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.

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.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Today is election day in Timor-Leste, when voters are deciding on 65 members of Parliament to represent them.

Each election is a reminder of the successful regional and international cooperation that led to Timor-Leste’s independence. It is also a reminder of the importance of Timor-Leste as an exemplar of democracy, peace and human rights as foundational values.

It is in Australia’s interest that this be nurtured.

As a small state facing many challenges, maintaining these values has regional and global resonance.

Timor-Leste is an important voice both in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. It is a successful state that, despite difficulties, has been able to be peace-loving and sustain relations with Indonesia.

By contrast, democratic regression, or the worst-case scenario of a failed state, would be an enormous setback for the entire region.

What role should Australia play in keeping this democracy strong?

Complicated relationship
The history of the Australia-Timor-Leste bilateral relationship is complicated. It includes the vital Timorese assistance during World War II and Australia’s tacit approval of Indonesia’s 1975 annexation.

It also includes Australia leading the UN International Force East Timor (INTERFET), which in turn led to Timor-Leste’s transition to independence following a referendum in 1999.

The two nations have been complexly intertwined through Timor-Leste’s journey to independence and democratic development.

Well, this is like the best thing I’ve seen in forever#TimorLeste #TimorVotes #election pic.twitter.com/gqB1CcORvp

— Marian Faa (@marianfaa) May 16, 2023

There have been instances of unease between the two countries. The most notable was the allegation of Australian spying during negotiations on the Greater Sunrise oil fields. This remains an ongoing issue with the potential to derail ties again.

But there have also been positive steps, such as Operation Astute, an Australian-led military and police deployment. This operation helped stabilise the country during the 2006-2008 political turmoil that culminated in the attempted assassination of President Jose Ramos-Horta and his medical evacuation.

In 2018, Australia and Timor-Leste concluded a treaty establishing their maritime boundaries following a United Nations conciliation process.

The complexity of the relationship means Australia needs to be respectful in relations, but it should not stop Australia from being a partner to support Timor-Leste’s democratic processes and institutions.

Supporting governance
A recent report outlines how Australia can support Timor-Leste’s governance in ways that ensure effective, capable and legitimate institutions that are responsive to people.

Australia has a track record of such programs. The eight-year, $72 million Governance for Development Programme supported Timor-Leste agencies to develop good policy and improve systems as well as helping civil society engage with government decision-making.

The programme worked in areas including public financial management, economic policy, enabling business, public service administration, law reform and financial services.

The Partnership for Inclusive Prosperity (PROVISU) will continue to support good governance and economic policy by providing support to Timor-Leste’s central government agencies and economic ministries. Through programmes like this, Australia can offer meaningful support to Timor-Leste.

Good governance that responds to citizens’ needs is a perennial problem. Timor-Leste’s nascent bureaucracy makes this a priority issue. Australia should continue to develop partnerships that strengthen institutions so they are able to deal with problems.

An example of this is PARTISIPA, a ten-year $80 million programme to improve access to quality basic infrastructure and services. It works in partnership with national and subnational governments to improve the delivery of decentralised services and village-level infrastructure, such as rural water. It continues Australia’s long-term support for the national village development programme and its community-driven processes.

Another area where Australia can contribute is in media.

Vibrant media
Timor-Leste has a vibrant media landscape that is among the freest in the region. Australian can support Timor-Leste to ensure its media are strong and robust as well as free, with public interest is at its core.

It can also work with local media to strengthen their ability to educate the general public on governance issues, to hold power to account and to promote the rule of law.

An example of this is a recent memorandum of understanding between the ABC and Timor-Leste’s public broadcaster RTTL, which includes media development programmes. The agreement recognises the vital role both organisations play in informing audiences and contributing to democracy.

The ABC will work with RTTL to establish a new English-language news service, helping staff enhance their journalism and content-making skills.

Another priority Australia can engage with is the justice system.

Consultations with Timorese civil society organisations, conducted by the Asia Foundation for the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) report, revealed a particular concern about rebuilding trust in the judicial system. It is an area with which Australia has not been greatly involved compared to Portugal.

Australia should also engage with Timorese political parties, recognising the important structural role they play in governance. This can complement continued engagement with formal government institutions and the national parliament.

Promotion of human rights
Australia should continue to invest in the protection and promotion of human rights.

Finally, Australia should be a partner for youth civic and political engagement, given the reality of a future political transition from independence leaders to younger generations.

Timor-Leste today lives with a legacy of conflict, which has far-reaching implications. There is significant pressure on government to meet the needs and expectations of the Timorese people. Australia can be a partner to support these goals.

By helping to build a stronger, resilient and prosperous Timor-Leste, Australia is investing in a more secure and stable immediate neighbourhood, which will reap mutual benefits.

Dr Melissa Conley Tyler is a honorary fellow, Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne and Andrea Fahey, PhD scholar, National Security College, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Evaristo Soares Martins in Dili

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.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

With more than 99 percent of votes counted in the poll, Timor-Leste’s opposition Alliance of Change for Progress (AMP) was leading at the weekend with 49.59 percent of the total votes and is set to break the country’s political deadlock.

The coalition squeaked across the line with an absolute majority, preliminary election results showed yesterday, after a fractious campaign marred by violence and mud-slinging, reports SBS-AFP News.

It was the second general election in less than a year for the half-island nation of 1.2 million that is struggling to boost its oil-dependent economy, after a months-long political impasse saw Parliament dissolved in January.

READ MORE: Timorese election resolves political stalemate

Provisional Timor-Leste general election results.

With 97 percent of votes from Saturday’s election counted, the three-party Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) – led by independence hero Xanana Gusmao – had about 48 percent of the votes.

The result means the alliance – which includes the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) led by Gusmao, the People’s Liberation Party (PLP) and the youth-based Khunto – has secured an overall majority of 34 seats in the 65-member legislature.

The provisional line-up in Timor-Leste’s Parliament with the AMP Coalition (blue) and Fretilin (black) commanding most of the seats in the new Parliament.

-Partners-

The former Portuguese colony won independence in 2002 after a brutal, 24-year occupation by neighbouring Indonesia followed by 2 1/2 years of UN stewardship.

Fretilin, which narrowly won last July’s poll, had about 36 percent, leaving it with 23 seats.

No reports of unrest
Despite a fractious campaign and fears of violence on election day, there were no reports of unrest.

Clashes broke out the previous weekend between Fretilin and opposition supporters, with more than a dozen people injured.

Parliament was dissolved and new elections called in January amid tensions between former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri’s minority government and the opposition centred around Gusmao’s CNRT.

Dr Alkatiri’s Fretilin party-led government collapsed after its bid to introduce a policy programme and new budget were thwarted by a hostile opposition.

“This outcome should produce a return to political stability in Timor-Leste and may allow Xanana Gusmao time to again consider looking to a replacement leader from the next generation after a suitable amount of time has elapsed,” said Professor Damien Kingsbury, coordinator of the Australia Timor-Leste Election Observer Mission.

“In terms of economic policy, it will be business as usual, which raises questions about the longer term viability for Timor-Leste,” Dr Kingsbury added.

Big challenges ahead
The incoming government will face big challenges, especially as the clock is ticking fast on its disappearing oil and gas reserves.

Oil and gas pay for the bulk of government spending but oil revenues are in steep decline and the country has few other productive economic sectors.

About 60 percent of Timor Leste’s population is under 25, according to the World Bank, while some 40 percent of its people live in poverty.

Providing jobs for young people and reining in public spending – especially on large infrastructure projects – will be key tasks for the new government, commentators say.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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: Choices sharpen in Timor-Leste

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.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz