East Timor vote highlights young nation’s political impasse after years of rocky transition to democracy
- Former guerilla leader, Francisco ‘Lu Olo’ Guterres, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ex-President Jose Ramos-Horta, are front-runners against 15 other candidates
- More than 835,000 of 1.3 million citizens registered to vote; winner will take the oath of office in May on the 20th anniversary of independence from Indonesia
Voters in East Timor cast ballots for a president on Saturday in an election that will test the young nation’s stability amid a protracted political crisis and economic uncertainty.
Incumbent Francisco ‘Lu Olo’ Guterres, 67, a former guerilla leader from the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor party, known by its local acronym Fretilin, is running against 15 other candidates, including four women.
“I am confident that I will win the election again,” Guterres told reporters after casting his vote in Dili, the capital. “I call on people to accept whatever the result and I am ready to work with whoever wins this election.”
Surveys showed Guterres and former President Jose Ramos-Horta, both of whose popularity owes much to their history as fighters in East Timor’s struggle for independence from Indonesia, were among the front-runners according to a recent opinion survey, with Ramos-Horta in the lead.
Ramos-Horta, 72, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is backed by the National Congress of the Reconstruction of East Timor, known as CNRT, a party led by former Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, an ex-resistance leader who remains influential.
