Gordon,
You said, "East Timor is obviously a failed product of colonialism; Portuguese and Indonesian".

You may right but then East Timor actually has a chance to be not-so-failed if it did not suffer another colonializm from their superpower neighbour Australia. Oil, oh, oil. Democration for oil.

Dear Citizen, I think you should really explain what you're talking about. As far as I am aware the Catholic Church's role in Timor had been instrumental to essential welfare and social services to the Timorese people during occupation. Negotiations between the Church and the Indonesians during their retreat saved much the eastern areas of East Timor from destruction (note the towns of Lospalos and Baucau).

While social services performed by church groups are not necessarily ideal in advanced developed states, most times in underdeveloped states it is only groups like the catholic church that are motivated to perform that role or those services.

The history of colonialism and the recent devestation to Timor-Leste should bear some weight in understanding the nation's current obstacles. I'm unsure what your comment is hoping to achieve.

Indeed East Timor is not a viable state, the recent collapse of that "country" is bound to happen sooner and later. East Timorese "leaders" proved to be nothing but incompetent buffoons who are incapable of running a tiny half-island with landmass smaller than Bahamas. Their "military" and "police" is nothing more but a rabble of armed gangsters who enjoy killing each other. Their half-civilised people are nothing more but a bunch of violent people whose hobby is engaging in primitive ethnic-warfare.

Quite pathetic, even the worst African countries like Somalia experienced stability and functioning govt for decades after independence. East Timor, receipient of much international aid, collapsed into a failed state within 4 years of self-rule. Now the fat clown Jose Ramos-Horta is begging for UN re-colonisation.

It is good that Indonesia expelled this hopeless half-island from our republic so we are no longer burdened with need to subsidise this worthless piece of real estate. We are better-off while they are clearly worse-off without our supervision. Every year after independence, lack of maintanence means East Timor's Indonesian-built road network are shrinking rapidly while neglect of education means illiteracy continue its upward march. Without Indonesian subsidies, East Timorese economy basically collapsed, making East Timorese much poorer, now they are the poorest people in the world.

Suharto is right, East Timor is Southeast Asian Haiti that require more advanced outside rulers just to stay afloat. I'm sure what happened last month will be repeated over-and-over again in East Timor in the future. By wanting independence, ET basically committed collective suicide

@grv.campbell:

Catholicism was imposed on East Timorese by Indonesia. By the end of Portuguese rule (1975), only one-third of East Timorese were Catholics since the Portuguese couldn't be bothered with spreading Catholicism in line with their absolute neglect of their East Timor colony. The rest were animists.

It was Indonesia who forced the population to adopt Catholicism as measure to counter godless communist ideology of Fretilin. It was Suharto who build the second-largest Jesus statue in the world, Christo Rei, in Dili. It was Suharto who build one of the largest cathedrals in SE Asia, Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, in Dili.

That is why impact of Catholicism in ET is very weak, with East Timorese mobs easily burning churches, killing priests and raping nuns. Now, Catholic Church is enemy of PM Mari Alkatiri, a communist who wants to abolish religious instruction from education system.

To see the skinny snivelling people kneeling down to kiss the ring of Bishop Belo is to get a glimpse of the way the richest most powerful religous institution has victimized the poor, ignorant and superstitious all over the world. The doctrine is hypocritical gibberish exploited by wierdly perverse people to give them power over the fearfully gullible. The church pays no taxes in East Timor and enforces large families. It is the one component of Portuguese colonialism that remains, and it is the most insidious because it enslaves the mind from childhood til death.