East Timor to Hold Second Round of Presidential Poll (Update1)

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East Timor to Hold Second Round of Presidential Poll (Update1)

By Emma O'Brien and Ed Johnson

April 11 (Bloomberg) -- East Timor's first presidential election since independence from Indonesia will progress to a second round as no candidate has secured 50 percent of the vote, the country's election commission said.

``We are looking at a second round on the ninth of May,'' commission spokesman Martinho Gusmao said in a telephone interview from the capital, Dili, today. Candidates protested that the election wasn't fair.

Francisco `Lu'Olo' Guterres of the ruling Fretilin party will proceed to the run-off, said Gusmao. It wasn't immediately clear which of the other two main challengers will take part in the second round.

Eight candidates stood in the April 9 ballot in the Southeast Asian nation, which lies about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Australia. Whoever wins the presidency will face the challenge of sparking economic growth, which was negative in 2006, creating jobs when half the population of more than 1 million people is unemployed, and improving conditions for the 42 percent of people living below the poverty line.

Five of the eight candidates filed a formal protest with the election commission today saying the ballot wasn't conducted fairly and demanding that counting stop immediately, Agence France-Presse reported.

Guterres secured 28.8 percent of the vote with 357,766 ballots cast at 3 p.m. East Timor time, an election commission official said by telephone, on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Final Count

Jose Ramos Horta, the prime minister and independent candidate, secured 22.6 percent of the vote and Democratic Party candidate Fernando De Araujo had 18.5 percent, the official said. More than 522,000 people were registered to vote.

More than 2,000 observers monitored the election, including teams from the European Union, Australia and Japan. United Nations police and members of the Australian-led force provided security at the 504 polling stations and for the candidates.

Guterres has already filed complaints with the electoral committee, his spokesman Arsenio Bano said from Dili.

Fretilin observers reported election officials in rural districts accepting registration cards or photocopies of passports as identification, Bano said. Voters had to present either a passport or official identity card issued by the committee in order to be allowed to vote.

De Araujo said in an interview from the capital he will hold a news conference today on his concerns there has been interference in the voting. ``I suspect a lot of manipulation,'' he said.

Second Round

Ramos Horta is preparing to contest a second round election, his spokesman, Dionisio Babo, said by telephone from Dili.

``He's still waiting for the final results and is concerned at the slowness of the counting,'' Babo said.

East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, has been unstable since former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri fired a third of the army last May, a move that provoked clashes between people from the eastern and western regions, resulting in 37 deaths.

In the past year, fighting between factions of the security forces and gang violence drove 150,000 people from their homes. A peacekeeping contingent led by Australia has been stationed in Dili since shortly after the unrest began.

To contact the reporters on this story: Emma O'Brien in Wellington at eobrien6@bloomberg.net ; Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net .