Xanana Gusmao alliance ousts Fretilin in Timor poll

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Xanana Gusmao alliance ousts Fretilin in Timor poll

9:54 CAT | 14 May 2018

East Timorese independence hero Xanana Gusmao waves a national flag upon arrival in Dili in March. Photo: AP

Timor-Leste’s national resistance hero Xanana Gusmao, a former president and prime minister, is headed back to power in the nation’s second general election in 10 months via a three-party alliance that includes his former guerilla colleague Taur Matan Ruak, another former president.

Gusmao’s AMP alliance gained more votes than incumbent Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri’s Fretilin party, with a majority of seats in a new parliament where four groups are expected to be represented in the country’s 100 per cent proportional voting systems.

The poll largely pitted two arms of the tiny nation’s independence movement – its combat leadership (AMP Alliance) and offshore diaspora diplomats (Fretilin) – against each other. Voters deserted smaller parties with Fretilin gaining the largest swing of slightly less than 6 per cent, and the swing towards AMP was about 1.5 per cent.

The election was triggered when the Fretilin minority government, sworn in by President Francisco “Lu’Olo” Guterres in September, failed to get a working majority.

Pictures posted on the internet of Alkatiri at Fretilin headquarters in Dili on Saturday showed him to be inconsolable, having failed to gain the 30 seats he had predicted as he voted on Saturday morning and that would have given him his third chance at being prime minister.

By Michael Sainsbury

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald