Government Changes The Development Of The Nation Delays....

The governments of Timor-Leste just recently reshuffled its structure before the government period ends. It was in February this year; the member of the cabinet was officially inaugurated by the President of Republic, H.E. Taur Matan Ruak. Some members are new and few were promoted or downgraded from Secretary State, Vice Minister even Vice Prime Minister. In the same time, there are some new institutions were established and abolished.

This reconstruction of the cabinet has caused a significant delay to the development of the nation. The new minister has to be familiar with his responsibility in order to perform well in execution of budget, planning and general administrative task.

Some development partners have conducted the survey study for the new project with the personnel at the technical level of the government organizations. The finding has been formulated into the shape of minutes of discussion or record of discussion which is required to be signed by the authorities of the GoTL at the minister level. However, before the signing in the document a briefing session must be conducted to the minister so that or at least to the director general and legal officer in every ministries. Even the briefing has been done to the minister but because of the cabinet reshuffle the document cannot be signed yet. A new minister appointed requested to get briefed before signing the document, because of the past experience of mismanagement of the former minister, it is extra carefully for the new minister to sign on to any document. This is the legal matter that needs to be followed by development partner as well as the government of TL. This policy has already stunted the development of this nation.

The government of TL can gently demark the responsibility for signing the official document. The document from bilateral cooperation as symbolically must be signed by the minister and the Director General could be as a signer for some technical document. With this demarcation, the development of the nation is moving forward as the finding from the development will also be reported to its cabinet for the approval. If the signing on minutes of the meeting of the survey study delayed the implementation will certainly delayed.

I hope that the government of Timor-Leste can separate its responsibility to its authorities in order to smoothly the development for this nation.