Gusmao looks to the future of East Timor
Annastashya Emmanuelle, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Rebuilding the infrastructure of war-torn East Timor and developing its human resources will be an enormous task both for the United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) and the soon to be fully independent country.
Bearing in mind this mammoth task, president-elect Xanana Gusmao considers that one would be wise to prioritize the nation's welfare instead of holding grudges over the past.
Gusmao, who was the commander of the Forcas Armadas Libertacao Timorleste (Falintil) which fought against Indonesia's occupation for more than 18 years, strongly encourages all to look to the future.
Justice, he says, is in the form of social justice, marked by the improvement of living standards for the East Timorese, who currently live on around 50 U.S. cents a day.
The reluctant presidential candidate, who won the majority of votes in April's election, said he would be more of a symbol than having a strategic role in the government after being inaugurated as president.
"I will help components of our society better understand the process because democracy doesn't grow in an instant," he said in a media conference in Jakarta on Friday.
For a person who often claims to be a non-politician, preferring to write poetry and farming than be a president, Gusmao is tactful and careful in his answers concerning political rivalries.
When asked about his rumored friction with future prime minister Mari Alkatiri, he said: "That is something the media used to talk about. Differences are a sense of democracy".
Jose Alexander Gusmao, who later changed his name to Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao, is the second son of seven, born in June 20, 1946 in the village of Manatuto.
He escaped a Catholic seminary school in Dare that his parents had sent him to and continued his high school education in Dili, because the Tango-dancing young Gusmao did not aspire to become a Catholic priest.
Once a journalist for Avez de Timor, he later went to Australia to work and study journalism for two years, Xanana and Nobel laureate Ramos Horta established the Nacroma newspaper when he returned to Dili in 1974.
First married to Emilia Batista, also of Portuguese descendant, the couple have two children Nito and Zenilda who have remained in Australia since he decided to join the guerrillas in East Timor.
In Nov. 20, 1992 he was captured in Dili, and sentenced to lifetime imprisonment before receiving clemency from former president Soeharto in 1993.
He was granted amnesty by former president Abdurrahman Wahid in September 1999, and married his second wife, Australian Christy Sword, the following year.