The article by Alfred Deakin and the reply from Geoffrey Hull deserve comment

Deakin's general points about the character and energy of the new bureaucracy are harsh but, I'm sorry to say, broadly accurate - this was apparent well before Independence. On the other hand, there are enough valid exceptions to this characterisation to warrant some hesitation in accepting his judgment completely. The exceptions are important, as they show two things.

First, many Timorese in the civil service are capable of and committed to their work, despite all kinds of difficulties; second, 'lethargy and confusion' are common responses when power is centralised, as it is in East Timor, and when top political appointees of often doubtful capacity rule the roost. During the quarter century of Indonesian occupation Timorese, with few exceptions, were kept out of any position above middle management in minor government agencies, and the nation-wide pattern of officials from Java and Sumatra holding virtually all senior positions also prevailed in East Timor.

Moreover, their access to education and training was limited. The education system itself has been described by knowledgeable Indonesians as a 'stupid making system' (sistem pembodohan) - designed not to develop people's skills in analytic or strategic thinking. The consequence is that, relatively, the Timorese gained little education or experience in technical matters and administrative affairs. This is a sad legacy that Timor, and the whole archipelago, will take decades to recover from. Yes, there is a lack of law on virtually all aspects of commerce and, critically, land tenure. The reasons for this are complex.

First, virtually none of the previous laws from Indonesia are appropriate, for reasons of underlying philosophy and administrative structures and systems - so they have had to start from scratch. It is disorientating, I speak literally, to be without a functioning legal framework and system. Likewise it is extremely difficult to imagine how much time and effort is required to create one ab initio. We too easily forget how many hundreds of years have been required to establish our legal systems. No one, and I really do mean no one including the UN and Deakin, has much in the way of worthwhile experience to offer on how to go about it.

Second, until you have a constitution there is no basis for making new laws - hence the initial focus on the constitution and related issues. The constitution was only finalised at the beginning of 2002 - a few months before independence. In the interim, and until now, left-over Indonesian laws were supplemented by ad hoc UNTAET regulations.

Third, on the issue of land laws, the present Minister for Justice, on being presented with draft policy and regulations for land tenure and dispute resolution in mid 2001, explicitly instructed senior UN advisors to stop work on them! This was a decision by a Timorese, not the UN - and this is not the only instance of basic legal work being halted for unknown reasons.

Fourth, Deakin (and Dennis Shoesmith) is simply badly uninformed about the amount of time and resources that were devoted by UNTAET (and other donors) to developing administrative (and technical) skills and structures. As a manager, maintaining day-to-day operations in the environment sector was often problematic because so many staff members needed to frequently attend management and technical training courses - we all knew the training was essential, and beneficial, but it required substantial time; colleagues in many other areas reported similar problems. Almost all the comments about the UN removing equipment are true, but they do require some background.

First, UNTAET had only a limited mandate, now taken over by a new UN mission. There was never any suggestion, in official circles at least, that the all of the goodies the UN had supplied would remain after Independence. In early 2002 it took monumental efforts on the part of senior UNTAET staff to get the newly constituted Timorese cabinet to belatedly pay any attention to transitional issues in the run up to Independence - one consequence of which is that they lost any chance to negotiate a more phased withdrawal of facilities.

Second, after September 11, 2001, the US invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent flood of refugees, East Timor simply disappeared from the international 'radar screen' - as the Chief Minister and the head of UNTAET discovered when they went to the UN Security Council in January 2002. As a consequence, the already thinly stretched UN resources simply dried up, and they were redeployed to other, now more important, places.

Third, the facilities we are discussing are those used, on the whole, by the urbanised elite in East Timor. The 80-90% of the population who are semi-subsistence rural farmers are unlikely to notice the lack of an Internet connection! Finally, the cold hard truth is that there are multiple millions of people in direr straits than the East Timorese, despite their current difficulties. More generally, in East Timor the UN mission (and the other donors) was faced with a task that simply could not be completed in the time available - from October 1999 (when a humanitarian emergency existed and chaos prevailed) to May 2001 (independence) - less than three years. The Timorese, understandably, wanted to be fully independent as soon as possible; the UN's mandate and resources were limited.

Anyone who expects to find a fully functioning modern state, complete with all necessary laws and a fully trained administration, simply doesn't understand what time, effort and skills it takes to achieve this. The consensus, among those who worked in East Timor and who have in-depth experience of the real Third World, i.e. they are not fly-in, fly-out experts - is that if all goes reasonably well (i.e. no civil strife, not too much corruption and nepotism, a truly patriotic government, etc.) it will take East Timor a minimum of some 5-10 years to be more or less fully functioning - that is, to the point where there are Timorese who can capably handle just about all that is required without more than minimal external assistance. If all does not go reasonably well, this period will stretch out for decades; there are more pessimistic opinions abroad.

On the issue of language and the elite Deakin has it pretty right, some minor points aside, which is where I take issue with Geoffrey Hull. Taking up Hull's challenge, it's pretty easy to identify one member of the new government who doesn't speak Tetum - the Minister for Justice. For over a year she has required all her staff, including expatriates, to speak and write Portuguese! Speaking Portuguese was a job requirement for a while in 2001-02, until they discovered they couldn't find nearly enough adequately qualified people. Hull is correct when he refutes Deakin's claim that Indonesian is used in most ordinary dealings, but neither is Tetum the only language used. The language used depends on the location - there are some 30 languages to choose from! My own experience in traveling widely through the countryside during a year is that one can get by quite well, and hold detailed, complex discussions, in Indonesian with almost everyone, excepting older people.

I don't speak Portuguese, but I know what it sounds like, and I do not recall ever hearing Timorese using Portuguese among themselves - but I heard lots of them using Indonesian, or littering their conversation with Indonesian and bits of mangled Portuguese. Listening to the Timorese speak Tetum or another of the local languages one is struck by how much Indonesian and Portuguese is woven in, especially for complex or modern concepts.

As a coda, to suggest that two thirds of the vocabulary of Tetum[n] is Portuguese is to suggest that Tetum is not an indigenous language! - a delightful self-contradiction on Hull's part. Contrary to what Hull asserts, there has been a survey (but not a census) of what languages are spoken - and I guess that Deakin found his figures in the UNDP report cited below. The UNDP (UN Development Programme) identified some 30 languages being spoken in East Timor in a survey conducted in late 2000 "... 82% of the population spoke Tetun, while 43% could speak Indonesian. Only 5% spoke Portuguese, while 2% spoke English ... The Planning Commission estimates that around 2,000 core staff in the civil service will need training in Portuguese, 400 in Tetun, and up to 150 in Indonesian." (UNDP National Development Report 2002, p.15) It is hard to imagine a clearer refutation of Hull's implicit assertion that Portuguese is widely understood and used - even among the educated Timorese who staff the civil service. Just as I heard no one using Portuguese in my travels, nor did I hear anyone using English - but then there was a 2.5 times greater chance of hearing the former!

Levity aside, the second part of the above citation clearly indicates the scale of the operational and economic cost of teaching civil service staff not only to speak, but to read and write in Portuguese. In the civil service, almost no one speaks Portuguese, some can't speak Tetun [sic Tetum!] and almost everyone speaks Indonesian. Learning a new language, especially one as difficult as Portuguese, requires many years of hard work - it's not just a matter of a few quick lessons. A number of our staff spent a substantial amount of time attending Portuguese language classes during 2001-02 - these may have kept the teachers employed, but did little if anything to make the staff proficient in the language; this training was, however, a burden on our operational capability.

On the language issue there was an alternative, and one that was suggested to the powers that be in Dili: "Do not have official languages." After long consideration, this was the deliberate choice made by another newly independent nation - Eritrea in about 1994. With at least nine major local languages, plus Arabic and English, they made a pragmatic and democratic decision: Whatever language worked in a given (official) situation would be supported. The cost - more resources for interpreters and translators; the benefits - everyone is given a voice and there is no energy wasting friction about who 'owned' the language used. It is worth recalling that the language we call 'Bahasa Indonesia' - the sibling of 'Bahasa Malaya' - existed well before the nation state called Indonesia, and may well exist for longer, i.e. the Indonesian state does not 'own' the Indonesian language, it belongs to the people of the archipelago.

There is something more telling and less honourable that needs to be known about the choice of official names and languages in East Timor. In the district-level consultations in late 2000 leading up to the deliberations of the Constitutional Assembly in 2001- public consultations that Fretlin opposed and the UN insisted on - all but one of the thirteen districts clearly stated they wanted the name of the new nation to be "Timor Lorosa'e" - Timor of the Rising Sun, a Tetum name. The Constitutional Assembly, dominated by Fretlin, and Fretlin by its diaspora members, ignored this and used the boring old Portuguese name: Timor Leste - East Timor.

About a year later, during the nationwide consultations to develop a national vision for the year 2020 (which was conducted by the Planning Commission with funding from the Irish people) there was a clear, explicit and vocal, almost universal, rejection of Portuguese as an official language - this was suppressed in the report. Finally, as has been reported, it was only the valiant efforts of Nicholas Lobato's son that managed to have Tetum[n] recognised as an official language. Had he not prevailed, Geoffrey Hull would have had to perform impossible contortions to show how making Portuguese an official language was not a craven reversion to colonialism.

In summary, the problems with the civil service are inevitable - they still plague most Third World countries. The challenge of establishing a new legal system remains formidable, and is not helped by the attitude or absence of the Minister of Justice, or the reliance on antiquated Portuguese legal and technical standards. And the problems with language were avoidable - but hubris has made them an unnecessary stumbling block. Viva Timor Lorosa'e!