🇹🇱 Timor-Leste is on - again

🇹🇭 Is it brewing in Thailand?

February 26, 2020

Hello friends!

Let’s leave Malaysia for now. If it turns out to go the way I’m being told it will, today is very much a ‘bring your powerbank everywhere you go’ day and we’ll be back in the morning. But it’s not the only chaos in town and we’ve got to catch up.

Please share, forward, hit that heart, tell all your pals — this one is free!

See you (at this rate) probably tomorrow,Erin

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(Xanana Gusmão, c/o Wikicommons)

Let’s start in Timor-Leste, where collapses of governing coalitions are, uh, a touch more frequent than in Malaysia. 

In Michael Leach we trust. Towards the end of last month, the governing coalition failed to pass its budget after two of the three parties rejected or abstained. This Leach piece for the Interpreter explains why this failure — which the Timorese people would feel immediately and dramatically with wild cuts to public spending — is indicative of much larger divisions within the Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP) coalition. In this piece, he predicts a ‘remodelled’ government. By mid-February, talk of new elections gained speed.

And, finally, yesterday Prime Minister of Timor-Leste Taur Matan Ruak resigned from his post. He will need to wait for the approval of President Francisco Guterres and will carry on duties until that occurs. “We also cannot leave our country without direction like a car without a driver,” Matan Ruak said, as reported by Associated Press. 

Guess who’s back, back again. National hero Xanana Gusmão, whose National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) had held off voting in favour of the budget despite being part of coalition, is expected to form government. A new coalition cobbled together with the additional help of a few micro-parties will be presented to the president later this week, with an announcement expected early March. Fretilin have stated the party will sit out all the drama and wait for the 2023 election. 

This is a very interesting key par from Leach: 

The appointment of ministers to the new government is therefore critical to how the situation develops from here. If no compromise is possible between the president and new prime minister, then key aspects of the present stand-off are unlikely to change. Indeed, the president commented today that the new alliance should “think carefully” before resubmitting the same nine ministers. The solution may lie, as José Ramos-Horta has noted, in dialogue and compromise. In practice, it is likely the new PM will need to give ground on certain ministers to see an equivalent shift at the presidential end. For his part, President Guterres may now have to confront Gusmão himself as the prime minister, a more difficult task than dealing with Ruak, who maintained cordial relations.

Fretilin’s leader, former prime minister Dr Marí Alkatiri, has his own views. Despite having twice called early elections during his tenure, Alkatiri says early elections must be avoided in the future. Unlike in Europe, he says, early elections fundamentally disrupt Timor-Leste. “We are not able to settle the argument, and now we go for election? It’s like husband and wife [who] have a fight, then get divorced. Fretilin does not want it to be the culture,” Dr Alkatiri said.

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(This is my own photo from election day in Bangkok last year. It was taken before my sister gave me her old iPhone and I am aware it sucks but creative commons is failing me here and I get higher engagement if I use images)

Future Forward has stumbled backwards. The upstart opposition was widely expected to lose its defence in a case involving a loan from leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. Friday saw the party disbanded and Thanathorn and other FF leaders banned from politics for a decade. An alternative party had already been established for the 70 remaining FF MPs who must find a new home asap. 

Campuses across the country have erupted in protest, led by Thammasat University. Coconuts Bangkok reports nearly 30 universities have hosted or will host demonstrations against the decision. Students are demanding Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha and his government step down and the 2017 constitution to be amended. The youth movement in Thailand is fascinating to me and very hard to fully understand, so I am interested in learning a lot more here. If you’ve got a great read and/or can suggest someone to chat with I will really appreciate it!

It could prove more trouble than it’s worth, experts warn:

“This is a setback for the opposition parties but may be a political disaster for the military-backed regime,” said Kevin Hewison, a professor emeritus of the University of North Carolina and veteran Thai studies scholar. “Political uncertainty could potentially destabilize a regime already struggling with several crises and a moribund economy.”

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