Today's instalment differs slightly from yesterday's reading. While Tim Anderson (I apologise by the way for wrongly crediting the piece to Evan Jones, on whose blog the piece I wrote about was posted) posited an attempt to get rid of the socialist East Timorese liberation movement Fretilin as the government of East Timor, or move which also coincides with Javanese attempts to strangle East Timor at birth, Reading the Maps produces a more penetrative analysis, which goes inside the East Timorese political class and diagnoses a pro-Australian faction headed by East Timorese president, Xanana Gusmao. The presidency is a largely ceremonial position in the East Timorese governmental structure, but Reading the Maps explains it was the President who called in the Aussies, over the objections of the Prime Minister, Marí Bin Amude Alkatiri.




The very fact that Alkatiri would object indicates he's the kind of man that the Australians would logically want to get rid of. Since they are apparently in command of the capital now, one imagines they can do whatever they want.