Where is East Timor heading?
By Jon Lamb East Timor has passed through the first year of “stability” since the failed assassination attempts in February 2008 on East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. Last year was marked by continued bickering among the East Timorese political elite, with the main opposition party, Fretilin, still regarding the Gusmao-led Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) coalition as only the “de facto government”. For the mass of East Timorese, dire poverty continues to dominate their lives. A report co-sponsored by the World Bank and the East Timorese finance ministry released last November titled Poverty in a Young Nation, found that half the country’s population lives on less than US$0.80 per day and a third of those poor live in conditions of “extreme poverty”. Poverty is most severe in remote and rural areas where access to adequate health, housing, education and other social services is extremely limited. One social indicator of the extreme poverty c
