Politics & Power Quote by Jose Ramos-Horta

A politician reaches for the language of spreadsheets when he needs to sell a national story about sovereignty. Ramos-Horta is talking about Timor-Leste's Petroleum Fund, but the real subject is credibility: the credibility of a young state managing sudden resource wealth without collapsing into the familiar “resource curse” script of corruption, volatility, and elite capture.

The sentence is engineered to reassure multiple audiences at once. “Created by law” is a quiet flex aimed at skeptics who assume institutions in post-conflict countries are informal, personalist, or fragile. Law implies guardrails, procedure, and continuity beyond any one administration. “All the revenues received” signals completeness and anti-leakage: no shadow channels, no discretionary slush fund, no offshore detours.

Then comes the rhetorical masterstroke: “conservative, safe, long-term” followed by the name-brand of fiscal virtue, “US Treasury Bonds.” It’s not just an investment choice; it’s a geopolitical and psychological anchor. By tying national savings to the most widely recognized “risk-free” asset, Ramos-Horta borrows the reputational capital of the United States to stabilize perceptions of Timor-Leste. It’s a message to donors, ratings agencies, and domestic critics: we are not gambling; we are banking the future.

The subtext, of course, is anxiety. A petroleum fund exists because oil money is politically combustible. By emphasizing restraint, Ramos-Horta is also preempting pressure to spend fast and spend loud. In a country with urgent development needs, “safe” can sound like “slow,” and this line tries to make patience feel like patriotism.