Timor-Leste independence hero Xanana Gusmao has won the parliamentary election, but the country’s first president may contest the count after his party fell short of an outright majority.

The result of Sunday’s election paves the way for a return to power for the 76-year-old, Timor-Leste’s first president, if he can form a coalition.

Fellow independence figure Dr Mari Alkatiri’s incumbent Fretilin party, formerly the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, won only 25.7 percent, according to the Electoral Commission.

• READ MORE: Timor-Leste is at the polls, here’s how Australia can support its democracy
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Dr Andrea Fahey from the Australian National University said the results signalled a desire for political change from the people of Timor-Leste.

“The management of the covid pandemic and the fact the government closed down, it was a big punishment vote on the government for that,” she said.

“For Dr Alkatiri, maybe it’s time to pass the torch.”

If there is no outright winner from the election, the constitution gives the party with the most votes the opportunity to form a coalition.

The next government will need to decide on allowing the development of the Greater Sunrise project, which aims to tap trillions of cubic metres of natural gas.

Dr Fahey said Gusmao was expected to move forward with engaging the Australian government on the project.

There are also growing calls for Timor-Leste to join the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), which could owe to its cultural connections to the region.

“It’s kind of the bridge between both regions,” Dr Fahey said.

“Timor-Leste would be a positive addition to the Pacific Forum, and could bring a loud voice [since] Timor has a strong international presence.”

Republished from the ABC Pacific Beat with permission.

Early elections cannot be allowed to “become the political culture” in Timor-Leste, says the leader of the opposition Fretilin party, Dr Marí Alkatiri.

The former Prime Minister said he wants to see an end to the political impasse, prompted by the collapse of the governing AMP Alliance.

But, he stressed, Fretilin does not want to join the government right now.

READ MORE: In Timor-Leste, failed budget sparks a political crisis

“Fretilin forms government in 2023, not in 2020,” he said, after meeting with the minority Democratic Party (PD) yesterday.

Fretilin was defeated in the 2018 election by the AMP Alliance, comprising Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak’s PLP, Xanana Gusmão’s CNRT, and the KHUNTO party.

The coalition fell apart after CNRT helped block the government’s 2020 budget in December, and the PLP has ruled out forming a new coalition with Gusmão’s party.

President Francisco Guterres Lú-Olo has the authority to dissolve Parliament and order fresh elections, ahead of schedule. But Dr Alkatiri argues that would be a mistake.

‘Have a fight, then divorced’
“We are not able to settle the argument, and now we go for election? It’s like husband and wife [who] have a fight, then get divorced. Fretilin does not want it to be the culture,” Dr Alkatiri said.

Dr Alkatiri said that during the first three years of President Lú-Olo’s five-year term, he has called an early election twice, and that unlike in European democracies, they have a greater impact on Timorese public institutions.

“Now, two [early] elections in our country have affected public administration. And if it affects the administration, it affects people’s lives, this is what we should avoid,” he said.

Dr Alkatiri said Fretilin delegations would travel to 10 districts, beginning with the Oé-Cusse enclave and two municipalities that are aligned to the party.

Evaristo Soares Martins is a journalist for Tatoli. Translated by Nelia Borges.

East Timor’s outgoing Prime Minister Dr Mari Alkatiri says that after almost two decades of separation from Indonesia, the country’s relations with its neighbour continue to strengthen despite some unresolved issues.

Indonesia “is our biggest supporter,” he said.

Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, celebrated the 16th anniversary of its hard-fought restoration to independence last week on May 20.

The day marked Timor-Leste regaining its independence after 24 years of Indonesia’s occupation, which invaded the country shortly following its independence from Portugal in November 1975 that political party Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (Fretilin) unilaterally declared.

In an exclusive interview at a hotel near Fretilin party’s headquarters, Dr Alkatiri, Fretilin’s secretary-general, described East Timor’s relationship with its former invader as “amazing, very good.”

“We still have some pending issues, such as maritime and land borders in Oecussi,” he said, referring to an East Timor coastal exclave surrounded by Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province, which lies on the western part of Timor Island. East Timor is located on the island’s eastern half.

Oecussi is a special administrative zone and has been designated as special economic zone with Dr Alkatiri as its president.

Maritime border dispute
Dr Alkatiri, who also served as East Timor’s first prime minister from 2002 to 2006, said both countries need to solve the border issue soon because it would be difficult to define a maritime border on the Savu Sea without a clearly marked land border.

“But the goodwill from both governments is there,” he said, adding that successive governments of East Timor would continue to strengthen the relations between the two countries.

Dr Alkatiri described Indonesia as East Timor’s “biggest supporter” in its bid to become the 11th member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Dr Alkatiri, who has been serving his second term as prime minister since September last year, is a Muslim leader in a predominantly Catholic country. His family on his paternal grandfather’s side came from Hadramaut in Yemen.

“They came as traders at that time and decided to stay,” he said.

Dr Alkatiri’s maternal grandparents were Timorese who came from Baucau and Liquica districts. He is married to Marina Ribeiro and has three children.

De facto leader
Indonesia was one of the regional bloc’s founding countries when it was established in 1967, and is regarded as its de facto leader.

Indonesia endorsed East Timor’s ASEAN bid when it formally submitted its application in 2011 during Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship.

Singapore, the current chair, has been reluctant to welcome East Timor into the bloc, but has said it looked forward to East Timor meeting the requirements to allow it to become a member.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said after hosting an ASEAN leaders’ summit in April that the topic was discussed during the forum, but “there was no extended discussion of the matter in this meeting”.

Dr Alkatiri said that ASEAN membership is “a very long dream”.

So far, Timor-Leste has met two of the requirements to be an ASEAN member: The country is located in Southeast Asia and has embassies in all 10 member states.

“This is one of the few things that is a consensus between the leadership of Timor Leste, despite the differences,” he said.

Coalition rule
Dr Alkatiri’s apparent successor Xanana Gusmao, who is poised to serve as prime minister for the third time, said East Timor is doing its best to become an ASEAN member.

“We understand some (member) countries think we are not ready, but sooner or later, we will be a member,” Gusmao said in an interview at his party National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) headquarters.

CNRT led a three-party coalition that beat the shortlived, Fretilin-led minority government in the May 12 parliamentary election.

Dr Alkatiri said the most pressing need for East Timor, with almost half its 1.2 million population still living in poverty, was government investment in public infrastructure, such as education and health, and spending on basic living needs, such as community housing and clean water.

“This is a 16-year-old country. We still need to build the nation; we really need to strengthen the foundation of the nation, institutional, political foundation, everyone needs to join efforts to do it,” he said.

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After a tense month-long campaign and two rest days, East Timorese cast their votes today in the Timor-Leste’s latest parliamentary elections. With the campaign characterised by considerable bitterness between the major parties, much is at stake.

Despite narrowly prevailing at the election just nine months ago, the Fretilin-led minority government failed to gain parliamentary support for its programme and budget during 2017.

The president — also from Fretilin — dissolved parliament and called today’s poll.

READ MORE: AMP winning, according to early provisional results

The East Timorese electoral agencies, short of funds after last year’s election and the parliamentary impasse, have risen to the occasion extremely well.

And, in a remarkable testimony to Timor-Leste’s young population, the electoral roll has grown by 3.1 percent to 784,000 voters, with around 24,000 voters turning 17 in just over nine months since last July.

Last year’s campaign came in the wake of a national unity government involving informal power-sharing between Xanana Gusmão’s CNRT and Fretilin. But relations quickly soured after an election that Fretilin won narrowly with 23 seats to CNRT’s 22.

In the end, Fretilin was only able to attract the Democratic Party, with its seven seats, to its minority coalition government, giving prime minister Dr Mari Alkatiri 30 seats in the 65-seat Parliament.

Rejected programme
Within weeks, the remaining parties had formed the Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) a coalition controlling 35 seats, and had voted down the government’s programme and budget.

Fretilin feels aggrieved that it did not receive parliamentary support after narrowly finishing ahead last year, despite an alternative coalition having been ruled out publicly by Xanana Gusmão in the immediate wake of the July election.

For its part, the AMP feels bitter about Fretilin’s parliamentary tactics last year, which delayed the second presentation of the government programme and prevented it from falling before the six-month mark, when the president could dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections.

AMP figures feel that their alliance should have been installed in government during the life of the Parliament. How these issues have influenced the voting public will be known tomorrow.

This year’s campaign has been marked by the resurgence of the “history wars,” the clash between the two wings of the East Timorese resistance during the Indonesian occupation.

The AMP has reunited Xanana Gusmão and his CNRT with former president Taur Matan Ruak’s Popular Liberation Party (PLP), which were at loggerheads during the 2017 election. Both were leaders of the armed resistance, Falintil.

The campaign has been frequently depicted as a contest between the armed front and members of the diplomatic front, who were outside the country during the occupation, including prime minister Alkatiri and key diplomatic figure Jose Ramos-Horta, who has thrown his weight behind the Fretilin campaign.

Hurt by attacks
Though he has not responded to them, Ramos-Horta has evidently been hurt by the attacks on his legacy, some of which have sought to diminish the contribution of those who struggled for independence in the international arena.

This division over resistance history has lent an unpleasant air to a campaign that has also been marked by exchanges of personal slurs between the major party leaders, including some outbursts of anti-Muslim sentiment directed at the Fretilin leader Dr Mari Alkatiri, and fractious personal debates on Facebook.

From the east of the country have come reports of rock attacks on AMP caravans in Viqueque, bringing back memories of the divisive 2007 election, which occurred in the wake of the 2006 political–military crisis.

The AMP parties have also complained of low-level attacks in Laga region of Baucau, were temperatures still run hot over the death of dissident veteran Mauk Moruk in 2014.

Yet the campaign has been remarkably peaceful on the whole, with colourful mass rallies of party supporters generally well behaved throughout most of the country.

The campaign has also been marred by a handful of accusations of favouritism and irregularities against the electoral agencies, prompting the head of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to publicly defend the organisation in press conferences.

Several complaints originated on AMP’s Facebook page, including concerns over printing errors in the ballots, which were quickly identified and cancelled, and suspicions about meetings between CNE and political parties that turned out to be part of routine investigation of previous complaints.

Closely watched
The CNE has responded quickly and satisfactorily. With domestic and international observers closely watching the process and extremely professional electoral agencies, there is very little scope for manipulation.

The CNE and the Technical Secretariat of Electoral Administration have done an excellent job under trying circumstances with limited budgets.

While the parties have discussed differing visions for the future, especially during the series of TV debates, considerable energy has been diverted into personal and historical debates within the small political elite. The new AMP alliance brings together two parties that ran last year on fundamentally different development agendas, and it remains to be seen how the CNRT’s focus on major infrastructure spending can be reconciled with the PLP’s more grassroots focus on basic development spending on health education and agriculture.

How voters have received this new combination will be known tomorrow.

For their part, supporters of Fretilin and the Democratic Party (PD) have been on friendly terms throughout the campaign, suggesting the alliance seems to be holding, though this relationship could be easily revisited in the interparty negotiations that follow the election.

The AMP is a formidable coalition of parties that received 29.5 percent, 10.5 percent and 6.5 percent last year: a total of 46.5 per cent. It could also receive the support of the Democratic Development Front, or FDD, the coalition of the smaller parties most likely to exceed the 4 per cent threshold required to get seats. This is not certain, though, and there are at least some rumblings of dissent from one of the parties inside FDD. On the other side, Fretilin received 29.7 percent in 2017, and its PD partner in the minority government received 9.8 percent.

No polls have been taken to indicate the likely result tomorrow. As a baseline indication, if last year’s vote is notionally combined into the new party coalitions that have formed, the AMP would start with a nominal allocation of 33 seats — the minimum majority required.

Favourite on paper
In turn, Fretilin, PD and the FDD would receive 21, six and five seats respectively. If FDD cannot clear the 4 percent hurdle, these notional numbers rise to 36 for the AMP, 22 for Fretilin, and seven for PD.

The AMP therefore starts as favourite on paper, but the outcome tomorrow can easily change from the 2017 results., As a rough guide, Fretilin requires a swing of just under 4 per cent (if FDD does not take seats) rising to more like 6 per cent if the FDD gains seats and backs the AMP.

These are clearly challenging targets for Fretilin, though not impossible, especially in the former case. It may be that the smaller coalition becomes instrumental in the final result if things run close.

Some longer-term trends are striking. At a forum on the elections I conducted in Dili on Thursday, younger Timorese commented that though they are often reluctant to openly criticise their resistance-era leaders, young people are more interested in the development policies of the government and how they will help to create future jobs.

There was also a sense in last year’s election result that while resistance-era legitimacy remains important to political fortunes, it is starting to offer diminishing returns for East Timorese leaders as the median age of the voting public falls, and voters look for solutions to entrenched development problems.

The young people at the forum also felt that the direst warnings of potential trouble if one side or the other loses tomorrow have come from political insiders themselves, with most ordinary people confident that the national police can manage any post-election troubles.

Young voters also said Dili’s noisy and active social media has played a mixed role — allowing more opportunities for debate, on the one hand, and especially for women’s and young people’s voice to come through, but also distributing fake news and rumours, and not fully representing rural voices.

Potential sleeper trend
Another potential sleeper trend is the changing attitude of the Catholic Church to the major parties. The Church responded positively to the concordat with the Vatican orchestrated by the PM of the previous national unity government, Fretilin’s Rui Araujo.

Despite occasional slurs against Mari Alkatiri, most of the older political leadership from the 1970s does not identify strongly with the church, though younger Timorese broadly do.

As tomorrow’s poll approaches, both sides are supremely confident of victory in their public statements. Either way, it is likely that Timor-Leste will be in good hands, and the real issue as always will be how the unsuccessful parties accept the results.

After last year’s uncertain result, East Timorese will be hoping for a clear and decisive outcome.

Dr Michael Leach is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Swinburne University of Technology. This article was first published by Inside Story and is republished with the permission of the author.

• A democratic coup in Timor-Leste
• Early election results give victory to AMP

Former Prime Minister Dr Mari Alkatiri, the current secretary-general of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), described his party’s win of about 30 percent of the vote as a “a victory for all people”.

“Now we will look forward to guaranteed stability, ongoing development and to bring people out of poverty,” Dr Alkatiri told reporters yesterday afternoon after 92 percent of the vote had been counted.

The party has come out ahead of Timor-Leste’s other major political force – the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) – headed by former president and independence leader Xanana Gusmao, which picked up about 28 percent of the vote, according to official numbers.

However, Dr Alkatiri said his party’s “victory” was also a win for Gusmao’s CNRT, with which they formed a de facto coalition in 2015, ushering in a new era of political unity in a country previously racked by conflict and instability.

Their cornering of about 58 percent of the vote showed an “endorsement” of this stability, said Professor Michael Leach, a Timorese specialist from Swinburne University.

But a reflection of a lower level of satisfaction with the government is the emergence of the newly established People’s Liberation Party (PLP) and the “disenfranchised youth” party Khunto, which picked up about 10.2 and 6.9 percent of the vote respectively.

Anti-corruption platform
Riding on a platform of anti-corruption, the PLP has called for an end to life pensions for government members and a re-routing of funds from big infrastructure projects into grassroots areas like health, education, water and sanitation.

A key concern has been the country’s over-reliance on oil and gas revenue to fund projects, salaries and services, with fears that unless the economy diversifies quickly, the country will run out of money within 10 to 15 years.

Professor Leach said Khunto had tapped into “disenfranchised youth unable to get a job”.

“They very much pitched their campaign at jobless youth and have done rather well and they will be in parliament more than doubling their 2012 vote,” he said.

Professor Leach said it would be interesting to see where the parliament goes from here.

It is yet unclear whether Fretilin, whose win will mean they get “first bite of the cherry”, will continue their de facto partnership with CNRT or forge new ties.

Another question is whether these emerging parties are offered and accept ministries – making them a less effective opposition.

Votes for the already established Democratic Party remained steady at about 10.2 percent – similar to their 2012 result.

• In Timor-Leste, more power-sharing likely