Growing Pains of a Young Democracy

Ever heard of Timor Leste? East Timor is located on Indonesia's main island, actually on the eastern tip of Indonesia's main island. What makes East Timor (now Timor Leste) special? Well unlike the majority of the coutry, East Timor is predominantly Roman Catholic. East Timor was asking for independence from Indonesia in for the past couple of decades and was only recently granted their independence. Now the Indonesian government was accused of a myriad of human rights violations, summary executions, torture, rape etc. The East Timor rebels were accused of their fair share of violations also and so the United Nations decided to intervene.

Finally, after years of struggling for democracy and independence they now have it. With a total population of about 2million or so people, the country does not have much of a labour force, not much of an economy and not much political clout. Their young government has worked hard to get their country moving and it seemed that everything was going well until recently.

Very recently actually. Just this week, violence has broken out in the young state due to soldier being relieved of their duties because the government cannot afford them anymore. I suppose countries like, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the old UN group will be sending peacekeepers to Timor Leste, maybe the Philippines will also send its fair share of peacekeepers and I believe we should. In the whole "being a good neighbor and a responsible member of the community of nations" concept, we should help the budding young democracy because its the right thing to do but one should keep in mind that in international relations, self-interest always comes first so maybe in the long run, an alliance with this small nation can benefit the country.

I believe that we should send peacekeepers to Timor Leste. Why? Because we also went through something similar to that. We got disillusioned by democracy. We thought it would ease our lives, give us more money, more freedom and less worries. It is the magical pill for the troubled and repressed society but people don't realize that independence, freedom and democracy come at the great price of truly guiding one's destiny. Its happened before, just a few months back, Ukraine tried people power to change the government they legally elected. President Victor Yuschenko is now the bad guy and former pseudo-dictator-pro-Russian leader-who-tried-to-poison-his-opponent-and-namesake Victor Yanukovic is the good guy, the savior.

Although these things can be expected (e.g. after America won its independence from the British Empire they had one of the bloodiest civil wars in the history of the world) and can be chalked up to growing pains of a young democracy, it does not mean that we should stand idly by.