Patrícia Jerónimo general population concerning the issues to be considered when drafting the Constitution, as well as about the way in which the one-week public consultation on the first draft of the Constitution was conducted (Baltazar 2004; Brandt 2005: 16-18). Under a very tight schedule, the debates in the Constituent Assembly were ultimately framed by and focused on the draft submitted by FRETILIN, which bore a marked resemblance to the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 (Brandt 2005: 16), with some signs of influence by the Mozambican Constitution of 1990 (Charlesworth 2003: 328), visible inter alia in the definition of substantive criteria for the attribution of East Timorese citizenship instead of a mere reference to ordinary law. It is not entirely clear whether there was much discussion about the criteria for attribution of Timorese citizenship during the debates in the Constituent Assembly and/or during the public consultation process. The issue had been discussed in the constitutional consultations held in the districts in preparation for the election of the Constituent Assembly, between 18 June and 18 July 2001, with some districts favouring ius sanguinis, others ius soli, others a combination of both criteria, and some districts expressly rejecting the admissibility of dual citizenship (Adão 2009: 360-361). According to Oliveira et al. (2015: 115), the issue of whether or not to include a provision explicitly barring dual citizenship was later addressed during the debates in the Constituent Assembly and a provision to that effect was included in the draft circulated in December 2001 as Article 3 (3). Devereux (2015: 69), in her overview of the drafting history of the constitutional provisions pertaining to fundamental rights, only mentions a debate about the inclusion of a provision prescribing that those who had ‘acquired citizenship’, as opposed to citizens by birth, would be ineligible for diplomatic and military posts [draft Article 4]. Neither provision made it into the final text approved by the Constituent Assembly. Baltazar’s (2004) account of the public consultation process which followed the approval of the first draft of the Constitution, on 9 February 2002, makes no reference to discussions about the terms in which East Timorese citizenship had been defined in the draft. The public consultation focused on other issues, such as the date of independence, official languages, equality of women and men, the national flag, family, marriage and maternity, freedom of demonstration, national defence and security, judicial review and the transformation of the Constituent Assembly into the National Parliament. 2.4. Membership status(es) at the time of independence On 20 May 2002, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became an independent state and, with the entry into force of the Constitution, several hundred thousands of individuals, in Timor-Leste and abroad, automatically became Timorese citizens by birth. That was the case with all individuals born to an East Timorese parent, irrespective of place of birth, with all individuals born in Timor-Leste to a parent also born in Timor-Leste and with all individuals born in Timor-Leste to unknown parents, stateless parents or parents of unknown citizenship [Article 3 (2) (a) and (b) and (3)]. Individuals born in Timor-Leste to foreign parents were not attributed Timorese citizenship automatically, but were nevertheless entitled to it by operation of the law, sufficing that they declared their wish to be Timorese if over (or after reaching) 17 years of age [Article 3 (2) (c)]. The Constitution did not include a provision barring dual citizenship, so the new Timorese citizens were not deprived of their previous citizenship statuses, most prominently their Portuguese and Indonesian citizenships. With the establishment of UNTAET, on 25 18 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2017/7 - © 2017 Author