Military may use the UN's obvious bias as an excuse to disregard the referendum's final tally

by Brooke Shelby Biggs
Sept. 3, 1999

Why did the normally vicious and relentless pro-Jakarta militias keep such a low profile on Monday during the referendum on independence in East Timor? No one has satisfactorily answered that question, although everyone -- on both sides of the fence -- agree that the peaceful balloting was unexpected.

Here's your bad news: The other shoe is about to drop. Monday's calm was keenly calculated by Indonesia. It intended for the vote to go forward as planned and uninterrupted, perhaps because it never intended to honor the results. As the militia violence escalates, I expect some Indonesian officials (especially those in the military) to declare the election invalid and perhaps to call for another ballot administered by a group other than the United Nations.

There are already ominous rumblings: The United Front for East Timor Autonomy (UNIF) announced Thursday that the voting process was "garbage," and that they "have come to the conclusion that the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) is really encouraging and backing the people of East Timor to break away from Indonesia." The announcement was expected to be followed by an official rejection of the results by UNIF later this week.

Reports from election observers indicate that the Indonesian faction of observers -- whose stated duty was to witness and ensure a fair vote -- left the polling houses before all the ballots had been cast, and long before any of them were counted. The observers who were left were all from pro-independence non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who had very clear agendas.

That the Indonesians ever presumed that the vote would be fair in the first place is itself hard to swallow. Here is the United Nations offering itself as an uninterested party qualified to conduct a non-partisan referendum on an issue steeped in blood, emotion, and much convoluted diplomatic history in the UN itself.

A look at the UN's history of resolutions on East Timor shows its longstanding bias (warranted as it might be) on the "Question of East Timor" in black and white: nine General Assembly and five Security Council resolutions castigating Indonesia for its invasion and occupation of the territory; plus numerous reports from the Commission on Human Rights characterizing the Indonesian government, military, and paramilitaries as imperialist torturers and murderers.

The first Security Council resolution in 1975 "recogniz[ed] the inalienable right of the people of East Timor to self-determination and independence ..." and later General Assembly resolutions said the UN "rejects the claim that East Timor has been integrated into Indonesia."

All of the points the UN has made over the past 24 years seem valid and well-justified. But being right doesn't make one impartial.

Having the UN -- a longtime and rabid monkey on Indonesia's back for the past quarter century -- in charge of a fair and equitable voting process concerning East Timor is sort of like putting the DNC in charge of tallying the votes in the 2000 US presidential election.

Although the May 5 agreement mandates the pullout of Indonesian troops from East Timor if the vote favors independence, the Indonesian government has repeatedly noted that its parliament will deliberate on whether to ratify the results and rescind its 1976 annexation of the territory. The UN is likely to disregard any parliamentary vote which seeks to obviate the results, and the Indonesian government is likely to resist going along with the pullout process should the parliament reject the vote's reported outcome.

There is compelling reason to believe that Indonesia's president BJ Habibie will lobby the parliament hard to accept the poll results: The US and several other western nations have threatened to cut off financial aid to the country if it does not honor the vote. And for a country mired in debt, corruption, and bank scandals, that could be a very expensive position to take.

But the money argument has holes in it. Would the IMF and World Bank really leave Indonesia high and dry? Would they even pull a significant amount of financial support? Probably not, say leading analysts, and even human-rights advocates. Because pro-independence movements are flaring up all over Indonesia, the international community is hesitant to contribute to what many see as the potentially explosive break-up of the world's fourth most populous nation. Hobbling Jakarta's ability to quell those uprisings with sweeping sanctions, according to a recent report from IPS, is not in the international community's best interests.

"The World Bank can come and wave the financial stick a little bit but I guess everyone in Jakarta knows there's a limit to which financial sanctions can be imposed, because that would encourage the political break-up of Indonesia," Michael van Langenberg, head of Southeast Asian studies at Sydney University in Australia, told IPS.

What the military chooses to do with the results, however, is a different matter. The control Jakarta can exert on the military forces in East Timor is minimal at best. The army -- through its continued support of pro-integration militias -- clearly resents what it sees as Habibie's sacrifice of the territory they have fought 24 years to secure. They will certainly be looking for any reason to resist surrendering the province.

Thanks to the UN, it now has a darned good argument against honoring the popular will of the East Timorese people. This could give Indonesia a powerful bargaining chip as it tries to retain control of as many of East Timor's natural resources as it can, or perhaps even a position from which to negotiate the partitioning of the westernmost section of the territory, which is now completely controlled by pro-Jakarta militias.

Much of what will happen depends on how much more international bad press Indonesia is willing to weather, and how well the Habibie (and the next Indonesian president's) government can control the military, which is the defacto administration of the province, and is deeply entrenched there after 24 years.

No one expected the balloting to be smooth, and perhaps its relative facility lulled the UN and the pro-independence groups into a false sense of hope. Yet looming in the background is a significant threat by Indonesia to disqualify the entire process, and worst of all -- they have a point.

Photo: AP/Wide World Photos