East Timor becomes an independent state tomorrow. Its slightly reluctant President Gusmao spoke to David Shanks in Dili
President-elect Jose Alexandre Gusmao - "Xanana" to nearly all Timorese - still has a dream of being a pumpkin farmer. Asked yesterday by The Irish Times to explain how, as a former resistance leader, he overcame his resistance to running for his present job, he said: "Actually I didn't. I hope in five years' time I will serve you a big pumpkin," he said.
It is quite a dream for the President of Asia's poorest country where farming is predominantly subsistence. For months before his election last month he had been saying publicly that he did not want to be president.
Yesterday he said he felt "a bit obliged" to accept the candidacy (which he won by 82.6 per cent), adding that he never wanted to be president and hoped not to be when his term ends in five years' time.
"The people know me as a freedom fighter, but I was only one of them," he said with a modesty that comes across as meant. "I always tried to listen to the people, to learn from them, to respond to their capacity to participate in a very long struggle, in which we gave some wrong orders."
He is now dreaming, not of orders, but of human development and "a society in which people love each other". The surprising thing here this week is that this dream was apparently underwritten by the international community.
A donors' conference this week pledged more than the world's newest nation asked for on the basis of a national development plan which extensively consulted the people on what they wanted. It was things like clean water and basic education but the plan, drawn up by international consultants, goes much further than that.
A taxi-driver explained what independence meant to him - "It's like going back to my ancestors" - without explaining exactly where they would hail from.
They are preparing furiously for a moment in the world media spotlight for what used to be a province about the size of Munster. It may be their last for a while, and an NGO official told me: "When the media go we get going."
"Happy Independence Day from your friends at Hello Mister, Dili's favourite supermarket," says a banner across the street beside the government building. "Hello Mister" is a Timorese greeting to a foreigner, be they male or female. Since the UN and all its paraphernalia came nearly three years ago Timorese youths have had many opportunities to say "Hello Mister". When I came first in 1997 I thought at first it was an overfriendly greeting by young Indonesian informers.
In fact the UN will not be going, only standing aside.
The peacekeepers will reduce from 8,000 to 5,000 by the end of the month, and by this time next year there will be only 3,000, and the UNTAET transitional authority will become a support mission to the government.
At Dili's municipal market, the Australians have built several traditional wooden thatched houses of the type that were discouraged as cultural symbols by the Indonesians.
Inside is a trade exhibition: stalls selling the colourful hand-woven cotton tais that were hard to find during the war. Another stall has pictures of former Falintil commanders and heroes, at which the young and others old enough to remember them are staring adoringly. One young man stretches out his finger to touch a fuzzy image of Konis Santana, a resistance leader killed by the Indonesian military. It was as if it was a holy relic.
A young man, Joe, steps forward to tell me: "The Timorese Che . . . his face, everything, he is handsome". Then an animated argument ensues about when he was killed (1989) and who succeeded him. But the pictures, which are not copies, were not for sale. Joe said: "If they sell them maybe they would be arrested."
At the biggest stall you can buy a Chinese Loncin motorbike for $1,400. Australian journalists saw that as a story line, suggesting China's interest in Timor. Remembering that the biggest pledge at the donors' conference came from Japan ($60 million), Australians think of regional threat.
"What if the new Timor became so friendly with China that a big base appeared there?" said one. It was often forgotten in Europe, which has NATO, that "Asia has no security architecture", he said, indicating just one of the regional concerns the new country will face.
Another is the issue of oil. Under a treaty with Australia, Timor is to get 90 per cent of an oilfield. But pro-Timorese solidarity analysts say that this is really 90 per cent of 20 per cent. They say, too, that Timor stands in reality to get about 20 per cent of what is its own. However, the agreement has been made, with Timorese reservations, because the new country needs the money. Australia has it over a barrel, they say.
In the evening in the tropical garden restaurant of the Turismo Beach Hotel, made famous by an all-night militia rampage through it in September 1999, the talk drifting from the plastic table is Timor, Timor, Timor. This is an international club of Timor addicts, of academics, activists, journalists, film-makers and diplomats. The World Bank or the IMF might be at the next table.
Joao Perera (61) has been working at the Turismo since 1975 and remembers December 7th of that year. He saw the first Indonesian paratroop helicopters above the palm trees of the hotel garden he now tends. Journalists crouching in rooms there remember his good humour during the rampage through the hotel.
Yesterday he was a bit uneasy about this independence thing and the ability of politicians to keep up the unity of purpose. "I find it hard to trust it," he says.