Government Palace

History

The old palace

The present Government Palace was constructed to replace an earlier government palace, built in Dili between 1874 and 1881 to be the official residence of the colonial governor. An elongated single-storey building with a colonnaded façade, the earlier palace ceased to be the official residence in 1886, when a new official residence, the Palácio de Lahane, was completed in the mountains south of Dili.

As of the 1940s, the government offices in Dili were distributed between the old palace, the services building and the finance building. Within the old palace were the government secretariat, the governor's office, the Directorate of the civil administration services, and the military division.

The services building, a very large structure built between 1882 and 1886, housed the services of the Public Works and the post office. The finance building, an unpretentious single-storey structure built in 1890 to store materiel for the colonial military, but actually used provisionally as a hospital until 1909, was the headquarters of the colony's finance services.

In December 1941, Allied forces entered Dili. In February 1942, the city was bombed, invaded and occupied by Japanese forces, and the Australian contingent of the Allied forces retreated to the mountains. The following month, the Australians launched the first of several raids against Dili, but from early December 1942 the Australian operations in Timor were progressively wound down, and Japan was allowed to occupy the whole island.

By September 1945, when Japan surrendered, Dili, and particularly its central area, had been left devastated by the bombings from both forces.

The present palace

Between the early 1950s and the end of the 1960s, the old palace and its accompanying buildings were replaced by the present palace, which was known during the remainder of the Portuguese colonial days as the Official Palace, and was the office of the colonial governor.

In the mid-1970s, after the authoritarian Estado Novo regime that had governed Portugal since 1933 was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, at least three significant events consequent upon that revolution took place at the palace.

First, in a speech during a function at the palace in late 1974, Antonio de Almeida Santos, the Minister of Interterritorial Coordination in the new Portuguese government, stated that the East Timorese should be free to choose their own destiny. However, and at the request of the secretary of state for administration, he also spoke much more enthusiastically of the possibilities of continued association with Portugal or integration with Indonesia than of independence, which he suggested would not be realistic given that Portuguese Timor was far from "economic independence".

Secondly, on 28 November 1975, approximately a year later, the Fretilin political party, at a hastily organised ceremony before a crowd of 2,000 gathered in front of the palace, made a unilateral declaration of independence of East Timor from Portuguese colonial rule.

Thirdly, on 7 December 1975, just over a week later, Indonesia began a full-scale invasion of East Timor, focused on Dili. By midday, Indonesian troops had secured the palace and had posted teams along the key routes leading out of the centre of town.

On 17 December 1975, the Indonesians formed a Provisional Government of East Timor (PGET) (Indonesian: Pemerintah Sementara Timor Timur (PSTT)); they then proceeded to occupy East Timor until 1999. During the occupation, the palace was used as the Office of Governor/Head of Regional Administration of East Timor (Indonesian: Kantor Gubernur/Kepala Daerah Tingkat I Timor Timur).

In the immediate aftermath of the independence referendum of 30 August 1999 that led to Indonesia's withdrawal from Timor-Leste by the end of October 1999, the palace served as a refuge for many Timorese from the violent reaction of the Indonesian military and its allies to the referendum's outcome. From late in 1999, the palace housed the services of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). Subsequently, until Timor-Leste resumed independence in May 2002, it was the headquarters of UNAMET's successor, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

Description

The palace

Located at Rua 30 de Agosto, in Colmera, a suco of Dili, the palace faces north towards Avenida Marginal, and beyond that, the Bay of Dili. It is composed of three independent blocks connected by a continuous peristyle running along its façade.

The central block is based on a 1953 design by João António de Aguiar, and was built in the first half of the 1950s. On its west side is the second block, which was constructed between 1960 and 1962. Originally, that block was used by the Department of Works, the workshops of which were in the southwest of the Bairo Central aldeia of Dili. The third block, to the east of the central block, was built between 1966 and 1969, to a 1963 design by António Sousa Mendes. Its initial use was for Postal Services, Telephones and Telegraphs (CTT).

In style, the palace is a traditional two-storey Portuguese structure with a symmetrical axis, a hip roof, and eaves. Formally, it follows the model used all over the then Portuguese Empire in the 1950s. The peristyle running along its façade consists of an arcade at ground level, and a veranda with a colonnade of pillars and a flat reinforced concrete roof at the second level.

The central block's arcade has seventeen arches (three central and seven lateral on each side). The central arches and the corresponding stretch of the upper veranda are in the form of a portico. The lateral blocks are slightly shorter than the central one. They have only fifteen arches (three central, again in the form of a portico, and six lateral on each side). The porticos on the lateral blocks are less noticeable than those of the central block, as they are a continuation of the veranda and no higher than the eaves. The side and rear walls of the palace have none of the architectural elements of the façade.

The plaza

Between the palace and the Avenida is a formal ceremonial urban open space, which was planned as a symbolic replication of the Praça do Comércio (transl. Commerce Plaza) in Lisbon. In the 2010s, the open space was re-branded from a largo (square) to a praça (plaza) honouring East Timor's unilateral declaration of independence in 1975. To its west was originally an infantry barracks and is now the Portuguese embassy. To its east was originally an open space planted with trees.

In the centre of the plaza is a monument erected in 1960 as a tribute to the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator. António Salazar's Estado Novo regime installed both that monument and other, similar, monuments across the Portuguese Empire. Also in 1960, the United Nations General Assembly resolved, in effect, to redefine the Timorese residents of the then Portuguese Timor as colonial subjects of Portugal, and asserted that they, not the colonial power, should determine their identity. According to Pat Walsh, an Australian human rights advocate:

"The [palace] and its largo to Henry were most likely Salazar's way of telling the UN va embora! (get lost) and the Timorese, nos estamos acui para ficar (we're here to stay)."

During the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the monument was not damaged or destroyed. Walsh has speculated that that is because "... Indonesia chose not to antagonise Portugal which at that point was vacillating on the Timor question." However, an historian, Geoffrey Gunn, has uncovered evidence, in the form of a publication of a provincial Indonesian government, suggesting that the Indonesians wrongly understood that the monument was dedicated to a mere colonial official in Portuguese Timor.

Even in the 2010s, few Timorese could identify the monument's true subject. Nevertheless, the retention of the monument in such a prominent location appears to have been a conscious decision by Timor-Leste's government to embrace the country's Portuguese colonial legacy as part of its national identity.