Timorese Politics: lessons from Cyberspace war

By: Acacio Angel

When one sees two Chinese together, one can guess what they must be talking about: business and money. Guess what two Timorese would talk about but Politics and power. The political discussion flows from two people to families, from groups to parties and them from media to online media.

Timor Leste is probably one of the countries in the world that discusses most of its political issues on social networking medias like Blogs and Facebook. As early as 2005/6, several Bloggers like Timor Online, ForumHaksesuk and Timor Lorosae Nacao started expressing their political opinions through blogging. Others simply use Facebook groups to express their ideas or supports to their preferred political parties. Another group are Bloggers who provide a neutral and objective opinion or arguments of the institutions they represent. Unlike blogging, which has certain controlling mechanism and close to discussion, Facebook users take a few step further from discussion to insults and purging of emotional baggage in public spaces. Could any good thing come out from the different ways of communicating opinion?

Regardless of the politics and its outcome in the July 7^th parliamentary election, the cyberspace war is worth paying attention to. With high emotion and uneducated political opinion involved, this cyberspace war avoids people from the actual confrontation or face-to-face fight. In an actual face-on fight, there is no more reason, argument and logic but emotions. The online fight provides opinions and emotional state people are up to without having to actually stepping on others’ toes. The online antagonism offers opportunities for people from far distances and across various political opinions to express their real lives nightmares and negative experiences with certain political leaders without physically hurting others.

In a country like Timor Leste where there is weak conflict management education, except a single person show of conflict management, online social networking is an option for young generation to enjoy freedom of expression. They are free to express their preference to a Party or hate them without having to stretch their arms and hurt another. It turns down the belief that Timorese solve problems with violence and not with dialogues. The online rivalry is a modern concept and available to small group of people where many youth and politicians are in the groups and it slowly changing the violent mentality that were products of the previous society.

But this freedom of expression and model of conflict management is too subjective and a venue for the escapee. There is more gossip than facts, opinion than arguments. Instead of insulting the political figures or parties, both bloggers and Facebookers should involve more healthy discussion on relevant issues facing the country, the party programs to address the issues and the credible leaders to fight them.

The future generation should be debating within those lines because TL is such a small country that has more political parties but lack of political idealism to lead the country forward. The freedom of expression which was hard-won by our deceased heroes should be excercised in the context of development and prosperity. When there is no substantial discussion on political idealism (not radicalism) and concrete plan, the country could only create more political opportunist groups that want only power but not to be responsible to any wrongdoing or mismanagement of the state’s funds.

With the presence of a more balanced social groups, objective and investigative bloggers like Lao Hamutuk, Luta Hamutuk, Forum Haksesuk, Tempo Semanal and Renova Timor, facebook groups could learn the lesson of thinking critically, objectively and logically which produces more constructive critics and accustomed to vibrant opinions.

The presence of modern social networking could help building a better and prosperous Timor Leste for all. When the communication technology is properly used, the online communications could be a powerful tool used to influence policy makers and hold them accountable to their deeds. A better Timor Leste could start from online social networking.