TimorLeste, Factors contributing to instability

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Timor-Leste, Factors contributing to instability
Dr Helen Hill Senior Lecturer, School of Social
Sciences, Victoria University, St Albans,
Victoria, AUSTRALIA 9th June 2006
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• SOME OF THE CAUSES OF THE CRISIS IN EAST
  TIMOR
• CAUSES in the POLITICAL SYSTEM
• Constitutional factors
• Causes in the Political culture
• Inability to implement the rule of law due to
  weak legal system
• CAUSES in UNTAETs RULE AND ITS EXIT
• Limitations of a Peace Keeping Mission for Nation
  Building
• RISING ASPIRATIONS AND THE FAILURE TO MEET THEM
• Failure to transform education wrong messages
  sent
• Failure to build communication infrastructure
  reliance on rumour
• Failure to build local economies, and create
  livelihoods
• Economic Planning and Development approach
• Good aspects
• Poor aspects

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UNTAET Period

• Heavy emphasis on prevention of corruption made
  decentralization of power and responsibility
  difficult.
• Tabula Rasa or Return to Normality
• Recruitment of Public servants was too fast and
  often done on the basis of formal examination
  rather than skills based.
• UNTAET was in such a hurry to leave, it could not
  even wait for an August 30th date for
  independence, which would have been much more
  unifying than the Mary 20th date.
• Debate on language held back policy-making, but
  didnt promote learning of languages
• Civic Education not taken seriously

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TIMORESE CONSTITUTION

• One of the most advanced and progressive in the
  world, influenced by constitutions of South
  African and Fiji when it comes to rights etc.
  But the Constriction was not voted on nor
  properly explained to the populace.
• Separation of powers similar to some European
  constitutions separation of powers between Prime
  Minister and President has reasons behind it.
• Electoral system similar to many in post-conflict
  countries, and entrenches a strong party
  discipline, unlike most Melanesian constitutions.
• Separation of Church and State was supported by
  all parties and Bishop, but new Bishops seem to
  have difficulty getting used to it

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TIMORESE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

• Closed List system with proportional
  representation for most of the seats in the
  Parliament with one single electorate. There are
  also District members elected by preferential
  voting a lack of funds for transport preclude
  members visiting their districts.
• Members are seated in Parliament according to the
  percentage of votes their party receives.
  Members can be replaced by others of their own
  party
• This system encourages and re-inforces strong
  party discipline, in contrast to the single
  member electorates found in most Melanesian
  countries.

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Factors affecting Timorese Political Culture

• During the occupation the Indonesians argued that
  East Timor would descend into political violence
  if the TNI was not there. Some Timorese came to
  believe this.
• After 12 years of occupation, in 1987, the
  Conselho Nacional da Resistancia Maubere CNRM was
  formed by Xanana Gusmão and party identities
  suppressed in the interests of joint action
  against the occupation. (In 1998 the CNRM became
  the CNRT as the word Maubere became divisive).
• After the ballot and the arrival of UNTAET,
  Timorese were told to disband the CNRT and to
  revive political parties in order to move towards
  a multi-party system.

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Timorese Political Culture

• The long history of resistance means there is a
  reluctance by Timorese in authority to reprimand
  or discipline those with whom they have shared
  the struggle over the 24 years. This is equally
  true whether those concerned were inside the
  country or taking part in the diplomatic front
  outside. It is not only a problem in the army,
  but also in many schools and smaller workplaces.
  
• The so-called East-West divide which has been
  the mantra of violent gangs has not been a part
  of Timorese political culture in recent years,
  all political parties and Timorese institutions
  include members from the east and the west of the
  country.

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Constituent Assembly and first Parliament

• Allegations are increasingly being made on the
  Australian media that FRETILIN was never properly
  elected to the government in the first place,
  (Tony Jones last night, John Dowd last weekend,
  Tim Costello before that.
• This is a familiar line of the opposition parties
  who were actually responsible for the
  recommendation that the CA turn itself into the
  first Parliament when they were in the National
  Council. The UN urged this as it would be too
  expensive to hold fresh elections and the results
  wouldnt be very different.

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Timor- Lestes Development Challenges

• Improving the productivity of Agriculture
• Improving diversity of food-crops knowledge of
  food preserving
• Improving nutrition breastfeeding
• Lowering infant and maternal mortality
• Reducing levels of Malaria and TB, preventing
  HIV-AID
• Generating wealth in the rural areas and helping
  to keep it there to provide pleasant and
  worthwhile livelihoods for people all over the
  country.
• Each of these requires vastly improved
  communications and transport.

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Timors Economies

• Not two but three economies
• Subsistence
• Formal
• Informal
• Skills Development required for formal economy
• Education for livelihood is very much needed in
  the subsistence and informal sectors, family
  livelihood strategies are diverse and include
  wage labour, selling of crops, selling of
  household manufactures etc.

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Rising Aspirations and the failure to meet them

• Youth who had been involved in the clandestine
  front had high expectations of what opportunities
  would be available to them on independence.
• Failure to address post-secondary school
  education, training or other activities has meant
  many youth not focusing on skills development or
  learning about how development will take place.
• Upsurge in private in private Universities
  offering unacredited courses will not meet these
  aspirations.
• No good education for those wishing to establish
  themselves in farming and turn it into a
  successful business.
• Education has not transformed itself from a
  system for a remote province of a large country
  to one for a small independent country.

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The intellectual is deaf!
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Two types of Knowledge (Andrew Gonczi in Griff
Foleys Dimensions of Adult Learning
200424)

• Mode 2 Knowledge
• Mode 2 is socially distributed knowledge, the
  knowledge of application that is produced in
  workplaces outside the university sector, it is
  output driven, specific and transient. It uses
  methods that might not be seen as legitimate when
  measured against the traditional university
  criteria for knowledge production, but it is
  valuable in economic terms and vital for social
  and economic development.
• It includes indigenous knowledge.

• Mode 1 Knowledge
• Mode 1 is knowledge of the discipline-based type,
  typically produced in universities. Written about
  in academic journals and taught in schools and
  universities, it is made up of systematized
  academic disciplines, propositions and theories,
  which are often tested without reference to the
  students imagination, or acquisition of Mode 2
  knowledge. In colonised countries this knowledge
  usually comes from the outside.

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Community Development course at UNTLJose Magno
and Zacarias da Costa CD Lecturers enrolling
students at Caicoli Campus

• Joint Curricula -
• Adult and Community Education
• Economics and Political Economy
• Community Development and the Environment
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Gender Development
• Health policy and strategy
• Human Rights and Development
• Management in NGOs
• Political Philosophy and Politics
• Research Methodology
• Technology and Development
• Information, Communications and Development

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Para-professional skills

• Mr Richard Carter, head of Victoria University
  Division of Technical and Further Education
  (TAFE) in 2002 identified several
  para-professional courses as urgently needed at
  this stage of Timors development.
• Office Administration,
• Business, including accounting
• Information Technology
• Hospitality and Tourism
• Electronics
• Information management (librarianship)

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Timorese Development Planning good aspects

• National Development, Road Map, Vision 2020 have
  all given way to Sector Investment Programmes
  under the control of the Ministers in each
  Department.
• Some Ministries, notably Health and Agriculture
  have made massive improvements in dialoguing with
  Civil Society and improving their policy.
• Timor regularly receives praise from the World
  Bank and bilateral donors at the Development
  Partners meetings, for its economic planning and
  budgeting.

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Timorese Development Planning poor aspects

• National Development Plan neglected
  communications and transport which are needed to
  create markets. Under the Indonesians farmers
  were subsidised to grow crops which were then
  bought from them under the KUD scheme. Failure
  to introduce something like distribution
  co-opeartives (proper democratic ones) has led to
  increased rural poverty.
• Education and training have not been transformed
  to meet the needs of the new situation.
• There is no way of really explaining to people
  how development actually takes place, good ideas
  from elsewhere in the world do not automatircally
  come in through the development assistance
  system.

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Five types of capital needed for Sustainable
DevelopmentJules Pretty of University of Essex

• Natural
• Social
• Human
• Physical
• Financial

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Co-operatives

• In the Constitution and the Development. Plan
• Part of the legacy of the nationalist movement
• Can address needs of villages for material goods,
  work, community
• Good vehicle for delivery of training
• VU assisting UNTIL on co-ops project through
  Community Development Department

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Capacity Building

• Francis Fukuyama
• The local character of the knowledge required to
  design a wide variety of good administrative
  practices suggests that administrative capacity
  isnt actually transferred from one society to
  another by developed-world administrators sitting
  around lecturing their less-developed
  counterparts about how things are done in their
  country or in the mythical Denmark.
• .administrative and and institutional solutions
  need to be developed not just with input or
  buy-in from the local officials who will be
  running the local institutions but by them.
• State Building, Governance and World Order in the
  21st Century, Cornell University Press, 200487-8

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Capacity Destruction

• Francis Fukuyama
• The International community is not simply limited
  in the amount of capacity it can build, it is
  actually complicit in the destruction of
  institutional capacity in many developing
  countries. This capacity destruction occurs
  despite the best intentions of the donors and is
  the result of the contradictory objectives that
  international aid is meant to serve
• The contradiction in donor policy is that outside
  donors want both to increase the local
  governments capacity to provide a particular
  service and to actually provide those services to
  the end users.
• State Building, Governance and World Order in the
  21st Century, Cornell University Press, 2004
  39-41.