East Timor's administrative teething troubles

When the UNTAET administration left Dili immediately after the May independence celebrations, the handover was anything but smoothly co-ordinated. UNTAET removed virtually all computers and cabling from the government buildings. In the entire parliamentary office complex there is now only a single computer with an Internet connection.

UNTAET also removed its large printing presses when it left. This makes it difficult to print legislation and government documents. East Timorese citizens travelling overseas have to make do with a laminated card as a temporary passport, because the facilities to create proper passports just don't exist.

However, not all the problems have been created by an inept UN administration. The political leaders of the dominant Fretilin party are mostly upper-class Timorese, who had the resources to flee when Indonesia invaded, and spent the entire 25 years of Indonesian occupation in Portugal or various Portuguese-speaking ex-colonies like Mozambique.

They do not speak fluent Tetun (the principal language of the predominantly rural Timorese people) and never learned Bahasa Indonesia. On the other hand, everyone under 35 years old converses in Bahasa, and almost all ordinary dealings in the larger towns are conducted in that language. Eighty percent of Timorese under 35 do not speak Portuguese at all, and few of the remaining 20 per cent could be described as fluent speakers.

Despite this, upon their return after liberation, the ruling elite insisted that Portuguese must be the official language. I suppose reluctance to embrace the language of their oppressors is understandable, but a less charitable interpretation is that the ruling elite wanted to reinforce power by ensuring that official business was conducted in their native language rather than that of the people.

Younger Timorese mounted a passionate campaign against enshrining Portuguese as the official language, but only succeeded in extracting a compromise whereby section 13 of the Constitution now provides that both Tetun and Portuguese are the official languages. However, Tetun is an almost completely oral language with a limited, basic vocabulary. All written communications must take place in Portuguese, despite the fact that almost no-one speaks or understands it.

Nevertheless, the executive government aims to remedy this situation. It has employed at great expense dozens of Portuguese school teachers (mostly direct from Portugal), who are accommodated in great comfort so they can teach Timorese people to speak, read and write their new national language. High school students are already being required to sit all examinations in a language they do not speak or understand properly.

My clients and I eventually managed to arrange a meeting with senior public servants who were able to tell us the state of play with business and tax law. Everything that was said had to be translated into three other languages to allow everyone present to understand: English, Portuguese, Tetun and Bahasa Indonesia. There were only five people present. We discovered that there is no corporations law at all as yet. There is, however, a draft bill dealing with corporations and a wide range of other commercial law issues (in effect a commercial code), but it appears to have been copied verbatim from an archaic 19th century Portuguese precedent.

The tax laws, on the other hand, bear the unmistakable imprint of the mainly Australian advisers who drafted them under the UN administration. Section 165 of the Constitution continues existing Indonesian laws and UNTAET ordinances in force until the new National Parliament passes new.

The tax structure and rates are virtually identical to Australia, a convenient outcome for Australian bureaucrats who did not want to see another low tax haven in the region. Others might take the view that an opportunity has been lost to attract much-needed foreign investment with carefully designed concessional tax rates. As an essentially social democratic party, however, that appears not to be the Fretilin view.

Despite its pivotal role in organising the UNAMET peacekeeping force that went into East Timor at short notice to stop the Indonesians from slaughtering the population in the wake of the September 1999 independence vote, Australia is regarded with mixed feelings by the Timorese.

Timorese people haven't forgotten the complicity of the Whitlam government in Indonesia's invasion, nor successive Australian governments’ self-interested acquiescence in 25 years of Indonesian occupation. Educated Timorese are well aware that Australia was the only nation which gave de jure recognition to Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor. I met an Australian lawyer at Dili District Court, who told the story of appearing recently in front of a Timorese judge who, on learning his nationality, said: "Don't expect any favours, Mr X. Remember that the only people we dislike more than Australians are Indonesians."