New democracy

The country has a parliamentary type of government. recently the ruling coalition failed and new elections have been scheduled. The last time this happened back in the early 2000s There was violence in the country. In order to prevent that the police have been stationed along all of the major rally routes. here is a policeman with a semi-automatic rifle who was stationed in front of our restaurant.
The campaigns are very orderly here. There is a relatively short campaign season of only a couple of months. Rally's for the different parties are held on different days. This is a picture of a parade to the rally which went in front of the church on Wednesday. It is for the most popular party here in the city. The rallys seem like they're a lot of fun. Cars and motorcycles going down the street. There was even a few vehicles in flags from the opposition party but it did not seem to cause much friction.


On Thursday after all of the individual parties parades were over there was a peace parade sponsored by the Catholic Church. It was to encourage all parties to be non-violent.
Here is a video clip from the peace parade.
The peace parade went right in front of the church and closed down traffic on all the streets around the church. This meant that none of our students could make it to English class.

Timor-leste has only been a democracy for 15 years. I think because the citizens know what it's like not to have freedom that they are very excited and enthusiastic about their Democratic freedoms. Most of the citizens are registered in the district of their families. In order to vote you have to return to the district. To encourage this the government sponsored free bus rides from Dili back to the districts. Our waiter at the local restaurant was planning on leaving last night after work and taking a 8 hour bus ride, voting and then getting on a bus and traveling eight more hours so she could be at work on Sunday. The city yesterday, Friday was very deserted with many of the citizens using the day to travel home. Many businesses were closed.

Because so much of the country is rural and the majority of the people don't have telephones there is no effective way to do pre election polling. All of the parties are confident that they're going to win the election, but they don't really know. The worry is that once reality is known people may get upset and  become violent.




Comments

  1. UnknownMay 11, 2018 at 4:15 PM

    IMG_6307.PNG
    This is my friend that used to live there & her son. Her husband Maun Nando was a part of the government there

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    Replies
    1. The Trapani's in LiberiaMay 11, 2018 at 4:24 PM

      Thank you. The picture didn't come through but I have her picture from a prior email that you have sent. It's a challenge to be part of the government here. There is a good number of past officials that are now in jail for corruption. There's lots of temptations for a government official.

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