AT A roundabout just outside Timor-Leste’s international airport stands a big new statue of the man after whom it is named: Nicolau Lobato, a hero of the country’s independence movement and, briefly, its president. He was killed in 1978, three years into the 24-year Indonesian occupation that thwarted the former Portuguese colony’s independence until 2002 (after an interregnum under the UN). Few of the “1975 generation” of Timorese leaders survived the long insurgency to see the birth of the new country. One of those who did, José Ramos-Horta, a former leader of the exiled resistance who later served as prime minister and then as president, argues that in consequence younger leaders have “already been tested and trained”, and Timor-Leste can be spared a succession crisis. Others are not so hopeful.
An episode at that roundabout in May helps explain why. In the early-morning sunshine, local residents spotted their prime minister, Xanana Gusmão, by the statue. He was haranguing members of his government, even throwing a water-bottle at one of them. He then punished some by making them stand for an hour in the sun, as if they were fighters under him in his days as a guerrilla commander in Timor’s rugged mountains. In fact, this was a committee overseeing an unveiling ceremony for the statue. Some had arrived late. The target of the bottle-throwing had tampered with barricades the prime minister himself had arranged. Not untypically, he was venting his exasperation at the fecklessness of some of his own cabinet.
The contempt in which he holds them is presumably one reason why he is poised to break a repeated promise to stand down this September, planning instead to relaunch his government by shuffling and trimming his bloated 55-member cabinet. Inept and riddled with corruption, the government needs rebooting. One commentator has even asked if Timor-Leste is destined to become a failed state.
As for Mr Gusmão, he is 68 and suffers severe back pain. But he seems indispensable. His own party, the Congresso Nacional de Reconstrução de Timor-Leste, or CNRT, pleaded with him not to quit at once. He is now expected to stay until the next election, in 2017, when he will reach his term limit. As the charismatic leader of the armed resistance and Lobato’s successor, he was jailed by Indonesia in 1992. He is, in a sense, Timor-Leste’s Mandela—a symbol of Indonesian oppression and then the embodiment of the hope of reconciliation both with the occupier and at home.
Many see Timor-Leste’s stability as dependent, in part, on Mr Gusmão. The unity forged by resistance to Indonesia proved illusory. With just 1m people in a place not much bigger than Montenegro, Timor-Leste is nonetheless fiendishly complex, with at least seven different languages. Regional tension was a factor in the worst post-independence crisis, in 2006, when discontent in the army brought the country to the brink of civil war.
Mr Gusmão has restored stability of a sort by three main stratagems. First, he pursued co-operation with the main opposition, the Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (Fretilin), the party under whose flag the independence struggle was fought, but with which he had fallen out badly. Now they work so well together that it can look worryingly like one-party rule. Second, he dipped into the country’s oil fund—intended to provide for the day, probably less than a decade away, when revenue from oil-and-gas sales, some 90% of the government’s budget, dries up. Mr Gusmão has used it to give benefits to uppity “veterans” of the resistance, sometimes in the form of contracts for electricity and other infrastructure. Third, he exercised his personal authority. In 2007 he merged the defence and security ministries and put himself in charge. Peace in Timor-Leste relies on reforming the army and police to institutionalise civilian control over them. Only Mr Gusmão seems capable of that.
Even Mr Ramos-Horta concedes that younger politicians “lack national authority” in a patriarchal culture where “age means wisdom”. The most obvious successor is the president, Taur Matan Ruak, a 57-year-old former leader of the armed resistance. But he has no party, and, as a critic of some of the government’s failings, seems unlikely to win Mr Gusmão’s endorsement. To offer reassurance of continuity after 2017, there is talk of amending the constitution to establish a short-lived “Council of Elders” on which Mr Gusmão, Mr Ramos-Horta and two Fretilin grandees would sit and offer guidance.
Swords through the heart
It may be too late to win back public trust for politicians as a class, so corrupt have they been since independence. A widely quoted estimate is that half of government spending disappears in graft, much of it into second homes in Jakarta or Bali. So the boon of the oil wealth is being squandered. Dili, the capital, an ungainly sprawl between the mountains and the sea, has been spruced up. Swish new government buildings have sprung up, including the tallest in town: the gleaming glass cube of the finance ministry. But the city still wears the scars of the arson and violence that accompanied the Indonesian departure in 1999 and the unrest of 2006. On the seafront the old headquarters of the Catholic diocese, one of the town’s monuments, remains a charred shell.
Elsewhere, development is slow. Roads are treacherous and the country is still abjectly poor. A former member of the resistance, jailed and tortured by the Indonesians, says he has heard poor villagers complain that life was better under Indonesia; words he feels “like a sword through my heart”. In the early days of independence, he says, the hardship was tolerable; given the oil money the country should be enjoying, it is so no longer. Yet such all-out despair remains rare. Timor-Leste, for all its disappointments, has not failed yet. If it can manage the transition to a new set of leaders less consumed by the rivalries, grudges and debts of the resistance struggle, it may even succeed.
INDIA’S restless prime minister, Narendra Modi, likes to brag that he sleeps for only three or four hours a night and replenishes his energy with yoga. He will need all the vigour he can muster in the coming month, during a punishing diplomatic tour to the rest of Asia. By the end, if he keeps up the pace, Mr Modi may have clarified what sort of policy he intends for India in a region where it punches below its weight.
The marathon begins in Japan on August 30th, where India’s leader travels with a delegation of billionaires and industrialists for a five-day trip. Mr Modi is close to Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a fellow nationalist with whom he shares suspicions of China. He gratefully visited Mr Abe in 2007 and 2012 as chief minister for Gujarat, even as Western politicians shunned him after Hindu-Muslim riots in his state in 2002. Gleeful Indian pundits note that social media give a clue to their friendship. Mr Abe follows only three people on Twitter; one of them is his eager fellow tweeter, Mr Modi.
The Indian prime minister had been due to visit Japan in July, soon after taking office in late May, as a reciprocal gesture following Mr Abe’s visit to India in January and a rare visit by Emperor Akihito late in 2013. It was put off, say diplomats, so that they could work out some eye-catching deals to announce as a sign of their friendship. Japan, formerly a big donor to China, now counts India as its largest aid recipient and will probably pledge some funds for Indian cities. It will also urge its car and electronics firms to invest more in India, a fillip to Mr Modi’s plans to boost manufacturing at home.
In return, Japan wants Mr Modi to say, or hint, that Japanese firms and technology will build India’s first high-speed rail line, stealing a march on cheaper Chinese rivals. Two security-related matters probably count for more. India wants a deal, similar to one it struck with America six years ago, that would allow co-operation between the two countries in the civilian nuclear realm. But obstacles remain: India is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so it will be difficult for Mr Abe to persuade Japanese lawmakers to agree to a civil-nuclear pact. And Japan’s nuclear firms look no readier than American ones to risk India’s burgeoning nuclear-power industry until tough Indian liability laws, in case of an accident, are rewritten.
Another possible deal, which would be highly significant if it comes off, is the sale of 15 Japanese amphibious US-2 aircraft to India for its navy to use for long-range surveillance, rescue and support. Mr Modi wants joint production of the US-2 in India by local, private and Japanese firms. That would boost manufacturing and serve as a high-profile boost to the defence industry after India said, in July, that foreigners would be allowed to own up to 49% of local ventures. A Japanese official, however, warns that unless India rules out sales to third parties of dual-use civilian-military products, the deal could fail.
Still, the timing for stronger ties between India and Japan is auspicious. Mr Abe looks eager to bind India into broader security co-operation between Asian “middling powers” that are anxious about the military rise of China but doubt that America can be trusted to guarantee their security. Like the Japanese leader, “Mr Modi’s outlook in Asia is more expansive”, argues Bharat Karnad, a hawkish analyst at the Centre for Policy Research, a think-tank in Delhi. With two assertive men in office, he expects fewer worries than under previous regimes about provoking China’s ire.
Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, fits a similar nationalist mould. Shortly after Mr Modi returns from Japan he is due in Delhi, also to talk nuclear. A deal is ready to be signed, allowing Australian uranium exports to India, seven years after John Howard, a predecessor, first tried to lift a ban. That matters for security, as imported uranium can be used for power generation, leaving India’s smaller domestic stocks for military use.
Relations with Australia have also grown warmer of late. The first joint naval exercises are due to be staged next year. Rory Medcalf of the Lowy Institute, a think-tank in Sydney, calls new ties between Australia, India and others in the region a “ballet of hedging and balancing” against China. Mr Modi is due to visit Australia in November.
In that context the visit of China’s Xi Jinping to India, in mid-September, could prove uncomfortable, even if it is likely to focus on Chinese investment and trade ties. Before Mr Modi came to office, some observers speculated that he could try to strike an early deal with China to settle the countries’ long-disputed border in the Himalayas. In fact, rather than accommodating, Mr Modi looks cautiously assertive. In May he welcomed the elected leader of Tibetans in exile, Lobsang Sangay, to his inauguration—though the spiritual Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, was not invited.
Another potential annoyance for China this week was Mr Modi’s dispatch of his foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, on a tour of Myanmar, Singapore and Vietnam. India’s president, Pranab Mukherjee, will next go to Vietnam, more or less at the same time as Mr Xi is in India. Partly with China in mind, India is strengthening its security ties with South-East Asia. It recently sent warships to visit the Philippines. This month the Indian navy conducted joint exercises in Vietnam off Haiphong in the far north, close to China. Its co-operation with Vietnam has also included training submariners, repairing military aircraft and selling patrol boats. India’s state-run oil company, ONGC, this month saw its rights renewed for two oil blocks off Vietnam’s coast in an area of the South China Sea that is contested with China. India has long spoken of developing a “Look East” policy, but has lagged behind China in forging ties with emerging economies in South-East Asia. In Vietnam though, which is deeply sceptical of China’s ambitions, Mr Modi finds an open door. A Vietnamese diplomat said recently that Vietnam saw India as an “all-weather friend”, a reference to how China describes its close links to Pakistan. Mr Modi might like such language, but he will be careful not to push too far: he does not want to infuriate China. There is little public appetite in India for conflict between the Asian giants.
Next month Mr Modi will travel to the United States for the UN General Assembly and a meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington to repair ties that turned frosty under his predecessor, Manmohan Singh. One area of co-operation the two leaders might discuss is joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. After so many state visits, Mr Modi’s head is likely to be left in a yoga-like spin.
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SHINZO ABE, Japan’s prime minister, has reason to feel chuffed ahead of his first cabinet reshuffle on September 3rd. He has the same 18-member team he began with in late 2012: a record of continuity unmatched in post-war Japanese politics. But as he now succumbs to pressure from members of his party to inject new blood, he also has reason to worry: about the possibility that the cabinet’s cohesion may unravel and that right-wingers, if appointed, might push him into even greater dispute with the country’s neighbours over Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The current cabinet’s longevity is remarkable given that Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) shares power with New Komeito: a party that disagrees with most of his policies, not least those that reopen war wounds in China and South Korea. The coming months, it is safe to bet, will not be so smooth. Recent polls suggest Mr Abe’s popularity is falling, largely because of concerns about the economy. His decision in July to reinterpret Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow for “collective self-defence”, in other words for Japan to help its allies should they be attacked, has not helped either.
Pressure from the right is already growing. Shigeru Ishiba, a powerful hawk in the LDP and a rival to the prime minister, believes Mr Abe’s approach to collective self-defence is wishy-washy. Mr Ishiba is likely to reject an offer by Mr Abe that he step down as the LDP’s secretary general in exchange for a security portfolio in the cabinet. Many analysts believe Mr Ishiba, who is popular with rank-and-file party members, is preparing to challenge Mr Abe for the leadership of the LDP next year.
The right has been emboldened by a stunning admission this month in the Asahi, a flagship liberal newspaper, that some of its reporting on “comfort women” (those forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers during the war) was wrong. It published now-discredited testimony by a former soldier in the wartime army who said he had helped to abduct 200 women on South Korea’s Jeju Island during the conflict. Some influential politicians in the LDP, including Mr Ishiba, want a revision of a statement issued by the government in 1993 that accepted Japan’s responsibility for corralling thousands of Asian women into wartime military brothels. Worryingly, one likely appointment to the cabinet is Sanae Takaichi, who is head of the LDP’s policy research council. Mr Abe sees her as an asset, not least because he has made such a big fuss over the need to boost female participation in the workforce (there are already two women in the cabinet; Mr Abe reportedly wants half a dozen). But Ms Takaichi has publicly called for a new statement on “comfort women” next year, the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. She has said the rewrite must “dispel false information” that “undermines Japan’s honour”.
Doing so would plunge deeply troubled relations with China and South Korea to new depths. Asahi may have been wrong on the Jeju Island case, but Japan’s responsibility for forcing women into prostitution during the war is beyond doubt. Sensitive to the risk, Mr Abe has tried to stay aloof. But he is no dove himself and has a long history of sympathy with the revisionists. He told the Sankei newspaper that “many people had suffered” because of the Asahi’s reporting.
Mr Abe is hoping to mend fences with Japan’s neighbours at a regional summit in Beijing in November. The annual meeting is a chance for him to hold his first talks with China’s President Xi Jinping since the two leaders came to power in 2012. But Mr Xi will be in no mood to talk if Japan’s hard-line revisionists get their way. Prospects will not have been improved after an admission by Mr Abe’s spokesman on August 27th that the prime minister sent a message of condolence to a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in April honouring wartime soldiers. Some of the “martyrs” were convicted war criminals.
THE rolling, fertile steppe of northern Kazakhstan resembles North Dakota. The climate is similar, too—perfect for rearing cattle that provide juicy steaks. It is also close to Russia, a market that is suddenly rather hungry.
Long before the Russian government banned many food imports from North America and Europe in early August, authorities in Kazakhstan were trying to diversify an economy dependent on oil and gas. Since 2010, under a $1 billion, five-year programme, the government has flown in 50,000 Black Angus and Hereford cattle (and lots of frozen semen) from Australia, Canada and America.
“Steaks are still a luxury product here, but the market is growing”, says Beibit Yerubayev, the American-educated boss of Kazbeef, a company backed by $50m in low-interest loans and in possession of a 2,000 square-kilometre (770 square-mile) land concession. With 9,000 head of cattle, Mr Yerubayev is now selling his home-grown steaks in Astana, the capital, for half the cost of an imported Argentine cut.
Kazbeef highlights how capitalism works in authoritarian Kazakhstan. Officials credit President Nursultan Nazarbayev with the ingenious idea of building a high-quality beef industry. When they satisfy presidential whims, state-backed companies enjoy preferential financing. But Soviet-style planning risks top-down bungling. Mr Yerubayev had to rewrite the business plan handed to him with his loan.
For his premium brand to thrive, Kazakhstan’s population of 17m is not enough. The big markets, Mr Yerubayev says, are Russia and China. In 2013 Kazakh ranchers exported 300 tonnes of prime beef to Russia. Even before the recent ban on Western produce, Kazakhstan was on track to meet an export target of 10,000 tonnes to Russia this year. Now, because of the ban, officials believe those numbers could be even higher, along with exports of lamb, pork, vegetables and melons.
A sudden rise in exports could, however, fuel inflation by raising prices of domestic foodstuffs. But Kazakhstan’s membership in a Russian-led trade bloc is a mixed blessing. By erasing customs checks with Russia and Belarus, the group (to become the Eurasian Union in January) has eased access to markets. Many Kazakh officials worry privately about hitching their nation’s future to an isolationist Russia. For businessmen like Mr Yerubayev, however, the customs union is a boon, and the food-import ban an unexpected bonus. “It’s showtime”, he says.
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Tieng Anh Vui
