Local Governance in Timor-Leste - Secretaria de Estado da Arte e ...

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In 2004, the government of Timor-Leste formally established the konsellu de sukuthrough Decree Law 5/2004. This legislation was specifically intended as bridginglegislation until consultations could be conducted and more comprehensive legislationwritten to govern this important area. It has since been replaced by Decree Law3/2009. The fieldwork for this thesis was conducted in the last year of the first term ofoffice for konsellu de suku members, while they were still governed by Decree Law5/2004.There is one konsellu de suku for each of the 442 suku across Timor-Leste. Thekonsellu is headed by the xefe suku. Other konsellu de suku members include all of thexefe aldeia, representing each of the aldeia within the suku, one elder, two women'srepresentatives and two youth representatives—one man, one woman. In Decree Law3/2009 there is now also one lia-na'in who is specially appointed by the konsellu desuku members during their first meeting following election into office. In the previouslegislation, the suku elder had often operated as the council lia-na'in, and in fact inAinaro this institutional figure was referred to by everyone as the suku lia-na'in.In the preamble of Decree Law 5/2004, it was stated that the purpose was to"legitimise the role so far played by community leaders and bodies through elections".This gives an important clue on the legislative intention in creating the konsellu desuku, where it represents a modified continuation of previous forms of localgovernance. Seen from this perspective, the intention of the Timorese governmentwas not to establish a new layer of governance, but rather to legitimise and to someextent co-opt existing local authority structures that had continued in various formsthroughout Portuguese, Indonesian and UNTAET times. This understanding is alsomirrored in how the konsellu de suku is viewed in Venilale and Ainaro, where timeand again it was confirmed in interviews that the roles of xefe suku and xefe aldeia arenot viewed as 'new' roles, but as roles that had continued throughout interviewees'lifetimes but with different labels attached to them. However, there were also someimportant modernising changes that were introduced through the konsellu de suku,with the more conservative elements of local governance to be balanced through theinclusion of the women and youth representatives.119
As discussed previously, one of the major points of failure for the World Bank's CEPproject was that it excluded traditional leaders from putting themselves forward forelection onto the councils (Ospina and Hohe, 2001). Perhaps learning from thisexperience, as many of the policy makers who worked on CEP then went on todevelop policy for konsellu de suku 35 , Decree Law 5/2004 gave everyone the right tostand for election. Fieldwork in both Venilale and Ainaro shows that this has resultedin a strong traditional authority presence within konsellu de suku, as communitiesendeavour to fulfil traditional notions of socio-political legitimacy balanced withother needs through electing someone who is traditionally legitimated to rule. This isa balancing act that varies from one place to the next, and also varies according to therole on konsellu de suku—whether one is xefe aldeia, xefe suku, lia-na'in, youthrepresentative or women's representative.Xefe AldeiaThe first role that reflects tight synchronicity between traditional and modernlegitimacy for leadership lies in the role of xefe aldeia. The aldeia is the smallest andmost traditional 'space' of governance that is recognised by the Timorese government.While suku are territorially defined and mapped, aldeia are not mapped in the sameway, which meant in Venilale and Ainaro that they tend to be defined along familylines. This tight correlation between aldeia and family groups is also reflected inArticle 3 of Decree Law 3/2009, in which aldeia are defined as being "composed ofan aggregated population united due to relations of families and traditions andconnected to sucos due to histories and geographies".In 2008 when I conducted my fieldwork in the suku of Fatulia and Ainaro, there was avery tight synchronicity between traditional and modern leadership centering on therole of xefe aldeia. In suku Ainaro, in the subdistrict of Ainaro, every xefe aldeia hadtaken over the position from his father and was very open that while he had beendemocratically voted into office, this was a position that required traditionalleadership—a dynamic that effectively creates an ongoing hereditary systemlegitimated by election. This system of traditional leadership binds the xefe aldeia as35 Personal interview, Chris Dureau, 12 August 2009.120
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Local Governance in Timor-Leste:The
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COPYRIGHT STATEMENT‘I hereby gran
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are some important points of tensio
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the Canossian sisters in Ainaro—M
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2.6 The Issues of Cross-Cultural Re
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LIST OF FIGURESFigure One: The Deve
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Tara banduUma kainUma lulikXefe Ald
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within, I had failed to recognise t
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anthropology of development (Shephe
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prefer the term 'local' to recognis
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evolve around ideas of traditional
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institution that is considered to b
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the case given the emphasis on cond
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Within these increasingly murky pol
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1.3 Case Study SitesVenilaleVenilal
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The reasons for choosing Venilale a
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and influences can have on the loca
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played out since decolonisation. Th
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geographically 'outwards' from uma
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CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWO
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2.1 FieldworkFieldwork was conducte
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marked differences in people's idea
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interactions between modern and tra
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then asking for advice on who else
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answer specific questions about how
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Every conversation and every experi
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discussions. This took a little tim
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crucial to the research question—
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CHAPTER THREE: CONCEPTUALISING POST
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epresentation through democratisati
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of coordination between these diffe
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equally problematic, as this succes
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government, and Huntington noted th
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Westernise. Equally, the specificit
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which individuals both shape and ar
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expanded this understanding to incl
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within a society. As Remmer puts it
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is to distribute power to some and
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To explain this point, he makes the
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provided by public policy" (Fukuyam
Page 81 and 82: Gramsci's account of hegemonic powe
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Page 89 and 90: The centrality of these kin-based g
Page 91 and 92: 4.1 Formation of Political Hybridit
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Page 99 and 100: did not make life any easier for th
Page 101 and 102: governor, but slowly seats were inc
Page 103 and 104: The movement towards decolonisation
Page 105 and 106: As the politics reached gradually b
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Page 111 and 112: outrage across the world. Following
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Page 119 and 120: these other factors reveal a more c
Page 121 and 122: SECTION TWO: EXAMINING LOCAL GOVERN
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Page 125 and 126: Important exchange relationships th
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Page 131: The centrality of the liurai house
Page 135 and 136: order to meet their communal requir
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Page 147 and 148: Party politics has been one such po
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Page 159 and 160: kain), it is taken to the xefe and/
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automatically become part of the lo
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ecent Shadow Report to CEDAW, which
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Governance must be for something, a
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power within Timorese communities.
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Such structural constraints, howeve
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Across every suku in Venilale and A
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was built for their most remote ald
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While community members may attempt
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networks that use such animistic ri
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strongman, who operated in Venilale
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the community are captured or diver
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strongman specifically uses institu
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CHAPTER EIGHT: BRINGING IT BACK TO
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communities have created various fo
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However, while incoming resources c
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of fundamental importance in consid
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APPENDIX A: LIST OF INTERVIEWEESVEN
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APPENDIX B: MAP OF TIMOR-LESTESourc
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APPENDIX D: POLITICAL MAP OF SUBDIS
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BINNS, T. (2006) 'Doing Fieldwork i
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CHESTERMAN, S. (2002) 'East Timor i
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DEGNBOL-MARTINUSSEN, J. (2002) 'Dev
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Lincoln, Y. (Eds.) The Landscape of
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GRENFELL, L. (2006) 'Legal Pluralis
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HOWARTH, D. (2000) Discourse, Bucki
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LANDMAN, T. & HAUSERMANN, J. (2003)
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MERRY, S. E. (1988) 'Legal Pluralis
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OSPINA, S. & HOHE, T. (2001) Tradit
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RUDOLPH, L. I. (1965) 'The Modernit
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THAKUR, R. & VAN LANGENHOVE, L. (20
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WORK, R. (2002) 'Overview of Decent
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