Runoff looms in East Timor vote

April 10 2007 at 11:39AM
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=126&art_id=nw20070410113259307C660272

Dili - A runoff loomed in troubled East Timor's landmark presidential election as Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta held a slender lead in a peaceful contest praised on Tuesday as a success.

Ramos-Horta, the nation's prime minister, led in a provisional count of 20 percent of the votes cast on Monday by a high turnout of East Timorese wanting an end to bloodshed and poverty that has scarred the former Portuguese colony.

But Fernando "Lasama" de Araujo, the chairperson of the opposition Democratic Party, was close behind Ramos-Horta in the race for the largely ceremonial job, the national election commission said.

"Perhaps no candidate will get 50 percent," commission spokesperson Martinho Gusmao said, without saying what percentage of the partial count the hopefuls had achieved.




A candidate must get a simple majority of the votes cast, or the contest - the first since East Timor achieved independence in 2002 after the end of Indonesian occupation - goes to a runoff set for May 8.

A former guerrilla and the candidate for East Timor's powerful ruling Fretilin party, Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres, was third after the partial tally of votes.

Technical problems held up the count across much of the country, but the poll to choose a successor to charismatic former guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao, who is not seeking re-election, was praised as a success.

Observers said the vote was orderly and fair and the turnout was high, despite fears of violence, allegations by rival politicians of voter intimidation and some last-minute scrambles for ballot papers.

"At one place we were at, people were lined up - literally 400 people in a line, breast to back - like sardines in the hot sun for three hours to vote, and there was no tension there at all," said Australian MP David Tollner.

Tollner, the head of a group of Australian election observers, said he was "extremely impressed" with the overall conduct of the vote and downplayed concerns about delays in tallying the results.

"On one hand people complain it's taking too long, but on the other hand there should be no doubt about the results when they come through," he said.

Ramos-Horta, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his work on East Timor, Lasama, a former political prisoner in Indonesia, and Lu-Olo were seen as the favourites for the presidency before the poll.

The election commission said the technical problems led to a delay in the count everywhere except in the capital, Dili, where Ramos-Horta had 30 percent and Lasama 25 percent of an almost complete provisional count.

The peaceful vote was hailed a success for a country that saw years of bloodshed under Indonesian rule after 1974, and an orgy of killing as it voted for independence in a UN-sponsored referendum in 1999.

"Voting in the presidential election proceeded without major incidents of violence or intimidation, which is already a very good result for Timor-Leste," said Atul Khare, the head of the UN mission in East Timor, referring to country by its formal name.

The vote followed a turbulent year in East Timor. Foreign peacekeepers arrived in May to quell violence that left at least 37 people dead and forced over 150 000 people to flee their homes.

The violence erupted after then prime minister Mari Alkatiri dismissed hundreds of army deserters. Firefights subsequently broke out between factions of the military, and between the army and police, and degenerated into gang violence.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he hoped calm would prevail as the votes were tallied.

"The secretary general is heartened that the election was conducted in a general atmosphere of order and calm, and that the initial indications show high voter turnout," his office said in a statement.

Indonesia also welcomed the peaceful presidential election and said it would work with the tiny country it formerly occupied.

Eight candidates stood to replace Xanana Gusmao, who won a pre-independence vote. More than half the population of about one million had registered to cast their ballots.