Comrades.
Only last week I was writing about the worrying renewed rise of the old Strongman in South-East Asia, after 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, won the general election in Malaysia, after 15 years out of the game.
Well, now it's happened again, in a place dear to my heart, East Timor.
Just when you least expect it, Xanana Gusmão is back.
After the weekend's exercise in the Miracle of Democracy [and the election has, btw, been declared "free & fair" by the international observers], 73-year-old Gusmão has been swept back into power, again, after he vowed never to return to politics after stints as both President and Prime Minister.
There is absolutely no doubting Gusmão's credentials as a genuine bona-fide Independence war hero, but he's come to power this time on the back of being the lead negotiator in getting back East Timor's oil and gas fields, that were shamefully and outrageously thieved off them by the Timor Gap Treaty [for which Gareth Evans, despite his excellent Pinko record, will never be forgiven].
They were well and truly rat-fucked there, and it's taken 29 years to sort out and achieve justice.
But, the Greater Sunrise fields are now a stranded asset if ever there was one, and with Timor Leste predicted to run out of their current oil & gas reserves well inside ten years, there's trouble ahead.
The arse has fallen right out of the fossil fuel market as the world turns to renewables, Woodside and ConcoPhillips are very hard bastards indeed, and as long as Gusmão insists on the pipeline to run the very doubtful "Rivers of Gold" to the remote south coast of Timor, instead of Darwin, the resource will never be exploited.
Ever.
That's the harsh reality, mate.
In a cruel twist of fate, the opportunity is gone.
It's probably as worthless as the paper it's written on.
After pointing out a photograph of Gusmão returning in triumph from New York to Dili with the new border treaty in hand to get straight on the campaign trail, the Good Lady Wife was moved to remark "sheesh, Xanana's looking a bit old and fat these days".
The Miracle of Democracy in East Timor is in a rut, with the two main factions of the old Independence fighters, warlords if you like, still fighting each other, after a pretend kiss and make up.
Still?
The 68-year-old now twice former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, the long time leader of Fretilin, is out of office after less than ten months - being snookered from all sides in Parliament forcing President Lú-Olo to call an early election - and will probably be run out of town.
The election was won by Aliança Mudança ba Progresso (Change for Progress Alliance, or AMP) who could rule in their own right, without the need of the support of fringe parties like the Democratic Development Front [FDD], a coalition of various splinter groups.
But, AMP is itself a three-way coalition led by majority partner, Gusmão’s National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction [CNRT], along with yet another former President Taur Matan Ruak’s Popular Liberation Party [PLP], and the Kmanek Haburas Unidade Nasional Timor Oan {KHUNTO].
Fretilin was routed at the polls, but far from disgraced. The third corner of the infernal triangle is, if course, another former President and PM and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 68-year-old José Ramos-Horta, [who I have an enormous amount of time for and I've been honoured to shake his hand], who has sensibly long since left the political landscape to work in world diplomacy as a special envoy-at-large, burdened with always being a peace-maker.
After surviving a serious assassination attempt, José won't be tempted into making a comeback.
KHUNTO is a "youth movement" which has its roots in a Dili martial arts gang of all things, that decided in get into the Democracy caper five years ago, and last time around, they unexpectedly won five seats.
But being a somewhat anarchic mob, they don't appear to have any leaders of note, and I have no idea what their policy platform is, that's if they have a practical one.
Timor's hopes rest in young leaders, but where are they, with old-guard revolutionaries still running the show?
Old Mate Alkatiri is between a rock and a hard place, as a Muslim he's always been an outsider in a country wholly dominated by Roman Catholicism, and his idea of negotiation is "my .44 is gonna do the talkin', from now on", so even Fretilin's pull on it's own storied heritage was not much good to them at the polls, even though they still enjoy wide support - but just not enough.
As the hopeless imbroglio of the last ten months proved, it turned out Fretilin couldn't run a chook raffle, let alone get supply bills through a hung Parliament.
Alkatiri will likely now be banished again to the tiny exclave of Oecusse, where he was previously sidelined with the grand informal title of "The King of Oecusse"...out of sight and out of mind...
The poor bloke reportedly wept at the news of the election result, knowing it's probably now the end of the road for Fretilin, maybe not yet electorally, but in historical terms at least. I remember hearing Ramos-Horta being interviewed in 2012 just before I visited East Timor, and he was asked what the top priorities were for Timor Leste, and he replied with two words "education, roads".
He then explained if you don't have the money to educate your young folk, slipping into eternal grinding poverty is inevitable, and the Portuguese and Indonesians did absolutely nothing to improve communications, and without roads there's no economy, beyond subsistence farming.
[Anyone who's been up into the coffee country and then on into the strange haunting mountains around Ermera, will tell you of the legendary wash-aways and pot-holes up there that are big enough to swallow up a 4WD, whole. The Indonesians re-built Baucau Airport 120 km east of Dili at enormous expense as a military airbase, and there were grand plans for it to be turned into an international tourist hub after Independence, but the road to Dili was never completely sealed, and the joint now lies abandoned in ruins].
Most people under 50 would have little, if any, memory or experience of the Indonesian invasion, and anyone under 25 would not even really remember the Civil War of '99, let alone living under Indonesian occupation -- and the under-25's now make up more than 60% of the population - time to move on?
It's easy to be pessimistic about East Timor's future, but they are a wonderful people, and an incredibly resilient, if hopelessly politically fractured society...but, for mine, the way forward is only possible if they start to let go of their past.
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