Horta's referendum stand

Horta's referendum stand

By Dino Patti Djalal

LONDON (JP): At a recent 10-day seminar series East Timor
independence leader Jose Ramos Horta used the occasion to speak
on his most favorite subject: East Timor's referendum.

The seminar which covered four North American cities, evolved
around a series of points and counterpoints traded between Horta,
five pro-integration East Timorese and myself.

The conversation began on Feb. 27 in Boston, Massachussets.
Horta was addressing a crowd at Harvard University, where he
spoke about East Timor's self-determination and called for a
referendum.

The session was going well for Horta, until Domingos
Policarpo, an integrationist East Timorese, accused Horta of
hypocrisy. Domingos said Fretilin, of which Horta was a key
figure, was not the least bit interested in a referendum in 1975.
He said Fretilin was the only party which had boycotted all
negotiations to implement self-determination.

Of course it was Horta who unilaterally and forcefully
declared East Timor's "independence" in November 1975, an act
which constituted a flagrant desecration of the right of East
Timorese for self-determination.

Horta was boxed in. He responded, quite astoundingly, by
declaring opposition to the Fretilin "declaration of
independence", stating that it was a deed of his Fretilin
colleagues, not his. Horta also said that he wrote about this in
his book Funu: The unfinished saga of East Timor (1987), "which I
am sure you have read, Mr. Djalal".

I have read Horta's book, and could not believe I had missed
this crucial element. That night, I asked a member of staff at
the Embassy in London to find the book and scan it to spot any
reference to Horta's opposition to the Fretilin "declaration of
independence".

Two days later he informed me that Horta made no such
reference in his book. In fact, in his book Horta indicated that
his main reservation was regarding the date, not principle, of
such a declaration, preferring January 1976 instead of November
1975. Horta had managed to deceive us and his audience about the
book. But at least now that Horta was reluctantly declaring his
opposition to the Fretilin "declaration of independence", the
conversation was going somewhere.

The Fretilin "declaration of independence", of course, is
completely void of political and diplomatic currency. The
declaration was shunned by the international community, including
Portugal, Indonesia and the UN. Even scores of former Fretilin
leaders, including the first President of the "Fretilin
Government", Xavier do Amaral, have repudiated it. Nonetheless,
it was necessary to stick to it as a key point of debate to
highlight Ramos Horta's self-contradiction on the question of the
referendum.

The debate continued in San Francisco. Here, it was my turn to
speak from the podium. I said: "The question of the referendum is
something Horta and his Fretilin colleagues no longer have a
right to profess in 1997, for they were precisely the ones who
did everything they could to rob the East Timor people of this
God-given right in 1975."

Horta did not stay long enough to hear his East Timorese
fellows criticize him. Clementino Amaral, a member of the
National Commission on Human Rights, lamented: "I would like to
ask the leaders of Fretilin, those like Horta, why they did not
hold a referendum when they held power for over 100 days in East
Timor?" Domingos, who suffered from Fretilin brutality, claimed
that "Horta used the people of East Timor to score political
points".

Domingos claims to speak for East Timor but he has never
stepped foot in East Timor in 20 years. "You can't speak for
those you don't know," said Francisco da Silva, chairman of the
Forum for East Timor Studies.

He added: "For Horta to call a referendum, when his party and
the Portuguese killed so many East Timorese, is not only
irresponsible, it is an insult to the memory of all killed in the
civil war."

Horta responded the following day when speaking at the
University of Berkeley. But his argument had new elements. His
key message was that Fretilin had done nothing wrong by declaring
"independence" unilaterally. Yes, he argued, they did it, but so
did the Indonesians in 1945, and so did the Americans in 1776.
Both the Indonesian and American proclamations of independence
were "unilateral acts" and "did not involve any referendum". So
why should Fretilin be condemned for doing the same for East
Timor? Many in the audience agreed.

Horta was dancing to our tune. But I was not about to let him
get away with his false analogy. After his speech, I said that
Horta's remarks on Indonesian and American independence only
showed how much he misunderstood about the basics of self-
determination in East Timor.

Indonesian and American unilateral proclamations of
independence were entirely irrelevant to the case of East Timor.
First, by 1975, it was clear to all sides -- that there were
three equally valid political options for East Timor: integration
with Indonesia, a separate East Timor state or an arrangement
with Portugal.

Second, it was clear that these three options were to be
determined not by the elite members of the Fretilin central
committee, but by the people of East Timor. Whatever the
circumstances on the ground, Fretilin never had the exclusive
right to make that decision for, and impose it upon, the East
Timorese, as it did blatantly on Nov. 28, 1975.

Horta then said that Fretilin had to unilaterally declare this
"independence" in view of a prospective "Indonesian invasion".
But then, oddly enough, he pleaded, "But if we were wrong in 1975
for declaring independence, then let's have another vote, let's
have a referendum."

I was not given the chance to refute Horta. But I knew that he
was stretching his argument too far. The fact is that when Horta
presented his case before the UN Security Council in April 1976,
he never justified the declaration as a preemptive measure.
Instead, Horta persistently conceived East Timor's self-
determination in terms of "the people's armed struggle for
national liberation under the leadership of Fretilin".

As he proudly stated to the Security Council: "The people of
East Timor, after defeating their internal enemies, proclaimed
their independence." In this long speech, he did not utter one
word of "referendum".

After two weeks with Horta, my East Timorese colleagues and I
agreed that Horta's message was no more than an endless
assortment of contradictions:

* Fretilin's unilateral and forceful "declaration of
independence" contradicted their commitment to a democratic self-
determination by the people;

* Horta's recent opposition to the "declaration of
independence" contradicted the fact that he served as a very
outspoken Fretilin "foreign minister" who had launched a futile
campaign to seek international support for such a declaration;

* Fretilin's "declaration of independence" contradicted
Horta's current recognition of Portugal as East Timor's
administering power. In fact, it was Horta himself who proclaimed
to the UN Security Council on April 12, 1976: "The Central
Committee of Fretilin considers as terminated any political ties
between East Timor and Portugal", and that he "repudiate any
suggestion that Portugal is still the administering power". To
add insult to injury, Horta called Portugal "the mysterious
administering power of nothing".

* Horta's opposition to the declaration also contradicted
the views of some of his Fretilin colleagues in Portugal and the
guerrilla factions in East Timor. Indeed, Horta may have some
explaining to do.

My last conversation with Horta took place in Vancouver,
Canada, on March 7. After making a short speech, Horta opened the
floor to questions. I questioned his recent remarks in Boston,
and said that after having read his book, I still could not spot
the part regarding his opposition to the Fretilin "declaration of
independence". I then asked him to show me the page in question,
and walked up to him to hand over the book.

Horta was not pleased, and he likened the situation to "Jodie
Foster" being followed by "John Hincley", a remark which was
picked up by the Canadian media the next day. I was rather
surprised that Horta chose to evade the question. Horta did not
inspect the book I gave him, and proceeded to answer questions
from other people.

When the question period ended, Horta still had not answered
my question. The audience was leaving. I approached him for an
answer. Horta, knowing that some members of the audience were
curiously watching to see if he could show the page, flipped
through the book. "It's here somewhere," he said. "I am sure you
read it too fast." He stopped at a page, pretending to point to
it, and said in a voice only audible only to both of us, "I will
show you next time".

It was the end of our conversation. And it was Horta at his
best.

The writer is a London-based Indonesian diplomat. The views
expressed here are strictly personal.

Window: The Fretilin "declaration of independence", of course, is
completely void of political and diplomatic currency. The
declaration was shunned by the International community, including
Portugal, Indonesia and the UN.