“Pre-deconcentration policy promotes good governance”
The Secretariat of State for Administrative Deconcentration organized, on May 22nd, a national conference under the theme “Deepening administrative pre-deconcentration in the Justice sector – challenges and opportunities”. On a statement made at the occasion of the opening of the event, which took place at the Judicial Training Centre in Caicoli, the Minister of Justice, Dionísio Babo Soares, referred that pre-deconcentration is a State policy that aims to promote good governance.
Amongst others, the aim of the conference is to collect information on service delegation at district level and about the delegation of competences that district members expect to obtain in the new staffing tables of sectoral lines.
The Minister of Justice also recalled that article 5th from the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste foresees the principle of public administrative deconcentration, as an essential aspect on the territorial organization of the State: “our Constitution recognizes that the warm welcome given by local population allows for this principle to be achieved with the application of this basic law”.
Still based in the Constitution, Dionísio Babo Soares also referred article 72, which states that “Local government is constituted by corporate bodies vested with representative organs, with the objective of organizing the participation by citizens in solving the problems of their own community and promoting local development without prejudice to the participation by the State.”.
“The 5th Constitutional Government approved the Decree Law n. 4/2014, which establishes the organic statute of administrative pre-deconcentration structures, under two perspectives: the first about the administrative decentralization policy and the second as a means of promotion of good governance, aiming to delegate some powers, concentrated at district level, in order to assign services to the local community'' stated the Minister of Justice
The Secretary of State for Institutional Strengthening, Francisco Soares, who was also a speaker at this conference, referred that, when we talk about development, institutions and governance cannot be separated from each other: “just as Timor-Leste walks along with the world, it should also walk along with the State thinking, so that there might be an integration of ideas, of the system and of development”.
