With slightly less than 4 weeks to go to parliamentary elections, campaigning has started.  I have not seen any campaign rallies but there is clear evidence of activity with the spread of party posters around the place.

There have been a few deaths of late which may or may not be specifically linked to the election process.  The general situation in Dili has not changed much and the ongoing security incidents have really been going non-stop but it seems nowhere near as serious as January/February or parts of last year.

One sign of increased tensions is the number of usually young men hanging around in small groups at various locations.  It just seemed that this was up today.  Viqueque and Ermera have probably been running at a higher tension level and even Baucau has had a few problems lately.

OZ changed the travel advisory to specifically name Viqueque as an area to avoid following a couple of deaths over the weekend.  I would expect things to ebb and flow over the next 4 weeks, but Dili may not be the main problem area this time.  We’ll see.

Over the weekend (Monday is a holiday), the new Prime Minister Estanislau de Silva and the new President Jose Ramos-Horta will be sworn in. It is also the anniversary of independence on 20 May. So lots of dignitaries will be moving around and congregating, which no doubt will lead to some pretty wary UN police and ISF.

This will dominate the radar screen but a little snippet that almost sneaked under the radar screen was a little electoral law change which mandates the shift of vote counting from each polling centre to each of the 13 district capitals. (This was reported in today’s Suara Timor Lorosae newspaper.)

On the one hand, this will mean that the vote count itself ought to be under the tightest watch with plenty of observers to go around. However, it does mean that ballot boxes leave a fairly tight environment at the polling centres (where international, national and party-based observers are usually in numbers) and travel back to the district capitals.

In the old system, everyone knew the vote tallies at each polling station so any differences that may be recorded later ought to raise a red flag. Under the new system, the critical phase is the movement of unopened ballot boxes from the polling centres to the district capital. Some of these polling centres are pretty remote and this will put enormous pressure on the people responsible for assuring safe transportation to the district capital.

What it does mean is that observers will most likely not be able to say that voting papers have been under constant observation from the act of voting right through to the count. Doesn’t sound too crash hot to me.

This is just a heads-up re. the international press reports of increasing violence in Dili. Bairo Pite has been the main area for trouble for some months. It has quietened down and has flared up again.

According to locals from the area, the trouble has never really stopped. It just heats up and cools down. When questioned, I am told that nothing much is different at all. We are just in a heated up phase.

The area has been under intense security force attention for some time and the trouble is pretty much restricted to a small area of Bairo Pite. There are not a lot of expats who live in this area. The Bairo Pite clinic is at the eastern end of Bairo Pite and is not in the worst part, despite being regularly hammered with rocks earlier in the year. It benefits from being quite close to the heliport where the OZ troops have a base. Most of the trouble is more on the western and southern sides of the heliport.

The well-known aid organisation Care is quite close to the trouble and would have a better idea of what’s going on.

The UN police are not reporting these events in great detail so residents may not even know whats going on. There was definitely increased chopper and APC activity over the weekend and this did cause people to ask if anyone knew why. No-one including me seemed to know.
As for the rest of Dili, it is pretty much business as usual. I was out on the bike this afternoon and had absolutely no trouble at all. I guess after a while, it all just drops off the conversation list.

I believe I did forget to mention that the Padang restaurant near the Harbour View cafe ceased operating a couple of weeks back.

Yesterday (5 May), the OZ travel advisory for TL dropped to level 4. The accompanying email notification of the change also includes a few notes on what actually changed. This change notification is a good thing.

Keeping in mind that this is all relative, things have not been as good for quite a while. The 2nd round presidential election is on next Wednesday and it would be reasonable to expect some security issues between now and then. The cynic would say that by dropping to level 4, it now gives room to raise it again when things do deteriorate.

For the last week, truckloads of rice have been coming off the Dili docks escorted by the GNR.  I presume this means that the rice shortage is well and truly over.  I would still like to know how it really happened in the first place.

This evening, I was aroused by a new sound.  It says something when you start to notice unusual helicopter sounds.  First it was the Blackhawks, then the dulcet tones of the Kiowa and the commercial tones of the choppers from Heavy Lift.

This new one is noisy and slow.  I presume this is the first sweep around town of the Kiwi Iriquois choppers.  If they swoop low, they will frighten the horses, dogs, cats, pigs and sleeping babes.

I was listening to Radio Australia this morning and I heard about the renewed violence in Dili. I suppose the interested listener sitting in OZ is hearing this and thinking things have tipped over again. Not yet.

I moved about yesterday quite freely in central Dili (traffic problems aside) and felt no anxiety re. the security situation. I moved about amongst candidate supporters, as did a number of other expats. Yes, there are a number of extra international media people floating around and they were clearly mixing it with the supporters as well.

I left the scene of the tear gas incident about 1 minute before it occurred and was about a block away when it happened. Even if my timing had been different, I doubt if I would have found myself in trouble as I have no intention of doing more than moving about on the fringes of these big groups.

Of course, if I had seen a confrontation (ie crossing paths) between 2 different groups on the cards, my 6th sense would get me away from the potential conflict point quick smart.

Its all relative. I was much more concerned in January/February and I saw yesterday’s incidents as isolated one-offs. And nowhere near the situation of May last year. However, no doubt there will be more over the next few days.

I think the serious aggro was near the OZ Embassy, which is on the main road (Comorro Road) heading west. This is about 4kms west of the centre of town and this area has been hot for a long time. It would be wrong to infer that the trouble is attracted to the OZ Embassy – it is more that the Embassy is not exactly located in the safest spot in town. So when I talk about central Dili, I mean east of the heliport which is around 2kms west of the centre of town.

Many of the candidate supporters are young teenage males and they treat the whole campaigning process as the biggest party they have seen all year. Think Manchester United winning the European Cup and you are closer to the feel of the campaign rallies, except alcohol does not play a big part in it here. It makes it really hard to come to any conclusions about the electoral intentions of the more silent majority.

I know there was a mobile phone poll but I pretty much discount that for its non-representativeness. So it makes it difficult when there are no reliable pre-election polls and where many people do not want to show their hand until election day in the ballot box. So I have no idea of the result.

One should never forget that no matter what the feel one gets in Dili about candidate’s progress, that many of the candidates do not have the party infrastructure to conduct substantial rallies all around the country. Fretilin have a long established party infrastructure which puts them at an enormous advantage. And according to published electoral figures, Dili has only 19% of all registered voters which is about twice the figure of the next biggest of the 13 voting districts.