East Timor’s voters went to the polls yesterday in parliamentary elections seen as a key test for the young and fragile democracy and likely to determine if UN peacekeepers can leave by the end of the year.
Polls opened on Friday evening allowing 645,000 registered voters, who trickled in a steady stream at polling stations across the capital Dili, to cast their ballots.
There have been concerns that violence could reignite in the energy-rich, but underdeveloped state if — as predicted — none of the 21 parties standing in the country-wide poll wins a parliamentary majority and a fragile coalition takes power.
Presidential polls that were held over two rounds in March and April, however, passed off peacefully.
The UN sees yesterday’s elections as the last big test that will decide whether its remaining 1,300 peacekeepers and other security staff can withdraw as planned within six months.
Following the end of Portuguese rule in 1975, East Timor was occupied by Indonesia for 24 years. Some 183,000 people died from fighting, disease and starvation before the half-island state voted for independence in 1999.
The country has offshore fields of oil and natural gas and its Petroleum Fund has swelled to US$10 billion, but corruption is endemic.
Half of East Timor’s 1.1 million people are officially classified as living in poverty, posing the main challenge for the future government.
“I want the government to look after infrastructure and improve healthcare for the people,” said Martinho Afonso, a 55-year-old farmer, as he cast his ballot in the Dili suburb of Farol.
“Things need to improve for the poor people in rural areas, where people have no home, no electricity, no water,” he said.
The left-wing Fretilin party, which is synonymous with the pro-independence struggle, has campaigned on a populist platform of spending oil revenues to lift income and education levels.
The centre-left National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) is promoting investment on major infrastructure projects such as roads, electricity and water.
CNRT leader Xanana Gusmao, a charismatic figure and a resistance hero during the struggle for independence, is fighting to stay on as prime minister.
Gusmao kissed voters and joked with journalists and observers after casting his ballot with his wife at a small polling station around the corner from his residence in Dili’s beachfront suburb of Bidau Lecidere.
The vote will decide if East Timor, which celebrated a decade of formal independence in May, is ready to take on its own security.
A 450-strong International Stabilisation Force (ISF) — made up of troops from New Zealand and Australia — is also awaiting the outcome of the poll before finalising a pullout.
The UN Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT) — with a total current military, police and civilian force of about 3,000 — was deployed in 2006, after a political crisis in which dozens were killed and tens of thousands displaced, with a mandate to restore security.
The only major violence since then was a failed assassination attempt in 2008 on then president Jose Ramos-Horta, the Nobel peace laureate who lost to Taur Matan Ruak in the recent presidential election.
Ramos-Horta, who still commands popular respect, has thrown his weight behind the 66-year-old Gusmao and a unity government.
However, Fretilin, which received the largest number of votes in 2007, but failed to form a coalition, has dismissed any talk of working with the CNRT on forming a post-election government.
“Fretilin should win, and I believe that even if we don’t Fretilin will still have a political role in the future,” said party president Francisco Guterres, popularly known as “Lu Olo,” after casting his ballot.
Lu Olo, who lost to Ruak in a second round of voting in the April presidential election, said “health, education infrastructure and other things which are important for the people’s lives” are top priorities and “it is very important for all political parties to respond to these needs.”
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the