Last May, East Timor’s first elected government celebrated its first anniversary Brad Collis* reports on a former Melbourne academic’s role in restoring civil administration.
In Dili, the tiny capital of the world’s newest nation, the streets still bare the scars of its violent birth four years ago when the vote for independence triggered a violent reprisal by armed militias. Scores of buildings remain smoke blackened shells, waiting their turn for a bulldozer.
It reminds one of the devastation of war and of the enormity of the rebuilding task – especially when the destruction has been so complete that even buildings and property have lost their identity. It was this missing history that attracted Melbourne property law expert, John Leigh, to Dili three years ago to help reorganise the land titles office so the wheels of civic administration could turn again – or so he thought. The former university academic found there was no titles office. Not anymore. It had become the ‘lost property’ office, literally.
“There were no civic records left – no land titles, no town planning, no maps showing the layout of water and power supplies – all destroyed,” he said.
That basic information needed to restore order, to restart commerce and infrastructure had been obliterated. And finding or recreating it was suddenly in John Leigh’s lap.
“There were thousands of people occupying property, illegally, hoping to take advantage of the lost records and missing people, and naturally there was a rapidly growing list of ownership disputes,” he said.
His planned four month stay stretched to three years as he found himself at the heart of East Timor’s efforts to reconstruct itself into a functioning society. Leigh has been rebuilding from scratch the country’s entire land titles system.
“It’s one of those often overlooked basics of recovering from war,” he said. “You can’t rebuild, you can’t establish new business to employ people, you virtually can’t move forward at all until land ownership is resolved. It’s the point where the future starts and it gets very complicated. East Timor has had two periods of dispossession – when the Portuguese left in 1975, and when the Indonesians left. Between that time a property may have changed hands several times, and now the original owners or their families argue that because they never sold the land those transactions are invalid.
“In other cases you have a lot of coffee country that was owned by Portuguese families who fled and left their properties with caretakers. After a decade or so, and assuming everything had now changed forever, some caretakers sold the land. Now the real owners are turning up. It’s creating some interesting legal tussles.”
Leigh stayed on after his initial few months when the Australian aid organisation AusAID asked him to help establish a Directorate for Land and Property – the first department to be created under East Timor legislation. Aside from an underlying ‘humanitarian bent’ that runs in his family – his daughter Peta has left her Melbourne dental practice to work in East Timor as a volunteer – Leigh says he was drawn to the professional challenge.
“We’re starting from scratch here – no titles and no rules,” he said. “So for someone like me who has worked as an academic in property law it’s an extraordinary opportunity. The conditions are tough, you’re often dealing with the effects of trauma, but you have the satisfaction of being involved in putting something in place that is making a difference. And you can see the impact of your work immediately. When you resolve an issue it allows people to get on with their lives; to re-establish businesses and families.”
Working with fundamental land issues, that are entwined with social justice, has drawn Leigh close to the people. He lives among the East Timorese rather than among expatriates and finds himself slipping deeper into a new culture. When he laid gravel over his muddy backyard – its title absolutely secure – it promptly became the venue for neighbourhood weddings.
Standing on a cracked Dili footpath watching an earth-mover clear rubble to create a new building site, Leigh took a deep, satisfying breath; like a man who has had the rare pleasure of having his destiny fulfilled.
