Presdient Ramos Horta, Keynote Speaker, returns to Dili

Paul Toohey | April 18, 2008
The Australian
Horta welcomed home

IT was a different kind of madness to that which has so often plagued the streets of Dili. This time it was an outpouring of affection and a celebration of survival.

Nine weeks after being shot down in cold blood, President Jose Ramos Horta yesterday challenged his deepest fears and drove slowly among thousands of East Timorese who lined the dusty streets to welcome him home.

Mr Ramos Horta stepped off a charter plane at 8am and looked tense as he took to the red carpet.

Dignitaries applauded and an armed guard snapped to attention. It made you wince to see his mates hug him and clap him on the back, right where he took two bullets.

The President began to relax as he moved among dancers and old friends. But old friends can be dangerous in Timor, as he knows.

It was then straight to a press conference, where Mr Ramos Horta said he would give "a few brief words". But the former diplomat does not know how to be brief. He talked at great length in Tetum and Portuguese. Strangely, it was when he was talking in English that he broke down and cried.

"Sorry, I'm emotional. Even though I was shot and almost killed, I didn't want Mr Salsinha or anyone else to die," said the President, referring to the rebel leader who remains at large.

Mr Ramos Horta told of how he had believed he had built a warm relationship with the rebels, giving them money out of his pocket and driving up and down the mountains to win their trust and resolve the issue.

Then he toughened up and sent a message to Salsinha, who has said he will hand himself in only to Mr Ramos Horta. The President said he didn't want Salsinha.

"I prefer he takes himself to his church in Gleno (in the west) but not to me," he said. "He has to surrender to justice."

Mr Ramos Horta said he believed individuals in Indonesia had been urging Major Alfredo Reinado, who was killed by the President's guard during the attack in which Mr Ramos Horta was shot, to act against him.

He insisted the Indonesian Government had no part in the events.

Then the President left the airport complex surrounded by the hard men of East Timor, the GNR, or Portuguese riot police, who jogged alongside his vehicle.

Mr Ramos Horta gave an unscripted address to parliament, telling MPs their most important work in coming months related to "the barefoot and illiterate" people who were impatient and hungry.

He warned of a coming crisis with rising rice prices.

After the speech, Acting President Fernando de Araujo officially handed back the presidency to Mr Ramos Horta. The President left the parliament and headed east out of town to his home in Metiaut, on a newly laid bitumen road that workers had been working around the clock to ready for his return.

Mr Ramos Horta, who has admitted to being deeply traumatised by being shot, told The Australian he would know for sure how well he had recovered emotionally only when he saw the spot where he was shot.

But the President was too distracted to consider such matters. Before reaching his house, he got out of his car at a monument on a roundabout, where three local villages had combined to perform traditional dances.

A marching band of Catholic school children walked him up the road to his door, and Mr Ramos Horta paused only briefly to consider the spot where he was taken down.

Then it was inside for lunch with his family, and no more official program for the day.

Thousands of T-shirts with images of Mr Ramos Horta and the Pope had been distributed for his return, with the words "Bemvindo Sr President".

Welcome home, Mr President.