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

Haco in Venilale, each community is split into two distinct territories, separated fromeach other by another suku (see map in Appendix B). The split nature of the suku andthe difficulty in looking after the needs of the people who live in the far away regionsmake governance a difficult proposition for the xefe suku, particularly during the wetseason. However, as the xefe suku of Bado Ho'o explains, the traditional reasons forthis split territory cannot be easily overcome:Our suku is the original kingdom. It came like this, it was not in our time that wechose each other... I don't know if in the future there are going to be changes, howthey are going to make the borders between suku. This would need more profoundresearch from this government, for things to go well. But this came from a long timeago—you can see for yourself, the people are far from each other, they are neverclose. Other people can be close to me but people from my suku can go live far in[the aldeia] Uai Cana, some go to Badu Mori, some are close in Bercoli… To changethis it has to be the Government, through laws, because our origin is like this—in ourtradition we don't separate from each other even if we live far away from each other.As the xefe suku goes on to explain, this division of territory made it difficult toensure that his people had access to services, and that things were run fairly and well.While he tried to visit the various villages, it was difficult to do this regularly. Assuch, the constraints posed by this division of territory meant that he was heavilyreliant on the xefe aldeia to keep things running smoothly. While this posed its ownproblems when relations between the xefe suku and xefe aldeia broke down, the sukucould continue to function because much important governance was carried out withinthe aldeia rather than at the suku level of governance—an arrangement that wasactively encouraged by the xefe suku. These dynamics appear to be an inevitableresult of the unachieved syncretism between modern and traditional ideas ofcommunity. While, the xefe suku of the other split suku —where the territories wereeven further removed from each other—claimed that he had no problems in lookingafter his people, on further investigation it became clear that he rarely if ever visitedthe remote territory. This territory was known in Venilale by a different name andgenerally not correlated with the suku Uato Haco, and it appears that this communityhas been basically left to govern itself with their elected xefe aldeia and traditionallylegitimatedleaders.143