Again, performative political power repertoires and shifting waters in the east timorese semi presidentialist system of government, but now redux

Again, performative political power repertoires and shifting waters in East-Timor’s 'semi-presidentialist' system of government, but now redux Armando Marques Guedes Forms of government are forged mainly in the fire of practice, not in the vacuum of theory They respond to national character and to national realities There is great good in the Russian national character, and the realities of that country scream out today for a form of administration more considerate of that good Let us hope that it will come But when Soviet power has run its course, or when its personalities and spirit begin to change (for the ultimate outcome could be one or the other), let us not hover nervously over the people who come after, applying litmus papers daily to their political complexions to find out whether they answer to our concept of ‘democratic’ Give them time; let them be Russians; let them work out their internal problems in their own manner The ways by which peoples advance toward dignity and enlightenment in government are things that constitute the deepest and most intimate processes of national life There is nothing less understandable to foreigners, nothing in which foreign interference can less good George F Kennan Foreign Affairs, Spring 1951 As is well known, the relative merits of both presidentialism and parliamentarianism have been widely discussed for well over two centuries In the last generation, a comparative newcomer, ‘semi-presidentialism’, has joined the intellectual fray1 As the case of the two earlier notions, such captive place-holding at High Table is of course a reflection of the realworld political importance of what is at issue at levels like that of representation of community or its leadership But in the latter case, there is more: discussions of ‘semi-presidentialism’, quite clearly, present us with what amounts to both simpler and rather more complicated matters I want to argue that this should not come as a surprise If we take a close political look at “semi-presidential systems of government” it readily becomes clear that these are strange entities, indeed At one level, this in little more than an expression of the thrilling hybridism of the notion, The present paper is based on my part on the Research Project “State-building/State-failure Debate: the case of East Timor” (PTDC/CPO/71659/2006), granted by the Portuguese Fundaỗóo da Ciờncia e Tecnologia (FCT/MCTES), of which I am a consultant An earlier version of it was published by the Portuguese Academia Militar, in 2012, in the volume entitled (eds Carlos Batalha da Silva et al.) TimorLeste: Contributo de Portugal para a Construỗóo Estado: 87-107, Academia Militar, Lisboa A yet earlier version, the one the present article builds on, came out in 2011, with a title this paper plays with : “Performative Political Power Repertoires and Shifting Waters in the East-Timorese ‘Semi-Presidentialist’ System of Government”, in (eds.) Nuno Canas Mendes and André Saramago, Dimensions of StateBuilding: 89-111, Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Lisboa which gave it fame But we may go further than this – and I believe TimorLeste provides us with a good case in point of a composite ‘altered’ form of ‘semi-presidentialism’, one which we gain in scrutinizing, and which bestows on it a strange type of attractiveness This paper is an attempt to bring some of its symbolic and performative underpinnings2 The semi-presidentialism of East-Timor pictured in and as a gradient Some genealogy is useful When the expression “semi-presidential” came to light, under the hand of a French constitutionalist, Maurice Duverger3, it alluded to a mostly “legal” form After their rise, which came about since the early 1990’s, ‘semi-presidentialist’ systems of government have shown themselves more as modalities of political power-sharing than as the idealized tertium genus Duverger had argued they gave body to I shall argue that rather than a hypothetical “third formal path” between presidentialism and parliamentarianism, the semi-presidential model is a political solution which adds these two systems of government into a new, and greater, whole This is the main thrust of my argument in the present communication: that after the 1990’s explosion in their occurrence, ‘semipresidentialist’ systems of Government have shown themselves more as modalities of political power-sharing than as idealized jural ones I contend that, if seen from this perspective, and when placed in the wider context of other recent Lusophone experiments, the case of East Timor, although sui generis, is hardly exceptional In fact, as we shall see, a gradient of sorts can be detected by a simple process of controlled comparison S Tomé e Príncipe, and, to a lesser extent, Cabo Verde, have been in the throes of oscillations between a parliamentarian pole and a presidential one, since their adoption of a semi-presidential system of government in the late 80s and early 90s On their side, Angola and An earlier ‘version’ of a small parcel of this paper was published in 2010 as “Power-sharing in the Tropics and the ubiquitous ‘Presidential drift’: the mechanics and dynamics of unstable equilibrium in the semi-presidentialism of East Timor”, in (ed.) Michael Leach et al., Understanding Timor-Leste: 131-139, Hawthorn, Swinburne Press, Australia A very shortened and slightly revised second ‘version’ was, also in 2010, published as “President and Prime Minister Twinning up and switching down”, Magazine Jornal Oficial da Presidência da República Democrática de Timor-Leste, vol 1, no 1: 12-13 Its pdf is available for download at http://www.presidencia.tl/mag/mag0/page1.html, Dili, East-Timor For a far more detailed take on much of my theoretical line of reasoning as concerns the dynamics of different systems of government, see mySemi-Presidencialismo e Diferenỗas nos Processos de Presidencializaỗóo nos Estados Lusúfonos da frica e da Ásia”, em Actas I Congresso Direito de Língua Portuguesa: 116143, (coord Jorge Bacelar Gouveia), Almedina The present paper is thus part and parcel of an ongoing organic process of growth Albeit only incremental, not qualitative growth, as my lines of argument, remain, throughout, essentially the same With some voluntarism, in his deservedly famous 1973 book, suggestively titled Échec au Roi Maurice Duverger identified then seven different semi-presidential Constitutions: apart from the French Fifth Republic one and the 1976 Portuguese example, Duverger included in his list those of Finland (1919), Austria (1919-1929), Ireland (1937), and Iceland (namely the Constitution of 1944) Mozambique have drifted steadily in the direction of a full presidentialization – a system of Government which in Guiné-Bissau finds an increasingly fuller, albeit complex, expression Interestingly, local, “emic”, or “actor-centered”, explanations and etiological justifications for this ‘presidential drift’ strongly suggest its multiple motives, typically stressing ‘cultural’, ‘historical idiosyncratic’, ‘political, economic, and military’ reasons for this rather generalized shift away from the original blueprint To my mind, this is a further symptom of the essentially political nature of any so-called “semi-presidential systems of government”4 In what follows, my efforts are mainly focused on a delineation of this insight and its application to the case of Timor-Leste In the economy of the present text, I take a mostly “theoretical” political stance, and I therefore not dwell more than I need to on the empirical data that I think strongly supports this reading The objects of my analyses are also atypical as far as these sorts of studies go, as rather than worry about any of the minutiae of the normative framework of the “semi-presidential” option, I place the bulk of my attention on the political dynamics of the system of government adopted I nevertheless try to go further than mere description and explanation of a particular example, as it is also argued that the East Timorese case – although neither the case nor the model seem to fit in easily with the data-set – is perhaps most usefully envisaged as a curiously hybrid performative system embodied in a “Prime-Ministerial presidentialism” twinned with a “Presidential prime-ministerialism” This much comes out clearly in its real-world operation Recent developments support this reading, or so I believe The dynamic play of characteristic democratic undercurrents Let me begin with the Timor-Leste system of government and place it from the very outset in a wider comparative context On the face of it, the data-set is indeed somewhat complex But analyzing it is not And the conclusions which may be drawn from many such analyses are A few authors, namely Lusophone ones, have long sensed the fact, even though it was never fully assumed See, for example, Blanco de Morais, J (1998), in his very clear “As metamorfoses semipresidencialismo português”, Revista Jurídica, 22: 150, in which he claims, rather wistfully, that more than any other system “o semipresidencialismo exprime uma grande sensibilidade evolutiva em relaỗóo influờncia que a prática político-constitucional e partidária exerce sobre a sua geometria” [translated freely, “‘semi-presidentialism’ expresses a great evolutionary sensitivity in relation to the influence constitutional and party practices exert over ots geometry”] Most Portuguese-speaking authors, however, follow rather acritically M Duverger’s contructs; thus see, eg, the tighly argued but ultimately unconvincing Canas, Vitalino (2007), "Reler Duverger: o sistema de Governo semipresidencial ou o triunfo da intuiỗóo cientớfica, in (ed.) Armando Marques Guedes, O Semi-Presidencialismo e o Controlo da Constitucionalidade na África Lusófona, número especial da Negócios Estrangeiros 11.4, Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Lisboa enlightening As in many ‘Eastern European’ cases where a similar form of power-sharing was adopted, in East Timor the oscillation between the two poles has been able to survive one or two electoral processes – but it would be imprudent to assume that, as in other cases, it will survive more of them; or, if it does, that it shall so without severe hiccups Largely, ‘semipresidentialism’ arose given its apparently more democratic faỗade, as an embodiment of tolerance and balance after one-party regimes were superseded5 The political mechanics of that option, however, were not sufficiently worked out, and that much was particularly blatant – we now see – in what concerns processes which took place in weak States, and in general in those prone to political atomization I argue that the constant oscillations detected in the semi-presidential systems of divided States are largely the result of intrinsic tensions between, on the one hand, parliamentarian political dynamics, in which decision-making is initially easier – as there tends to be an overlap between the legislative majority and the one in the executive, but at the price of runaway ‘factional’ fragmentation that entails a slower and more viscous process of decision-making And, on the other hand, an initially slower, but progressively easier and less divisive, process of decision, as that which tends to occur in presidentialist politics, often forced as they are into uneasy ‘co-habitations’ – in which, conversely, that overlap in normal circumstances does not obtain, but where more stable consensuses are as a rule laboriously reached This has a few implications which are easy to chart Here is a crucial one: not surprisingly, semi-presidential recipes work much better in peaceful homogeneous political communities, and less so in war-torn and partitioned sociopolitical conglomerates like Weimar Germany, Guiné-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, or East Timor Such variations in efficacy can be quite blatant As a quite obvious matter of empirical fact, a curious political dynamic may be easily detected by means of the lightest of processes of controlled comparison: a dynamic which runs from a soft end – where a more or less unstable equilibrium prevails – to a much harder one, marked by unidirectional changes which are not really possible to revert The immediate impression one gets from the diachronic progression of semi-presidential systems of government as soon as intra-Lusophone comparisons are carried out, is that we are facing a gradient States like S Tomé e Príncipe or Cabo Verde, at the softer, or lower intensity, end, have stuttered under the pressure of constraints on governance systems that oscillate between pushes for parliamentarianism A ‘structural’, or ‘confessional’, ‘semi-presidentialism’’, is the position still taken by a few more ideologically motivated authors In what concerns the case of East Timor, see, for instance, the recent Feijó, Rui (2009), “Elections and the Social Dimensions of Democracy/Lessons from Timor-Leste”, in ? (eds.) Christine Cabasset-Semedo and Frédéric Durand, East-Timor How to Build a New Nation in Southeast Asia in the 21st Century: 123-139, Carnet de l’Irasec / Occasional Paper n°9, Bangkok and pushes for presidentialism Those of Angola, Mozambique and GuinéBissau have been subjected to a much neater, a higher intensity, presidentializing thrust It is interesting to note that the local explanations for these oscillations and presidential ‘drifts’ pinpoint a variety of different motives for the inconstancy relative to what is written in their respective Constitutions – in some cases typically going for “cultural” explanations, in others on “historical-idiosyncratic” ones, and in a few other cases yet on political, economic or military causes for the ‘deviation’ [not rarely entitled a “desvio da norma”] detected It is often rather easy to show that not seldom all these amount to quite linear convenient local defenses provided to justify a change widely perceived as essential by national elites7 What is clear is that an enlargement of scope which includes other ‘semi-presidentialist’ examples, from the post-Kaiser German Weimar Republic to the Fifth French Republic of General de Gaulle (1958-1962), and the Portuguese post-25th of April Democratic Revolution of 1974, in Lisboa, and the latter and multiple Eastern and Central European postcommunist ones, does resolve images nicely It does so to the extent that they widen the sample we have while at the same time they suggest a very concrete in-depth historic-sociological explanation And it is the following: “Presidential drifts”8 are extreme cases of the oscillations found in all “semi-presidential regimes”, ones which tend to come to the surface, above all – that is, in a both faster and more robust manner – in those Statebuilding processes undertaken in political communities marked by strong political and sociological forms of pluralism They, correlatively, come to surface much less often and intensely in politically and sociologically more homogeneous, that is, less divided, political communities None of this constitutes a revelation, of course Not once we become aware that the adoption of semi-presidential systems of government as a rule takes place in post-dictactorship societies, as a ‘cosmetic’ response demanded by ideological forces betting on rapid processes of fast-track democratizations in up to then non-democratic regimes This template applies rather nicely to East Timor, after the civil war and the horrors of the lengthy and rather brutal Indonesian occupation For a fairly detailed analysis (although by no means an exaustive one) of this point, see my Marques Guedes, Armando (2010), Semi-Presidencialismos e Processos de Presidencializaỗóo em Estados Lusúfonos, in (eds.) Bacelar Gouveia, Jorge e Assunỗóo Cristas, Actas I Congresso Direito de Língua Portuguesa: 116-143, Almedina, Coimbra So there are both explanations gestated by power-holders and those that arise among opposition forces Not surprisingly the first stressing the legitimate nature of the pressures, the second focused, instead, on their opportunism The expression “dérives presidentielles” is used by French analysts who refer to francophone African systems of Government , and in my own already quoted studies of Lusophone ones See, for example, (eds.) Daloz, Jean-Pascal et Patrick Quantin (1997), Transitions démocratiques africaines, Karthala, Paris, and the many authors who systematically allude to the many “dérives ‘’monarchiques’’”; as well as in many articles included in my own already cited Marques Guedes, Armando (2010), op cit The initial draft of the new Constitution for the independent State – the first to be born in the 21st Century – was mostly the work of a Portuguese academic constitutionalist of renown, Jorge Miranda After a long process of ‘popular’ consultation, mostly irrelevant given the actual minor tuning and tweaking to which it led – except, as we shall see, in what concerns an ‘end-game’ in which Fretilin allegedly outfoxed a Xanana Gusmão who had already shown his disposition to run for the post of President of the newly created Republic, by emptying the Presidency and so reducing it to a more ‘ceremonial’ role than the one it is claimed was earlier expected – a self-proclaimed “semi-presidential” Constitution was adopted by the new state of Timor-Leste One would be hard put not to see the Timor-Leste Constitution as a ‘semi-presidential’ one The Constitution is rather similar to the Portuguese one, albeit it bestows slightly weaker powers on the President – cast as a largely symbolic Head of State elected by direct personal and universal suffrage for five years with mostly representational powers, although empowered by the fact he or she is the “Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces” (article 85, b)), he or she has veto powers over all types of legislation (article 85, c)) True, the Timorese President may be “impeached” by Parliament (article 79, 5ff.), depends on a Parliamentary “authorization” for travels abroad (article, 80), as well as for the declaration of a “state of siege” or “emergency”, and of “war” and “peace” (article 85 g) and h)) But just as it is up to the President to designate and install the Prime-Minister (article 85, d)) following the results of separate legislative elections, the President can “dissolve the National Parliament in case of a serious institutional crisis” (article 86, f)) and can also exonerate the PrimeMinister if the Government’s Program is rejected by the National Parliament” (article 86, g))9 This is of course the blueprint for a sharing of political power between President and Parliament to which the expression ‘semipresidentialism’ alludes Given dispositions such as these, it is indeed very hard to argue – unless one only has the model of a full-fledged presidentialism in mind – that due to the weakness of the President's constitutional powers and executive authority Timor-Leste should be portrayed as a parliamentary Republic Although, to be sure, that revamping was likely attempted, time and again, as a tactical political bid – it is interesting, in this context, to note that the very popular Xanana Gusmão had committed himself to the Presidency before the then still inthe-making Constitution had clarified its ceremonial rather than executive My translations There is no point in listing here the many other competencies held by the East Timorese President, as the complete text may be found at http://www.constitution.org/cons/east_timor/constitution-port.htm For the official English version, see http://www.etan.org/etanpdf/pdf2/constfnen.pdf role, something which he undoubtedly later regretted as he became aware he had been somewhat outfoxed by Fretilin on this matter10 My point is that in a divided society this kind of power interdependence becomes easily short-circuited as in a plural and divided society inevitable overlaps and gaps are easily then instrumentally used in political infighting To a large extent, a simple comparison with other Lusophone ‘split’ examples would have shown to attentive observers that such formal arrangements should have amounted to a forewarning of things to come A mere lateral association, so to speak, would have warned the eruption of conflicts was nothing but a question of time: so, as could be expected, the power-sharing arrangement worked well for a time, but it then started oscillating according to the many new power-balances met along the road of State-building Practices and dynamics are now changed rather radically, even if, nominally, everything is still expressed by all East Timorese as constitutional business as usual Political plate-tectonics balanced by a form of shadow play The upshot of these transformations followed suit A major oscillation – in the rather robust version of the sense of the expression earlier indicated – occurred in Timor-Leste in 2006, releasing political pressures and tensions which had steadily and rather relentlessly accumulated for quite a while in the uneasy alliance in place; ones that pitted against one another eastern and western naturals, particularly those in Army contingents, President and Prime-Minister, the pragmatic “resistentes nacionais” who had stayed behind and the mostly Marxian “cosmopolitans” who had taken refuge in the wider world, and rather different political projects and governance modus operandi11 Looking at the dynamics of it all helps us understand the internal and external “correlations of force” present Materially, the crisis in April 2006 10 Even if, to the best of my knowledge, evidence is circumstantial on this issue It is interesting to quote Pedro Magalhães in this context, when he wrote that [o] objectivo [da Fretilin] por detrỏs da adopỗóo semi-presidencialismo em Timor-Leste foi menos o de ‘imitar’ o antigo colonizador que neutralizar Xanana Gusmão” [freely, “the [Freitilin-led] objective behind the adoption of ‘semi-presidentialism’ in East Timor was less one of emulating the colonizer than the one of neutralizing Xanana Gusmão”], in “Uma tragédia reencenada”, 2006, at http://outrasmargens.blogspot.com/2006/06/uma-tragdia reencenada.html As the powers bestowed of the President clearly lay bare, the ‘outfoxing’ at best led to a weak de facto format of a “semi-presidentialismo de pendor parlamentar” [with a “parliamentary penchant”], and not to actual parliamentarism 11 Many Australian official reports on the crisis were pro-Xanana Gusmão, essentially blaming matters on Fretilin “radicals” A rather partial and very pro-Mari Alkatiri take on the events and their historical background, which largely places responsibilities about what happened on foreign manipulations of Timorese political dynamics, may be found in the large Barbedo de Magalhães, António (2007), TimorLeste Interesses Internacionais e Actores Locais, Afrontamento, Porto, a work launched at the Fundaỗóo Mỏrio Soares, in Lisboa began when over four hundred armed men, the self-proclaimed “Peticionários” – almost a third of the East Timorese Armed Forces (FFDTL) – took up arms against a perceived discrimination in favor of their ex-Falintil comrades, those traditionally connected to Fretilin, drawn mostly from the Eastern part of the island They were soon joined by members of the Police force and first demonstrations, but violence – although centered in Dili – quickly broke out virtually in the entire country Soon, the internal situation ran out of control Fighting, often heavy, and generalized turbulence, were widely spread, in late May, when then Defense and Foreign Minister José Ramos-Horta – according to some accounts speaking for his Prime-Minister Mari Alkatiri – formally requested military assistance from Portugal, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia Matters escalated as armed gangs roamed Dili, torching and killing, refugees fled the capital in large numbers, and UN personnel begun to leave the ailing State A not entirely clear situation of ever deeper unrest ensued On the 30th of May, President Xanana Gusmão, used his constitutional prerogatives to taken on special security powers in a bid to quell the violence The period of “emergency rule”, which, in accordance with constitutional dispositions, would last for 30 days, was to "prevent violence and avoid further fatalities" and was meant to insure a "rapid reestablishment of public order" Gusmão, took as a result sole control of the Army and Police forces and also – at any rate nominally – the supervision of the peace-keeping actions of 1,300 strong Australian-led peacekeeping force s dispatched to the troubled islands since the 26 th of April, that is four days earlier On June the 4th, 120 troops of the Portuguese Republican National Guard (GNR) landed in Baucau Incidents related to leadership and coordination of military and police activities rapidly erupted, mostly pitting Portuguese and Australian soldiers against one another; but fortunately this was solved by means of an agreement celebrated on the 8th by the parties concerned – the four countries mentioned above By the 16 th of June, East Timorese rebels began disarming, when the top rebel leader, Lt Cmdr Alfredo Reinado, and his men, handed over ammunition and a few weapons to Australian peacekeepers Mop ups, pressures and behind the scenes negotiations ensued – and on June 26th, Prime-Minister Mari Alkatiri, an old Fretilin hand who had lived mostly in Mozambique during the long period of Indonesian occupation, and whom, it was insinuated, illegally armed pro-Eastern Fretilin-connected militias, thus fanning and escalating the troubles – the insinuation had some obliquity built into it, as actually, in a material sense, that charge was made against Rogério Lobato and Roque Rodrigues and, officially, not directly against Alkatiri – presented his resignation The resignation of the then highly empowered Prime-Minister was not an easy affair – and the chain of events took place as if in slow motion This should not come as a surprise The stakes in terms of the tensions and dangers for national unity being what they were, and perhaps also because the correlation of forces was for a long while not too clear, from the outset the then East Timorese President, Xanana, acted carefully It is interesting to note how essentially political moves were undertaken under a legalistic and constitutional guise A reduction in the incumbent Prime-Minister’s powers was first suggested, then his voluntary resignation solicited, then came the idea of substituting him with two Deputy PrimeMinisters and finally, when the parliamentary Fretilin majority confirmed Alkatiri as their leader and he refused to budge, a wave of ministerial resignations ensued, triggered by the departure of Ramos-Horta, the Defense and Foreign Affairs Minister On the 26th of June, as noted above, the very next day, Mari Alkatiri, explicitly assuming his share of responsibility for the crisis, announced his renunciation of the PrimeMinisterial post, stating he did it “so as to avoid the resignation of His Excellency, the President of the Republic” More changes were to come and surprising ones at that As the dust settled, and under the grip of foreign military forces, the Government – i.e Ramos-Horta – had earlier called on international forces to help stabilize a situation in flux, Timor-Leste was led to interestingly somehow recast, albeit with no formal constitutional changes at all (be they revisions or eventual ‘amendments’), its de facto system of Government On July th, President Xanana Gusmão appointed José Ramos-Horta as Prime-Minister A team emerged Performative twinning up and switching down As it was, it seems, in fact, that a temporary solution was found In tense runoff Presidential elections which took place on the th of May 2007, the erstwhile Prime-Minister of the past year, Ramos-Horta – with 69% of the vote and running as an independent, the Fretilin flag having been bestowed on Francisco Guterres Lu Olo, his opponent – took the post of President Finally, almost precisely a year after the onset of the troubles and violence, on the 30th June 2007, a parliamentary election was held, in which fourteen parties ran for the sixty five seats in Parliament Fretilin, with an almost 30% showing, won the vote by a small difference – but in the absence of a clear majority, and after marauding mobs apparently linked to Fretilin again took to the streets of Dili on a rampage, the Party was not awarded the reins of power by José Ramos-Horta, the new President Instead, Xanana Gusmão, the erstwhile President, became the new PrimeMinister, at the head of a coalition led by his newly-founded CNRT (Congresso Nacional de Reconstruỗóo de Timor, a party to which Xanana gave the same acronym as that of the well-known and messianic 1998 Conselho Nacional da Resistência Timorense)12 Although by no means an unheard of fact, the assumption of a Prime-Ministerial post by a former President constitutes a rather interesting case if and when envisaged from the perspective of political legitimacy13 Just ask the question: why did widely supported Xanana Gusmão, the former and first President of the Republic run for the formally lesser role of Prime-Minister? Was it so as to ensure a well-respected and charismatic guerilla leader would effectively occupy the top executive post, so that Fretlin or Mari Alkatiri could not it themselves? Was it this and a stark recognition that a formidable concentration of executive powers in the role of Prime-Minister had in point of fact been achieved by Alkatiri, one which Xanana believed he could use to advance his own political and personal agendas, given the mostly ‘executive-oriented’ environment that came about in 2006 as a result of the heavily increased presence of “internationals” in the country’s effective governance? Was it a mixture of all these? As a variation on this theme, could it have been because Xanana Gusmão realized that, according to the East-Timorese Constitution (and also given the very real power Mari Alkatari managed to draw into the 12 Feijó, Rui (2009), op cit here is a quotation from this work: “To sum up the meaning of those results, one might say that a new majority surfaced, and that there is now (explicit) convergence of President, Parliament and Government – something quite banal in presidential or parliamentary regimes, but not necessarily so in semipresidential ones (in fact, it represents one of the main lines of criticism of the model in the framework of transition and consolidation of democratic regimes) The fact that this new majority – with its own dynamic requiring further attention – gained power through elections generally accepted as free and fair, and acceded the reins of governance in a basically peaceful manner (there were public demonstrations against this, but no serious attempt at blocking the change in government or at challenging the presidential decisions in its proper locus, the supreme court of the land) must be underlined In many cases of transitions to democracy, the moment at which a government is peacefully replaced by another one formed by the previous opposition after competitive elections marks the moment at which transition ends and consolidation begins Both Spain (where the socialist Felipe Gonzalez replaced the centrist UCD in 1981) or in Cabo Verde (where the opposition leader defeated the historical PAICV in 1991) are cases in point In this sense, the electoral cycle of 2007 may be interpreted as a clear sign of progress in the consolidation of democracy in Timor-Leste”, p 137 While rightly stressing the “now explicit convergence of President, Parliament and Government”, the author entirely ignores the significance of the fact the erstwhile President became Prime-Minster (and vice-versa) in these elections – or that a dual charisma-based team, ‘anointed’ by ‘traditional’ complementary resonances, was so created 13 The example of Vladimir Putin easily springs to mind But this is a false parallel, really Putin did so because of an extant constitutional limit (only two sequential presidential mandates are allowed in the Russian Federation) and not as an emergency solution for a crisis Moreover, his case probably configures more a tactical move than a panacea And, at any rate, with Vladimir Putin becoming Prime-Minister as Dmitry Medvedev elected to the Presidency there was no ‘swap’ of posts or pooling of charisma 10 toolkits of the Prime-Minister), the President of the Republic does not actually hold the 'top post', but rather by then a mostly empty ceremonial one? Or was it instead, and more prosaically, the simple outcome of an ‘arithmetic calculation’ as to what was the best power-sharing deal which could be achieved between him and José Ramos-Horta, one of his few possible partners in a credible and personally stable arrangement, something which the country badly needed?14 Such questions are surely very interesting and even stimulating ones – but I believe they largely miss the point, as latter events brought to the fore What matters most is not, indeed, the petite histoire, the nitty-gritty mechanics of events, but instead the contextual echoes evoked and the final outcome of the moves carried out And that was the fact Xanana Gusmão moved to occupy a more bloated Prime-Ministerial post and in so doing brought his charisma and ‘Presidential’ legitimacy with him, further empowering the role which could be fulfilled by the Prime-Minister of Timor-Leste at the expense of the role of President And it more bloated indeed: as Prime-Minister, Xanana, in his post-2007 government, the IV Constitutional one, had a bigger than ever number of Secretaries of State in his direct dependence – not only was he Prime-Minster, but he also placed all the Ministries connected to Security and Defense directly under his hierarchical power15; thus, as Prime-Minister, Xanana drew to him FFDTL, PNTL, and the other police forces He also named his own VicePrime-Minister, José Luís Guterres (from the by then separate FRETILIN Mudanỗa).His was a message sent loud and clear to both the Fretilin majority relegated to the limbo of opposition and to an acquiescent, trusting, and stalwartly pro-Xanana electorate 14 There can be little doubt that Xanana Gusmão interpreted sustained signals from his power base as demands for a more pro-active, a more “executive”, stance Was this an anticipatory attitude of Xanana, much in the spirit of what Yale constitutionalist Jack Balkin wrote in relation to the infamous 2000 BushGore elections: “[t]o be sure, the meaning of these elections is constructed; their significance is generally appraised after the fact It may not correlate with any particular voter’s actual intentions or reasons for voting All politics, it is often said, is local But the construction of these meanings is an important part of the way a democratic system works, both for outside observers and for the participants themselves Ascribing a meaning to an election is how politicians understand their mandate, and, to a large extent, it is how members of the public understand what they have done collectively”? [from Balkin, Jack M (2002),”Legitimacy and the 2000 Election”, in (ed.) Bruce Ackerman Legitimacy and the 2000 Election, in Bush v Gore: The Question of Legitimacy: 210-228, Yale University Press, downloaded from http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/essayon2000election.pdf] 15 Xanana became Prime-Minister, Minister of Defense, and Minster of the Interior All guns, so to speak, depend on him In the words of Reinaldo Hermenegildo, a Portuguese GNR officer writing in 2007, “we are thus facing an atypical form for the political organization of a government, not only insofar as its articulation is concerned, but also in its dependencies A centralization of power is set, even a personalization of that very power in one governing entity, Xanana Gusmão, the Prime-Minister; the fundamental Ministries of Timor-Leste having been placed under his hierarchical dependency” [in the original Portuguese: “[e]stamos assim, perante uma forma atớpica de organizaỗóo polớtica de um Governo, quer na sua articulaỗóo, quer nas suas dependờncias Verifica-se uma centralizaỗóo poder, e uma personalizaỗóo inclusive, desse mesmo poder num único elemento Governativo, o Primeiro-Ministro Xanana Gusmão, com as respectivas pastas fundamentais de Timor-Leste dele hierarquicamente dependentes”, in R Hermenegildo (2007)] 11 Things worked well, at least at first In effect, Xanana’s message embodied a ‘memo’ which could be sent without too much of a political risk of fueling further instability, at least not without more ado – given the ancillary evidence that José Ramos-Horta also had managed to garner considerable local public sway, as a consequence of his personal standing, and acknowledging that his politics and many of his personal networks are not wholly unpalatable to Fretilin Ramos-Horta too, in becoming President on an independent ticket, bloated in parallel the presidential post In good truth, the move led both of them to recapitulate, as it were, the roles they had played during the long struggle for independence: Xanana, inside, fighting directly and from within for his people, and Ramos-Horta, on the outside, overviewing matters from the exterior and busy networking in the corridors of power; a winning recipe, and part of Timor’s national political repertoire16 Overall, the new team strongly enhanced – thus giving them a much needed supplement of credibility – the political mechanisms of governance of Timor-Leste; and it is interesting to note that they did so, not so much outside the ‘black letter’ of the Constitution, as by means of an instrumental reshaping of the role its dispositions fulfilled until the tragic events and processes of 2006 – by making use of a resonance still reverberating today One that nevertheless at the same time recasts it as merely one of various possible trends of political polarization via the accumulation and simultaneous pooling of power in terms of a locally more intelligible indivisibility; and one that in Timor-Leste is associated to a personal complementarity which is, in itself, a piece of the local cultural-historical repertoire of political success formulas This ‘building-block’ was, of course, greatly enhanced and sustained by the public perception of a wellpublicized good working relationship between Ramos-Horta and Xanana – and by the power elites’ not too dissimilar reading of the role played by the duo during the crises, as well as before and beyond them It is of the essence that both such ‘foundations’ work along political, rather than constitutional, axes Are we witnessing an informal reverse power up-creep in East-Timor? Before briefly touching upon an as yet unclear present, let me bring all this together with an overview My line of argument has been that, far from a jural tertium genus somehow placed between a presidentialist and a 16 A term mostly applied by Charles Tilly for guiding “conceptual schemes” used, among others, by contentious political movements For one of the many of his texts in which the concept of “repertoire” is discussed at some length, see Tilly, Charles (2001), Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom 12 parliamentarian system of Government, ‘semi-presidentialism’ is an entity of another order: a political form of power-sharing which strives to incorporate, by adding them onto each other, a Parliamentarian and a Presidential system17 Timor-Leste fits well – if somewhat atypically and in a rather unstable manner – into this modeling, as the lightest of comparisons easily shows us I pointed out earlier that the data-set is complex As in many ‘Eastern European’ cases where a similar form of power-sharing was adopted, in Timor-Leste the oscillation between the two poles has been able to outlive one or two electoral processes – but rarely more, and even those with hiccups Why should that be the case? In Timor-Leste as elsewhere, ‘semipresidentialism’ – even if in a watered-down version – arose given its apparently more democratic faỗade, as an embodiment of tolerance and balance once, after what was often a long struggle, one-party regimes were finally superseded The political mechanics of that option, however, were not sufficiently worked out – particularly, we now see, in weak States, and in general in those societies prone to political atomization As underlined from the outset, I argued that this is largely the result of intrinsic tensions between, on the one hand, a parliamentarian type of political dynamics, in which decision-making is initially easier – as there tends to be an overlap between the legislative majority and the one in the executive – but at the price of runaway ‘factional’ fragmentation that entails a slower and more viscous process of decision-making And, on the other hand, an initially slower, but progressively easier and less divisive, process of decision, as that which tends to occur in presidentialist politics, often forced as they are into uneasy ‘co-habitations’ – in which that overlap, at least in normal circumstances, does not obtain, but where firm and more stable political consensuses are as a rule laboriously reached18 Once this is cleared up, it 17 This is by no means new, albeit my clear-cut formulation may well be novel For a long time now, analysts of semi-presidential systems have shown to be well aware of its nature as, essentially, a mechanism of power-sharing Benjamin Reilly – to give just one example close to our East Timorese case – appears to have gone as far as mapping out the normative difficulties in attempts at reconciling, by merger, the two systems in one ‘semi-presidentialism’ actually embodies A quotation from his work: “while ‘semi-presidentialism’ has its benefits, it places unusual strains on new democracies In particular, periods of divided government can put great stress on the stability of countries which have not yet developed established practices of political coexistence In addition, the uncertainties of constitutional law in situations of shared power create their own problems: in these three country cases, disagreements over which particular office would exercise which particular constitutional powers was a recurring source of conflict No constitution can codify all situations which office-holders are likely to face, meaning that even the most thorough constitutional text will inevitably leave some grey areas unspecified This is a particular problem for semi-presidential constitutions, as it is precisely those grey areas of uncertainty which can provide the basis for ongoing conflict”, (in Reilly, Benjamin (2008), “‘semi-presidentialism’ and democratic development in East Asia grows” East Asia Forum, retrieved from http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2008/11/08/’semi-presidentialism’-and-democratic-development-in-eastasia-grows/) 18 It is interesting to note that the local explanations and etiological justifications for this ‘presidential drift’ I have mentioned as common in Lusophone countries (and I suspect elsewhere, too) strongly suggest its multiple motives, typically stressing “cultural”, ‘historical idiosyncratic’, political, economic, 13 becomes unsurprising that semi-presidential recipes work much better in peaceful homogeneous political communities – and less so in war-torn and partitioned sociopolitical conglomerates like Weimar Germany and, in the case of Lusophone States, Guiné-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, or East Timor This is something, to be sure, that is not really very surprising Indeed, my contention is that once we push aside political legalism and wishful thinking and their associated pre-comprehensions, such a gradient of decreasing efficacy is not at all difficult to understand As formal mechanisms for post-authoritarian or post-dictatorial power-sharing, ‘semipresidentialist’ systems structurally propend to oscillations: they give body to forms of an unstable equilibrium A gradient as the one found is surely to be expected, in which a ‘presidential drift’ affirms itself quicker and more robustly in political communities marked by strong sociological and/or political pluralism – and correspondingly less so in more homogeneous and internally less divided ones This is by no means a linear affair, of course: it should be noted that the political history of actual conflicts is also a variable here, as are, indeed, the electoral systems preferred What Angola and, say, S Tomé e Príncipe, or Guiné-Bissau, and the East-Timorese example show us, in convergent ways, is that the processes of “presidentialization” so prevalent in Lusophone and other sociologically plural and politically fragmented ‘semi-presidential’ countries, are perhaps better contemplated as modalities of power concentration than as an empirical format for the accumulation of powers by either a President or another entity (say, the Prime-Minister) – so the very term’semipresidentialism’ is partly a misnomer19 The net result of the political bids for power and governability was therefore a curious model embodying both a concentration of power and a simultaneous power-sharing by two charismatic leaders; a novel ‘twinned’ figure piercingly, if in many senses implicitly, negotiated during and after the painful and threatening tensions unleashed in 2006 – and one drawn for an experience-tested and locally recognized ‘catalogue’ of winning political formulas None of this should and military reasons for this rather generalized shift away from the original blueprint The curious thing is, they seems almost exclusively focused on hindrances to decision-making – and thus suggest what is at issue in their usage is not an analytical preoccupation but a power one The point I want to convey is that the Prime-Ministerial option, or choice, of Xanana Gusmão should be envisaged in the same context Perhaps Paulo Gorjão and André Monteiro (2008), “A Consolidaỗóo Regime Democrỏtico Timorense: Desafios e Oportunidades, Seguranỗa e Defesa, had this in the back of their mind, when they wrote that “thickening all thse circumstances, there is East-Timor’s regional context which did not (and does not) favour its democratic consolidation, as the region has seen a gradual increase in the number of authoritarian states” “[in the original: “a adensar todas estas circunstâncias, temos o contexto regional onde Timor-Leste estỏ inserido, que nóo favoreceu (nem favorece) a consolidaỗóo democrática de TimorLeste, pois na região tem vindo a aumentar, gradualmente, o número de estados autoritários”] 19 It is not only the term “presidentialization” that may be misleading “Semi-presidentialism” is misleading too: it is also difficult to fathom why, as a purported tertium genus, it could not instead called “semi-parliamentarianism” But it never is 14 come as a surprise, once one unveils ‘semi-presidentialist’ options as political ones, often chosen for the ‘ornamental’ reasons usually put forward by forces ideologically engaged in the rapid ‘democratization’ of former non-democratic regimes Now, as I hope to have sketchily shown, the case of Timor-Leste, given its painful history of internal and external struggles and divisions, places it rather firmly in the unstable area of the gradient identified – but, most interestingly, it does so in the guise of a widely consented sort of “Prime-Ministerial presidentialism” which runs hand-in-hand with a “Presidential prime-ministerialism” That is, both as a functional and as an actor-centered affair A curiously hybrid figure which, perhaps given the ‘cultural’ diacritical importance that personal charisma locally has, somehow embodies a circumspect “Presidential drift” – but one that nevertheless at the same time recasts it as merely one of various possible trends of political polarization via the accumulation and simultaneous pooling of power in terms of a locally more intelligible indivisibility; and one that in Timor-Leste was, for a period, associated to a personal complementarity which is, in itself, a piece of the local political repertoire, as I already pointed out Largely given this solution tension was, however, naturally generated in the operation of the system, and thus their efficacy tended to be rather flimsier Indeed, later developments give us a less rosy picture of the political status quo and its eventual unfolding In his later months in power, President Ramos Horta seemed to be increasingly concerned with conducting the foreign affairs of the young country, and ever more often seemed to be doing so in spite of the Government’s wishes and skirting around a few of its constitutionally-defined attributes – changing Ambassadors, dealing directly with strategic States at the core of EastTimor’s attention radar, taking charge of essential reforms which should fall within the scope of the executive branch At least formally, some measure of an upwards power drift had taken place Prime-Minister Xanana Gusmão, always cautious and locally savvier, had mostly allowed matters to freely flow, carefully (some say cunningly) avoiding any direct clashes with the President all along But he did not assume a passive position The unexpected rises in the East-Timorese “Sovereign Fund” spelled by the 2008 unexpected huge rise in oil prices appears to have opened up new venues for the countries leaders, and a spate of new paths for a real-world power redistribution – while creating higher expectations for its rather dispossessed population 20 Once he realized that, Ramos Horta at once used the changed circumstances for a spree of foreign policy moves, mostly concerning East20 According to reliable sources, the Fund almost multiplied by ten its holdings and assets since oil prices climbed to almost $US 150 a barrel 15 Timor’s links to Australia, China, India, and ASEAN, all the while keeping an eye on the UN and its promises 21 Xanana, on the other hand, increasingly found it both possible and expedient to distribute, at the local and regional level, live money to suco leaders and liurais, as a token of sharing the inward bound wealth East-Timor had (and still today, has) been getting in the last few years – a tactic far more likely to capture regional and local support than the one embodied in the President preferred foreign policy orientation So, too, some up-creep was felt Looking at matters from supplementary angles sometimes helps, and I believe in this case it indeed does True to an atypical personal political leadership trajectory and his headstrong personality, the status of the then new President, José Ramos-Horta, pivoted around his sizeable political flair and the wealth of contacts he has; his external recognition as a astute and trustable political operator; and also on his apparently rather consensual relationship with the then new Prime-Minister and Government that, as we saw, he himself – carefully and constitutionally – appointed; all this anchored on a savvy internal and outer political readings of the fairly inconclusive results of the legislative elections of 2007 As to Xanana Gusmão, then Prime-Minister, his end of the deal was not bad either: the negotiated restructuring was such that his political capital remained intact and indeed served him well in his new position, allowing for his untouched charisma to find new (if in some senses harder) roads for expression And this, albeit – and perhaps because of – his shrewd pragmatic willingness to appear to cede erstwhile accumulated governmental clout to a presidential role which had largely, and rather systematically, been depleted of it during the course of the first round of power-sharing – a power thinning which, it should be kept in mind, dragged on from the first national elections, in 2001, throughout the troubles that soon began and finally exploded in earnest in late 2006 As I and many others pointed out all along, curiously and rather fascinatingly, the shared keenness of keeping FRETILIN at bay after the dramatic events of 2006 and well into 2007 – a keenness largely partaken externally, too – led to a two-staged redistribution of both powers and competences in the formal semipresidentialist power-sharing arrangement predicated by the Constitution: first, by giving rise to an atypical institutionalization of the Prime-Minister’s laboriously enhanced de facto powers, including all the guns, as earlier pointed out by me; but, thereafter, by a reversal embodied in a still ongoing up-flow of many of those into an ever more heavily remoulding of political clout onto the hands of the new President At a descriptive level, these were the general dynamics of the 21 On these thickening linkages see, for the Chinese case, Nuno Canas Mendes (2009), “The Dragon and the Crocodile: Chinese in East Timor”, Portuguese Journal of International Affairs, Lisboa 16 apparent and even formally tangible ‘presidential drift’ we seemed to be witnessing But were we then, and are we now, really witnessing a ‘presidential drift’? Is it real, rather than just a formal shadow play? Should we not, instead, talk about an ongoing game for a concentration of power which has as its Leitmotif the refusal of power-sharing ideals? In the real-world behind the refractions and shades, are we not instead witnessing the rise and rise of a “prime-ministerial presidentialism” in East-Timor? A series of moves, in other words, with the very real potential to spell the end to the “semi-presidential” period of experimentation? If we indeed are, Ramos Horta surely was not happy about this Internationally winds did not seem to favour as much as they earlier did his ambitious post-Nobel Prize projects Domestically, issues more and more often appeared to backfire and a suave type of escalation seemed to be on the cards After diplomatic bickering from EU powers grudgingly unhappy, it appeared, with any nonessential expenditures and overstretch, the UN mandate in East-Timor was extended for one more year Thus things threaded on What came next was rather surprising, although, retrospectively, perhaps not so much An election was held on 17 March 2012, with a runoff on 16 April 2012 Taur Matan Ruak (José Maria de Vasconcelos, a local resistant) has been President since 20 May 2012 Matan Ruak got 61.23% of the vote, Francisco Guterres just 38.7% Ramos-Horta virtually disappeared from the local political landscape Legislative elections were held on July 7th, 2012; on schedule, and the next round is to be held in July 2017 In the legislative ones in mid-2012, CNRT got 36% of the votes, FRETILIN, 30%, the PD, 10%, Frenti-Mudanca, 3%, and others 21% As per local rules, CNRT got 30 seats in the East-Timorese unicameral National Parliament (the number of seats varies from 52 to 65; MPs are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms in a modified proportional representation system), FRETILIN, came second seats, with 25, PD, gathered 8, and Frenti-Mudanỗa a mere In New York, UNMIT was not renewed In its stead, the Portuguese GNR was first asked to stay, but later the decision was taken it would drastically reduce its manpower in the country Australia, asked to leave, refused to budge New Zealand took the decision to depart in the second week on November, after a 13-year presence and five losses, claiming “the situation is now stable” Xanana Gusmão remains as Prime-Minister The President he must now balance with is Mata Ruak, a pairing that is probably less easy, as he is also an “insider” To most effects and purposes, FRETILIN was left out of the loop, and its leadership has made it known that, as the second most voted party, they resent the fact What’s next, for bi-cephalous representation and the uneasy local intertwined dynamics? Time will tell 17 what happens in the coming years in what appears to be fast becoming a regional “protectorate” shall be little more than a proxy for Canberra “led” by a strong Prime-Minister and “represented” by a mostly historical and largely ornamental President One can only hope internal power matters are not heading for another collision rendered possible – in what seems as an inevitable accumulation of tensions and stresses – by the not too prudent East-Timorese “semi-presidential” template in a plural ethno-linguistic and, mostly, political-ideological ecosystem In the fast-changing US-Australia be capable of stabilizing East-Timor without strong-arming it? Will FRETILIN cave in? In late 2012, as I write this, it is too early to know BIBLIOGRAPHY Balkin, Jack M (2002),”Legitimacy and the 2000 Election”, in (ed.) Bruce Ackerman Legitimacy and the 2000 Election, in Bush v Gore: The Question of Legitimacy: 210-228, Yale University Press, downloaded from http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/essayon2000election.pdf Barbedo de Magalhães, António (2007), Timor-Leste Interesses Internacionais e Actores Locais, Afrontamento, Porto Blanco de Morais, J (1998), in his very clear “As metamorfoses semipresidencialismo português”, Revista Jurídica, 22: 150Canas Mendes, Nuno (2009), “The Dragon and the Crocodile: Chinese in East Timor”, Portuguese Journal of International Affairs, Lisboa (eds.) Daloz, Jean-Pascal et Patrick Quantin (1997), Transitions démocratiques africaines, Karthala, Paris, Feijó, Rui (2009), “Elections and the Social Dimensions of Democracy/Lessons from Timor-Leste”, in ?(eds.) Christine CabassetSemedo and Frédéric Durand, East-Timor How to Build a New Nation in Southeast Asia in the 21st Century: 123-139, Carnet de l’Irasec / Occasional Paper n9, Bangkok Gorjóo, Paulo e Andrộ Monteiro (2008), A Consolidaỗóo Regime Democrỏtico Timorense: Desafios e Oportunidades, Seguranỗa e Defesa, 6: 80-83 Magalhães, Pedro (2006), “Uma tragédia reencenada”, 2006, http://outrasmargens.blogspot.com/2006/06/uma-tragdia-reencenada.html Marques Guedes, Armando, et alia (2001), Litígios e Pluralismo Estado, sociedade civil e Direito em São Tomé e Príncipe, Almedina, Coimbra _ (2010a), “Semi-Presidencialismo e Diferenỗas nos Processos de Presidencializaỗóo nos Estados Lusúfonos da frica e da Ásia”, em 18 Actas I Congresso Direito de Língua Portuguesa: 116-143, (coord Jorge Bacelar Gouveia), Almedina, Coimbra (2010b), “Power-sharing in the Tropics and the ubiquitous ‘Presidential drift’: the mechanics and dynamics of unstable equilibrium in the semi-presidentialism of East Timor”, in (ed.) Michael Leach et al., Understanding Timor-Leste: 131-139, Hawthorn, Swinburne Press, Australia (2010c), “President and Prime Minister Twinning up and switching down”, Magazine Jornal Oficial da Presidência da República Democrática de Timor-Leste, vol 1, no 1: 12-13 Its pdf is available for download at http://www.presidencia.tl/mag/mag0/page1.html, Dili, EastTimor _(2012), “Performative Political Power Repertoires and Shifting Waters in the East-Timorese ‘Semi-Presidentialist’ System of Government”, in (eds Carlos Batalha da Silva et al.) Timor-Leste: Contributo de Portugal para a Construỗóo Estado: 87-107, Academia Militar, Lisboa Reilly, Benjamin (2008), “‘semi-presidentialism’ and democratic development in East Asia grows” East Asia Forum, retrieved from http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2008/11/08/’semi-presidentialism’-anddemocratic-development-in-east-asia-grows/ Tilly, Charles (2001), Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge University Press 19 ... _(2012), ? ?Performative Political Power Repertoires and Shifting Waters in the East- Timorese ? ?Semi- Presidentialist? ?? System of Government”, in (eds Carlos Batalha da Silva et al.) Timor-Leste: Contributo... concentration of power which has as its Leitmotif the refusal of power- sharing ideals? In the real-world behind the refractions and shades, are we not instead witnessing the rise and rise of a “prime-ministerial... parliamentary regimes, but not necessarily so in semipresidential ones (in fact, it represents one of the main lines of criticism of the model in the framework of transition and consolidation of democratic