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

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!