The East Timor experience

The Law auditorium is packed. Newsmen. Students. Professors. Foreign ministers. It’s a good thing I come in white long-sleeves. I squeeze through the jampacked crowd and find a decent space where I take a pretty good look at President Jose Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor and Nobel Peace Prize winner. His voice, mellow and deep, resonates throughout the hall, drowning the incessant chattering of some law students behind me. I am overwhelmed. His simplicity. His humility. His words. Here is a man who seems to know how to run his country and how run it well.