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Francisco Kalbuadi "Chico" Lay (né Francisco Lay; born 7 February 1954) is an East Timorese politician and a member of the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (Portuguese: Congresso Nacional de Reconstrução de Timor, CNRT).
Francisco Kalbuadi Lay | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Deputy Prime Minister of East Timor | |
| Assumed office 1 July 2023 | |
| Prime Minister | Xanana Gusmão |
| Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs | |
| Assumed office 1 July 2023 | |
| Prime Minister | Xanana Gusmão |
| Preceded by | Joaquim Amaral |
| Minister of Tourism and Environment | |
| Assumed office 1 July 2023 | |
| Prime Minister | Xanana Gusmão |
| Preceded by |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born | Francisco Lay February 7, 1954 |
| Political party | National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) |
| Nickname | Chico |
He is the more senior of East Timor's two incumbent Deputy Prime Ministers, and also the incumbent Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs and Minister of Tourism and Environment, serving since July 2023 in the IX Constitutional Government of East Timor led by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão.
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Lay was born in the then Portuguese Timor.[1] In 1977, he was captured by the Indonesian army, and started living with Lieutenant General Dading Kalbuadi,[2] commander of the Kopassus special forces who had infiltrated Portuguese Timor in the lead up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.[3] Kalbuadi adopted Lay as his son,[1][4] and Lay therefore took the general's family name.[1]
As of early 1988, Lay was manager of CV Amigo, a company owned by General Kalbuadi that was operating in East Timor.[5] At the beginning of the 1990s, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, also known as Tutut, eldest daughter of then Indonesian President Suharto, asked Lay, then chair of the East Timorese branch of the Jakarta-backed Indonesian National Youth Committee (Indonesian: Komite Nasional Pemuda Indonesia, KNPI), to chair one of her charities, the Tiara Foundation, in Dili.[1][6]
According to George Junus Aditjondro, an Indonesian critic of the Suharto government, and in particular its activities concerning East Timor:
"The Tiara foundation recruited young Timorese to work in Indonesian factories owned by members and cronies of the Suharto family. This scheme, which initially enjoyed the blessing of Bishop [Carlos] Belo and then Governor [of East Timor] Mario Carrascalao, eventually left around 800 young underpaid Timorese stranded in Indonesia, with many young Timorese dying of unnatural causes in Indonesia and also some of them forming a military-backed gang in Jakarta."[1]
TAPOL, a British NGO established to monitor human rights issues in Indonesia, reported in 1991 that the scheme was "... being encouraged by the military on the assumption that rebelliousness among young East Timorese is caused by unemployment and dissatisfaction with their lot," and that "Tutut's recruitment drive [had] the approval of BAIS, the Strategic Intelligence Agency, which [was] keen to reduce the political pressure in East Timor." However, the report went on to comment that the 'training' under the scheme was just a "two-week indoctrination course", that scheme participants were "low-paid", and that discontent with the scheme had caused tensions between local workers and Timorese in both Semarang and Bandung.[6]
The Tiara Foundation scheme proved to be so controversial that Lay went abroad for a short period.[1] Following his return, he was recruited by Domingos Soares, another collaborator with the Indonesians, to manage a provincial government-protected illicit gambling business at Tasitolu near Dili. He was soon fired, amidst allegations that he had embezzled large sums of money from the business.[1] Bishop Belo then recruited him to manage the Don Carlos Foundation, one of the charities of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dili. In that capacity, Lay travelled with the bishop to Australia shortly before the UN-supervised East Timorese independence referendum in 1999;[1] at the end of that year, Asiaweek described him as an "aide" to Belo.[4]
Meanwhile, Lay had also been involved in other activities. For a long time, he was an informant for the Combined Intelligence Task Force (Indonesian: Satuan Tugas Intelijen, SGI),[7] the intelligence arm of Kopassus.[8] Additionally, in 1998 he and two other Timorese businessmen, Oscar Lima and Ahmad Alkatiri, a younger brother of Mari Alkatiri, combined with Gerry Hand, a former minister in Australia's Hawke and Keating governments, to plan a 30- to 40-room hotel in Dili, and tender for a 400-room complex also in Dili. Hand had been, but was no longer, running several joint ventures on Christmas Island with Robby Sumampouw, a prominent Indonesian businessman.[1] In mid-1998, columnist Brian Toohey wrote in the Australian Financial Review that:
"Hand attracted ... controversy by representing ... Sumampow, whom he has described as 'a very good friend'.
Although Hand [had] been a vocal critic of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, Sumampow made a large part of his fortune by gaining a lucrative share of the former Portuguese colony's coffee, sandalwood, marble, hotel and retail industries. Sumpampow's access to East Timor was facilitated by his close association with General Benny Moerdani, who planned the 1975 [Indonesian] invasion [of the former colony]."[9]
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Lay began his political career as a member of the Fretilin party. In 2001, he was elected as a Fretilin candidate to the Constituent Assembly of East Timor, from which the National Parliament emerged in 2002.[10][11][12] During that legislative term, he was President of the Economics and Finance Commission.[13]
By 2012, Lay had switched his allegiance to the CNRT; he served as President of the CNRT's political campaigns committee for that year's parliamentary election.[14]
On 8 August 2012, Lay was sworn in as the Minister of Tourism in the V Constitutional Government led by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão.[15][16] When that Constitutional Government was replaced on 16 February 2015 by the VI Constitutional Government led by new Prime Minister Rui Maria de Araújo, Lay continued as a minister, under the new designation Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture.[17][18]
In 2017, Lay defeated the incumbent Secretary General of the CNRT, Dionísio Babo Soares, in an election for that post at the party congress.[19]
In that year's parliamentary election, Lay returned to the National Parliament at #5 on the CNRT list, but he resigned on 6 September 2017, the second day of the session.[20][21] With the CNRT going into opposition after the election, Lay also lost his ministerial post upon formation of the VI Constitutional Government on 15 September 2017. One of his replacements, Manuel Vong, was sworn in as Minister of Tourism; the other, Fernando Hanjam, became Minister of Education and Culture.[22][23]
In 2018, the National Parliament was dissolved early. In the elections that followed, Lay was again elected to the parliament, this time in 4th place on the list of the Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP), of which the CNRT was part.[24] During the formation of the VIII Constitutional Government, Lay was nominated for appointment as Minister for Trade, Industry, Environment and Tourism. However, President Francisco Guterres rejected that nomination because Lay had allegedly been involved in a corruption scandal.[25][26]
In the 2023 parliamentary election, Lay was the 2nd placed candidate on the CNRT list, and was elected once again to the National Parliament.[27] The CNRT won the election, and its victory was attributed by The Oekusi Post to hard work by Lay, the CNRT's party president Xanana Gusmão, and others, in effectively conveying the party's message or political slogan of "Human Fraternity" (Portuguese: Fraternidade Humana).[28] Lay was involved in the post-election negotiations between the CNRT and the Democratic Party (PD) over the formation of a IX Constitutional Government as a coalition between the two parties.[29] On 1 July 2023, he was sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs, and Minister of Tourism and Environment in the IX Constitutional Government,[30][31][32] and he therefore gave up his parliamentary seat.[27]
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Lay is a member of East Timor's small ethnic Chinese community. His brother, Pedro Lay, was Minister of Infrastructure from 2007 to 2012, and Minister of Transport and Communications between 2012 and 2015.[15][16][33]
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