Poll deepening political divide

The Courier-Mail - Saturday, April 14, 2007
John Martinkus in Dili

'The election officials were unable to answer questions on what had happened to 150,000 votes'

This week's presidential ballot in East Timor has solved none of the problems affecting the bitterly divided young nation.

With serving Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta facing off against Fretilin candidate Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres in a May 8 presidential run-off the chance of politically motivated violence remains high.
This has been a chaotic and bizarre week which demonstrated once again that losing candidates fear the power of Fretilin, the country's ruling party, and will not accept its political dominance.
On Wednesday, the political landscape in Dili changed dramatically. It started with a news conference called by candidate Fernando "Lasama" Araujo.

Reporters presumed the event was being called to announce the acceptance by the Democratic Party leader that he had come third and was out of the running for the run-off election. Instead Mr Araujo dropped a bombshell.

Together with four of the other losing candidates in the presidential poll, he issued a statement calling on the electoral commission to stop counting the votes on the basis of allegations of misconduct by electoral officials and Fretilin.

It was widely known the results from the eastern part of the country, a Fretilin stronghold, were due to be announced in the afternoon and that the parties had been given prior notice by the electoral commission of the result. All five candidates had waited until the result to allege misconduct and officially declare the election invalid.

When questioned by reporters as to the evidence of the misconduct, Presidential candidate Lucia Lobato waved a piece of paper and said repeatedly: "This is the evidence". She refused to either read out what was on the piece of paper or show it to the gathered journalists.
Later that afternoon the East Timorese electoral authority (CNE), announced the result. CNE spokesman Martinho Gusmao told reporters Mr Guterres had jumped from third place to the lead with 28.79 per cent of the national vote and that widely declared favourite Mr Ramos Horta was in second place with 22.52 per cent, with Mr Araujo on 18.52 per cent.

The looks on the faces of diplomats and journalists in the room who had already declared Mr Ramos Horta as the winner based on earlier results indicated the shock of this result.

There were two reasons why no one predicted this outcome. The first was the selective release of preliminary figure by the electoral authority.

CNE's Mr Gusmao surprised reporters at a news conference last week by declaring he supported Mr Araujo and that he hoped he would win. It was noted in the report by the European Union official observers which spoke of instances of public officials taking political positions in this election.

The second reason for the shock was the CNE's delay in announcing the results from the east of the country.

By delaying their inclusion, it appeared the CNE spokesman was playing some kind of political game that led to early speculation of a Ramos Horta victory.

But, by far the most disturbing aspect of Wednesday's announcement, was the total figures of valid votes counted. The figure of 357,766 was given - far short of the 522,000 who registered to vote in the poll.

The election officials were unable to answer questions on what had happened to 150,000 votes.
Serious concerns have been raised by the 27-member EU observer group regarding the shortcomings of two Timorese Government bodies - the Election Commission and the STAE, which ran the logistics for the ballot.