting” him and Gusmao at that time, or by the international peacekeeping troops, including the huge Australian contingent, present in the country.

DITA ALANGKARA/AP

President Jose Ramos-Horta. He was critically wounded in the February 11 assassination bid.

The Australian side, which felt embarrassed that such attempts were made on the lives of the top Timorese leaders when its wings were spread across the tiny country, did not want to rush to a judgment about the sequence of events. So, the Australian and U.N. officials quickly pointed out that the Timorese leaders, after the recent elections that brought them to their present positions, had wanted to resolve the ongoing “rebellion” in their country through negotiations.

It was in that context that the Australian troops were said to have stopped dead in their tracks after virtually encircling the key “rebel” leader, Alfredo Reinado. Eventually, Reinado was killed, apparently by Timorese national security guards, during the shoot-out that occurred to “save” Ramos-Horta after he was “first” attacked by Reinado.

Gusmao is far less ambiguous about the circumstances of the February 11 incidents and the motives of the persons involved. He is convinced that the ambush on him and “the attack on the President’s [Ramos-Horta’s] residence” were part of “a well-coordinated plan”.

Speaking in the presence of Gusmao on February 15, Rudd, however, emphasised that “the facts of these matters are yet to be fully determined” and that Australian investigators would reach their independent conclusion while their Timorese counterparts would make their separate assessment. On that day, it was not clear whether these two accounts would corroborate each other.

Australia’s presence in Timor-Leste is unique in several ways. Australia is, by a very wide margin, the dominant external player within the overall U.N. framework. However, Canberra, while extending support to the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste, provides Timorese defence forces with direct military assistance as well.

Unsurprisingly, in the present murky situation in Dili, Rudd, who does not quite share his predecessor John Howard’s visions of pax Australiana in the neighbourhood, reassured Gusmao in ringing terms. Australia, Rudd said, would “not [be] just a fair-weather friend”. Instead, as “a partner with Timor-Leste into the future”, it would “stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of their democracy”.

JORDAO HENRIQUE/AP

Alfredo Reinado. The rebel leader was killed by soldiers guarding the President.

The future “defence” of Timor-Leste’s fledgling “democracy” should be seen in a historical context. After Portugal, Indonesia was seen by East Timor as its “second colonial master”. More importantly, violence of some form or other has consistently marked the entire montage of Timor-Leste’s progression to its present plight – the struggle for independence from Indonesia, the U.N.-monitored referendum on the issue of freedom from post-Suharto Indonesia, the period of transition to total independence under the U.N.’s tutelage, Gusmao’s initial reign as a largely non-executive President and his present term as the more powerful Prime Minister at this time of a search for a durable constitutional order.

At one level, the current state of violence is traceable, in some part, to the divisions within the Fretilin party, which was guided by Gusmao himself during the struggle for liberation from Indonesia, which had annexed East Timor in the 1970s even as a changing Portugal cut its colonial losses and quit the scene.

The disintegration, not disappearance, of Fretilin has been accompanied by the rise of political personalities such as Mari Alkatiri and by the rise of a certain degree of “communalisation” of politics along Christian-Muslim lines. Timor-Leste is a predominantly Christian enclave in a largely Muslim archipelago. Indonesia’s Bali is a famous Hindu enclave in this region, and there are other Christian enclaves in Indonesia.

Amid the largely individualistic polarisation of politics in Timor-Leste since its complete independence over five years ago, Alfredo Reinado rose as a “rebel” leader within the country’s very modest army. Chaos hit the country after Reinado and his supporters, a few hundreds, deserted the Army in 2006.

A series of political manoeuvres by key players finally led to the emergence of Ramos-Horta as head of state and Gusmao as head of government. The positive equation between them was the only silver lining in a dark political landscape before the February 11 incident.

After the recent elections, U.N. Secretary General’s Special Representative for Timor-Leste Atul Khare was upbeat about the country’s potential to navigate the transition to full-fledged democracy. The litmus test now will be how Timor-Leste rides out of the present storm.

Reinado, an opponent of the Gusmao-Ramos-Horta team, is dead, but the country’s challenges remain. And, Timor-Leste, too, stays on the radar of the international community as a tiny geopolitical real estate in a strategically important maritime zone with energy resources.