DISTURBING DEVELOPMENTS IN PREPARATIONS FOR ELECTIONS; UNDP

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DILI 000101 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT FOR EAP/MTS USUN FOR RICHARD MCCURRY E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KDEM TT SUBJECT: DISTURBING DEVELOPMENTS IN PREPARATIONS FOR ELECTIONS; UNDP PROPOSAL MAY AGGRAVATE THE PROBLEM REF: A) 05 DILI 558, B) DILI 21 DILI 00000101 001.2 OF 003 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: In recent discussions with representatives of international election assistance NGOs and via requests for assistance relayed to the UN, senior Government of East Timor (GOET) officials have revealed an outline of their plans for the 2007 legislative and presidential elections. Embassy Dili is concerned that the Government's approach to the planning and structure of these elections will involve little public consultation, will give the ruling party excessive control over electoral institutions, and will not establish strong independent monitoring and accountability mechanisms. While international election assistance NGOs are planning programs to fill in some of the gaps, a robust UN election assistance program will be needed both to counteract some of the Government's undemocratic inclinations and to fill in the gaps that are too big for the NGOs to fill. Unfortunately, the UN Development Program (UNDP) is in the process of designing a program that would provide technical assistance to the Government's specifications while doing little or nothing to level the playing field. The UNDP program would also rely almost entirely on bilateral funding, thus virtually guaranteeing its inadequacy. In order to ensure free and fair elections, East Timor needs a UN Election Assistance Division program that should include: a) carefully selected international advisors working on all aspects of election preparation and implementation; b) substantial support for the independent election commission that is mandated by East Timor's Constitution; c) training and logistical support for political parties; and d) strong monitoring presence during the campaign as well as on election day. End Summary. ¶2. (U) Representatives of several international and/or multilateral organizations, including UNOTIL (UN Office for East Timor),the UN Department of Political Affairs' Electoral Assistance Division (EAD),UNDP, and the International Federation of Election Systems (IFES),have met recently with senior GOET officials to assess East Timor's preparedness and Government planning for the 2007 elections. Ref B discusses the visit and report of EAD's Needs Assessment Mission. Reports received from representatives of other organizations that have met with GOET officials confirm the impression of the EAD mission that GOET is planning a national election that may replicate some of the problems of Timor's recent local elections, discussed in Ref A. ¶3. (SBU) IFES representatives met recently with Minister of State Administration Ana Pessoa, the primary official overseeing the development of a new election law and the organization of the 2007 elections. Pessoa, who effectively functions as Deputy Prime Minister, is the most important member of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's small inner circle of advisors who spent their exile in Mozambique. In her meeting with IFES representatives she outlined some key intentions regarding the election law and the kinds of assistance GOET wants from the international community. The Government intends to write a law that retains the same problematic structure used during the local elections (see ref A). This will include the Technical Secretariat for Election Administration (STAE),responsible for all election logistics and reporting directly to Pessoa's ministry, and an independent monitoring body. Although East Timor's Constitution requires an independent body to supervise or oversee ("supervisar") the elections, the National Election Commission that oversaw the local elections had little real power and even fewer resources. See Ref B. In addition, Pessoa indicated that the election law will provide for proportional party representation in the Parliament, but will favor larger parties by establishing a minimum threshold for party representation. Pessoa also addressed the issue of election scheduling. While dates are yet to be set, she made clear that the Government will not depart from its plan to hold parliamentary and presidential elections on two separate dates, with the parliamentary election most likely first. ¶4. (SBU) Regarding international election assistance, Minister Pessoa has made requests to UNOTIL for several advisors (including technical assistance to STAE and legal drafting assistance for the election law) and has conveyed some receptiveness to the assistance available via international NGOs. However, both IFES and UNOTIL sources have noted that she clearly wants to impose strict limits and controls on the form and scale of international involvement. According to these sources, Minister Pessoa wants international technical assistance tailored in such a way as to minimize the likelihood DILI 00000101 002.2 OF 003 that the assistance will include advice the Government does not want to hear. ¶5. (SBU) Among other indications of this determination, Minister Pessoa has insisted that UNOTIL appoint a particular legal advisor, a relatively undistinguished Portuguese lawyer who assisted GOET last year in drafting the problematic local election law. She has rejected an offer by UNOTIL to provide an election law expert from Spain who is fluent in Portuguese and far more highly regarded than the advisor whose appointment Minister Pessoa prefers. ¶6. (U) At present the Government indicates that it has not begun to draft an election law. Nor has there been consultation with anyone outside the Government itself about what the election law ought to provide. Meanwhile, the ruling Fretilin party has already begun its preparations for the 2007 elections: several regional party congresses have already been held to elect delegates to the national party Congress scheduled for late May. The national Congress will almost certainly re-elect its two top leaders, Prime Minister Alkatiri and National Parliament President Francisco Lu'Olo Guterres, to lead the party in the upcoming elections. Opposition parties have not yet gotten off the mark, in part because they are less organized and far less well-financed than Fretilin, and in part because in the absence of an election law they do not yet know the context in which to structure their campaigns. Moreover, organizations that intend to work on voter education, advocacy, and/or election monitoring lack the legal context in which to move forward with their planning. ¶7. (SBU) On Friday, March 3, Emboffs attended a meeting called by UNOTIL to unveil what was billed as a comprehensive UN electoral assistance plan. Although the meeting was chaired by SRSG Sukehiro Hasegawa, who is the head of UNOTIL as well as of UNDP in East Timor, the presentation of the proposed electoral assistance program was given entirely by UNDP officers and appears to be entirely a UNDP program. In response to questions at the meeting and in a later private conversation, Dr. Hasegawa indicated that EAD would be asked to "bless" the UNDP program and perhaps to advise it. ¶8. (SBU) The proposed UNDP program apparently resulted from a two-person UNDP Needs Assessment Mission, which visited Dili after the EAD mission and without any of the publicity or broad consultation that characterized the latter mission. Indeed, the UNDP mission apparently confined itself largely to meetings with Minister Pessoa, and UNOTIL sources report that UNDP's initial proposal for an electoral assistance program in Timor was essentially a laundry list of the things Minister Pessoa had indicated she wanted. This consisted primarily of nine international advisors to STAE, including two legal advisors who would assist in drafting the electoral law and others who would provide technical advice, public information services, and so forth. ¶9. (SBU) According to UNOTIL sources, Dr. Hasegawa insisted that the UNDP program include some assistance to the independent electoral commission. The proposal was modified accordingly, although "Phase I" of the program included only one international advisor to the commission. In "Phase II" --- to be implemented after the election law is adopted, during the last few months before the election itself --- most of the UNDP advisors would still advise STAE, but six would advise the independent commission. The proposal presented at Friday's meeting would also provide assistance to allow the commission to have a few Timorese staff members in each of the country's thirteen districts. ¶10. (U) In addition to the diplomatic corps, invitees to the March 3 meeting included East Timor's political parties, NGOs, and journalists as well as STAE director Tomas Cabral and members of the National Election Commission. Representatives of opposition parties, journalists, and Commission members complained that the proposed assistance to the Commission was grossly inadequate. They argued that in order to fulfill its oversight mandate, the Commission would have to be present not just in the thirteen districts, but in the sixty-five sub-districts and in each of the polling places around the country, during the campaign and also on election day. STAE chief Cabral, on the other hand, said the Commission would need no independent help because the Government would give it all the resources it might need to perform its constitutionally mandated DILI 00000101 003.2 OF 003 functions. Diplomats present at the meeting generally confined themselves to asking questions. Some of these questions focused on issues similar to those raised by the NGOs and opposition party members. Others asked why they were being presented not with an EAD proposal but rather with what appeared to be almost exclusively a UNDP program. ¶11. (SBU) Emboffs have learned that later on Friday, after the meeting with the diplomatic corps and other observers, UNDP met with Minister Pessoa to present the details of the draft program. According to sources in the meeting, Pessoa indicated that the GOET was happy with the parts of the proposal that would assist STAE, but she insisted that almost all the proposed assistance to the independent election commission be cut from the proposal. In particular, she indicated that the commission would need no presence in the districts, much less in all the sub-districts or at all polling places. Rather, she indicated that, "STAE can take care of that." ¶12. (U) UNDP also made an appeal at Friday's meeting for bilateral donations to fund it proposed program. The budget was about $8 million, and UNDP representatives indicated that UNDP would be able to contribute little or nothing from its central budget, which provides only $1 million per year for East Timor. Diplomatic representatives of Australia, Portugal, and Brazil indicated that they might contribute to the program. The Ambassadors of the United States and Japan indicated that their governments were committed to providing some assistance for the elections, but that they would have to study the proposal further before deciding how much if any of their electoral assistance would be channeled through UNDP. (Comment: USAID has tentative plans to spend between $2 million and $3 million on a wide range of election-related activities through IFES, NDI, IRI, and perhaps organizations that work to develop the capacity of news media. Embassy Dili's preliminary assessment is that USAID's current plans, although no substitute for a robust UN electoral assistance program, are far more likely to enhance the prospects for a free and fair election than the UNDP program will be, and that it would be counterproductive to divert funds from these activities to UNDP. End Comment.) ¶13. (SBU) UNOTIL sources indicate that UNDP is revising the program in an attempt to meet Minister Pessoa's concerns. It is possible, however, that the inability of UNDP to negotiate a program that even pretends to provide adequate resources to the independent commission will strengthen the hand of EAD in internal UN negotiations in New York. This could result in the revival of the idea discussed in Ref B for an EAD-designed program designed to promote international best practices. ¶14. (SBU) Meanwhile, however, Emboffs have learned that UNDP and/or UNOTIL have agreed to pay for a "consultancy" by the Portuguese legal advisor requested by Minister Pessoa, who will visit later in March along with a colleague, also Portuguese, to assist her in drafting the law. It appears that the resulting draft will largely replicate the flawed local election law --- a powerful STAE reporting to Minister Pessoa, a weak oversight commission, and such other features as hundreds of "civic education brigades" paid with government funds and controlled by Pessoa's ministry rather than by the independent commission. See Ref B. The plan appears to be that this draft will be endorsed by the Council of Ministers and sent to the Fretilin-dominated Parliament for speedy enactment with little or no public consultation, much less any attempt to forge a broad national consensus. ¶15. (SBU) Comment: These recent developments strengthen Embassy's conviction, expressed in Ref B, that in order to ensure free and fair elections East Timor needs a UN Election Assistance Division program that should include: a) carefully selected international advisors working on all aspects of election preparation and implementation; b) substantial support for the independent election commission that is mandated by East Timor's Constitution, including support for the commission to have a presence in the sub-districts and at the polls; c) training and logistical support for political parties; and d) strong monitoring presence during the campaign as well as on election day. End Comment. REES