The History of Parliament in East Timor and Human Rights

Abstract

The existence of Parliament began a long time ago where in each clan there was a council of elders whose function was to give council and intervene in public affairs. In Greece there was an assembly, in the Roman empire, we know it with the name senate, in Portugal it was the court and then parliament and this name of Parliament has its origin in England and with the Portuguese influence in Timor-Portuguese, and the name Parliament entered the traditional Timorese structure in which it is known as the Parlamentu route or Parliament staff. From the beginning, Parliament has always had the function of controlling the reigning power to prevent the reigning power from falling into arbitrariness and abuse of power. Parliament was born to defend the interests of the people and the nobles against the arbityness of the reigning powers, as one of the examples is what happened to the king of England, John the Landless. Nowadays the role of Parliament is always important to control the executive power and the power of the President of the Republic. Parliament also becomes like the voice of the people and thus represents the people to assert the aspirations of the people before the state power. A state can be considered democratic if it has a strong and active Parliament that performs its function well as a true representative of the people and not a representative of the political parties that have parliamentary seats. Therefore, even if Parliament represents the people, the people must control their representatives. because Parliament today in the system of the Closed-List Proportional System can fall into this situation in which it represents the interest of the party better than the interest of the people