Troubled East Timor to vote in runoff for president

EAST TIMOR: East Timor voters head to the polls Wednesday for a runoff in the presidential election, amid claims of intimidation and hopes the result will pull the nation from a cycle of violence and turmoil.

The election for the largely ceremonial post is the first since the impoverished country declared independence in 2002 after a bloody separation from neighbouring Indonesia three years earlier.

Current prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta is favoured to win over former freedom fighter Francisco Guterres, known as Lu-Olo, from the powerful Fretilin party, observers said.

“If the voter turnout is high, it will probably divide about 37 percent or so for Lu-Olo and the rest for Ramos-Horta,” said Damien Kingsbury from Australia’s Deakin University.

“If the voter turn-out is low, which is possible as many voters’ preferred candidates are not running, it could be 40 percent plus to Lu-Olo and 50 percent plus to Ramos-Horta,” said Kingsbury, an East Timor expert.

“I doubt that Horta will actually lose,” he added. The two rivals emerged to contest the runoff after neither won a majority in the closely-fought April 9 election, which was peaceful and saw thousands of Timorese queue for hours to cast their votes.

Guterres won 28 percent while Ramos-Horta finished with 22 percent. More than 4,000 international and local police officers, and about 1,000 troops from an Australian-led international peacekeeping force dispatched to quell bloody unrest last year, will again be on alert in case of trouble.

Observers said they were concerned that, if Guterres lost, violence would erupt among Fretilin supporters, especially in strongholds outside the capital Dili.

“We are getting mixed messages about whether Fretilin will gracefully accept defeat. I think they will at a formal level, but perhaps not on the streets, or in some particular areas such as (central west) Ermera and (southern coastal) Viqueque,” said Kingsbury.

Tiny East Timor was plunged into turmoil in May last year after fighting between factions of the military, and the military and the police, descended into gang violence that killed 37 people and forced 150,000 to flee their homes.

Claims of intimidation during door-to-door campaigning and bribery of voters have emerged in the leadup to Wednesday, including offers of sacks of rice in exchange for votes, and cash for voter registration cards, analyst Sophia Cason said.

But Cason, from thinktank International Crisis Group, predicted voters would brush off any threats, and again turn out in force, in the hope a new president will improve their impoverished lives.

“There was an atmosphere of intimidation at some of the polling stations in the first round, even in Dili,” Cason said, adding the latest claims could not be substantiated.

“But despite this, people didn’t seem to be scared.”

“East Timorese are resilient, if you consider everything they have been through before this election, when a political rally before independence could bring severe punishment, then this (intimidation) is not going to stop them from voting,” she said.

More than 520,000 people are registered to vote, and the result should be available later in the week.

Some polling stations ran out of ballots in the first round and technical problems meant votes had to be rechecked, delaying the result.

Ramos-Horta, who spent 24 years in exile during the Indonesian occupation and was the chief spokesman for East Timor’s cause, has been campaigning for unity in the nation beset by regional rivalry.

He shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for pushing the former Portuguese colony’s plight on the world stage, a struggle that helped bring its 1999 UN-sponsored referendum for independence.

Dili, Sunday, AFP