JOSEFA PARADA - SUARA TIMOR LOROSAE - 15 April 2011 - Translation from Tetum
DILI – Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has acknowledged that he is responsible with regard to the initiation of the process for the construction of the Hera Port. The head of the government has admitted that he did not properly read the contract he signed with the company Lifese Engineering Australia.
PM Xanana explained that the contract he signed stipulated that Australian law applied to the contract, and that according to the terms of the contract payment to the company must be made within fourteen days, the breach of which resulted in payment of penalties for late payment.
“I can say that I was a bit at fault, I acknowledge that. If I have to go to court or wherever else, I am prepared to go. The Australian company is also threatening to take me to court; I said you do that. If I am summoned to Sydney I will also go. I have already gone to Jakarta, why not Sydney where the conditions are better, the human rights conditions are better. If I have to live in jail maybe that will be a better life for me,” PM Xanana said.
PM Xanana followed up saying that this problem emerged because he did not read the contract he was signing. “My English is limited to that of, I see you, I say how are you, so I trusted the highly paid advisor, who earned I don’t know how many times more than I earn, whom we had working in the Technical Secretariat for Procurement, to properly prepare this contract. It turns out afterwards this contract was according to Australian law. In the end when there was already a problem, I saw it was Australian law,” PM Xanana added when speaking with journalists after his meeting with the President of the Republic, Jose Ramos-Horta at the Presidential Palace, Thursday (14/04).
PN Xanana informed that previously he had an advisor named Felipe who was suppose to look at these contracts. But he has returned to his country because during the one year he was contracted to work here, the PM says he did not did not do anything of value. So the PM said ‘because you do not do anything it is better that you go back,’ and so he has returned to his country. It was after he left that these things came to light, including the stipulation in the contract that payment must be within 14 days.
“Our system has just started to move. I will give you an example of the company Marina Enterprise that has not been paid for two years despite having performed their contract. But these people are saying because 14 days have elapsed you must pay penalties. Then they went there, and because there was a problem with the land, we went there with them. If it is ours we can say how it is. Now when people come with their standards, and they are impeded or something, then it says I must pay their costs. I said, it does not matter, sorry but we have to stop it, and we will discuss how we can pay them, I will pay and then put it back,” he added.
PM Xanana said, that the government planned to terminate the contract with the company Lifese Engineering and hand the construction project over to a Timorese company to perform, and will tell them to do a quality job.
“There are no saints on this thing. I acknowledge my wrong doing, because it was I who signed, as Minister for Defence. I confess that it was my fault, my fault because I believed this, I believed everything was alright but then I signed and on the fifteenth day I had to pay or pay penalties, but look I had already signed,” the PM pointed out.
Regarding whether the US$4.5 million already paid to the company has been lost, PM Xanana said that it was not for nothing, as the construction material was already here, so there is no problem with the money just being spent for nothing.
“Whilst the construction did not proceed with the things here in Timor I would have to keep paying. So I said, that is enough. What is owed we will pay so that we do not have headaches from you. The material is already here, if they say we have to pay anything, we have to pay penalties for late payment,” he said.
As to how much is owed in penalties, the PM said that he has already signed a letter to inform the company what the government says is owed, and spent yesterday looking at the issue with the Ministry of Finance to calculate exactly how much the government owed in penalties.
“I will tell them that as far as the penalties are concerned, we will discuss that later. They have threatened to take us to court, but not the Dili courts. International court. I told the President that when they return to Dili then we will talk to them. As to who is wrong, I admit I was wrong for sure, because I did not read the contract. I thought that it had all gone away but then they started to pressure us again, and so I read it again carefully, but I was dead by then, because it had already been signed,” he acknowledged. (jin)
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