Some news prior to election day...
News Malaysia, 16 March 2012
More than 1,200 UN forces are ready to intervene in East Timor's presidential election this weekend if there is an outbreak of major violence, the top UN official in the country said Friday.
East Timor, which gained formal independence from Indonesia a decade ago, will hold its second presidential poll as a free country Saturday with a line-up that includes the incumbent Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel laureate.
Ameerah Haq, the UN secretary-general's special representative for East Timor, told AFP that the campaign period had gone "remarkably well".
The peaceful run-up to the election stands in stark contrast to the rioting and factional fighting that erupted in 2006 ahead of elections the following year, which left at least 37 dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
Last year the UN officially handed security responsibilities back to to East Timor police, although around 1,200 UN forces remain in the country. The country's own security forces will officially safeguard the election but UN forces were ready to step up if needed, Haq said.
"The internal security institutions are much stronger, and we are only here to support them. Right now there is capacity within their own security institutions to handle any outbreak of violence," she said.
"Obviously, if there is something major and widespread we are still here until the end of December."
UN forces have been stationed on the half-island nation of 1.1 million people since the 1999 vote for independence and are due to pull out at the end of the year.
Twelve candidates are running for the presidency but the race is expected to be a three-way contest between Ramos-Horta, the Fretilin party's Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres and former armed forces chief Taur Matan Ruak.
Ramos-Horta won in a second-round of voting against Guterres in 2007, buoyed by the support of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's National Congress for the Reconstruction of East Timor (CNRT) party.
But this time the party is backing Ruak, amid signs that the president and prime minister no longer see eye-to-eye on many issues. Ramos-Horta has become increasingly critical of Gusmao's government.
Ruak, who did not run in the 2007 election, is regarded as a hero for his record as a guerrilla leader during Indonesia's 24-year occupation and is seen as the wild card in Saturday's poll.
Rallies by Guterres and Ruak have pulled in the largest number of supporters.
Two weeks of campaigning officially came to a halt on Thursday, two days ahead of the polls.
"In our estimation things have gone very well as the campaigning period is concerned," Haq said, noting that no serious violations or incidents were reported.
Haq said the the UN was providing logistical support to the candidates and elections, including helicopter service to transport ballot papers to remote regions of the impoverished nation, which is virtually without infrastructure.
President Ramos-Horta faces re-election battle in East Timor
AlertNet/Reuters, 16 March 2012, By Tito Belo
DILI, March 16 (Reuters) - Nobel Peace prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta faces a battle on Saturday to win re-election as president of East Timor with 11 other candidates standing, several of whom also played major roles in the nation struggle for independence from Indonesia.
The president of Asia newest and poorest nation plays little role in policy but is vital in projecting stability in East Timor after its bloody struggle for independence in 2002 and scattered violence around parliamentary elections in 2007.
Ramos-Horta, who survived an assassination attempt in 2008, shared the Nobel prize in 1996 for working for a peaceful solution to the East Timor conflict and his key role in the independence movement appeals to voters.
More than 9,000 supporters signed a petition asking Ramos-Horta to stand in the March 17 presidential election.
"If I am elected for a second term I will continue my success that I have achieved now, which is peace," Ramos-Horta told a crowd in Maliana district, southwest of the capital Dili, on Wednesday.
During East Timor long campaign for independence, Ramos-Horta lived in exile, acting as a defacto foreign minister and drumming up international support for independence.
One of his main rivals will be former army chief and guerrilla leader Jose Maria de Vasconcelos, also known as Taur Matan Ruak.
"I fought for 24 years with (former guerilla leader and now Prime Minister) Xanana Gusmao and the people for the independence of East Timor," Matan Ruak said in a speech.
"Ten years after independence people are still poor and this has become my responsibility to be the president and bring hope to all citizens," he said.
Analysts said other rivals with a good chance to progress to a second round of voting on May 9 are Francisco Guterres from the Fretilin party that won the most votes in the parliamentary poll in 2007 and Fernando de Araujo of the Democratic Party.
East Timor is Asia poorest nation but it has vast offshore natural gas reserves and is strugggling to unlock this wealth.
For many voters economic issues are key, as 41 percent of East Timor 1.2 million people live below $0.88 a day, according to a World Bank report, and malnourishment is a significant public health issue.
One of the main problems for East Timor leaders is a dispute with Australia Woodside Petroleum over the development of a big offshore gas field.
Woodside, which heads a consortium of firms developing the Greater Sunrise project gas field, wants to use a floating LNG plant, while East Timor wants the plant to be built onshore in order to create jobs.
The value of a petroleum fund has jumped to $6.9 billion in 2010 from $370 million in 2004 but is yet to be fully used to build the economy, said Damien Kingsbury, a professor from Australia Deakin University.
The presidential campaign, which formally ended on Wednesday, was conducted through a series of rallies at which candidates vied to project a message of peace and stability.
Supporters plastered the dusty capital Dili with posters and toured on motor-bikes or campaign carts blasting out slogans.
"There is progress this year. I can feel this celebration of democracy and a growing tolerance among people and I feel I have my freedom to vote for the person I like," student Laurinda Beti Pinto told Reuters by phone from Dili.
The peaceful campaign has been in itself an achievement, said Cillian Nolan, Southeast Asia expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.
"These elections for many Timorese are an exercise in trying to develop more confidence to where the country is going and to project that image to the outside world," Nolan told Reuters.
(Additional reporting and writing by Olivia Rondonuwu in JAKARTA; Editing by Matthew Bigg and Michael Perry)
Australia to decide future of Timor force
Herald Sun/AAP, 16 March 2012
AUSTRALIA is set to decide the future of its military presence in East Timor after the country's parliamentary elections due in June.
Defence force chief General David Hurley said East Timor's armed forces, the FFDTL, did not depend on Australian troops and were quite capable of independent operations.
He said they and East Timorese police would take responsibility for security in the presidential elections being held this weekend and the parliamentary elections to be held in June.
"We are really a third- or fourth-tier force behind the UN police force and the national forces," he told a parliamentary committee.
General Hurley said the Australian force would remain at its current strength and structure until after the parliamentary elections.
"Then we will go into discussions with the Government of Timor Leste about the form of Australia's future security or defence engagement," he said.
"There are a number of options."
Currently there are some 390 Australian troops in East Timor. With 70 soldiers from New Zealand, they make up the International Stabilisation Force.
As security in East Timor has improved, troop numbers have been progressively reduced.
General Hurley said Australia could stay in East Timor with a smaller force or move to a traditional defence cooperation program in which it would assist with training.
News Malaysia, 16 March 2012
More than 1,200 UN forces are ready to intervene in East Timor's presidential election this weekend if there is an outbreak of major violence, the top UN official in the country said Friday.
East Timor, which gained formal independence from Indonesia a decade ago, will hold its second presidential poll as a free country Saturday with a line-up that includes the incumbent Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel laureate.
Ameerah Haq, the UN secretary-general's special representative for East Timor, told AFP that the campaign period had gone "remarkably well".
The peaceful run-up to the election stands in stark contrast to the rioting and factional fighting that erupted in 2006 ahead of elections the following year, which left at least 37 dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
Last year the UN officially handed security responsibilities back to to East Timor police, although around 1,200 UN forces remain in the country. The country's own security forces will officially safeguard the election but UN forces were ready to step up if needed, Haq said.
"The internal security institutions are much stronger, and we are only here to support them. Right now there is capacity within their own security institutions to handle any outbreak of violence," she said.
"Obviously, if there is something major and widespread we are still here until the end of December."
UN forces have been stationed on the half-island nation of 1.1 million people since the 1999 vote for independence and are due to pull out at the end of the year.
Twelve candidates are running for the presidency but the race is expected to be a three-way contest between Ramos-Horta, the Fretilin party's Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres and former armed forces chief Taur Matan Ruak.
Ramos-Horta won in a second-round of voting against Guterres in 2007, buoyed by the support of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's National Congress for the Reconstruction of East Timor (CNRT) party.
But this time the party is backing Ruak, amid signs that the president and prime minister no longer see eye-to-eye on many issues. Ramos-Horta has become increasingly critical of Gusmao's government.
Ruak, who did not run in the 2007 election, is regarded as a hero for his record as a guerrilla leader during Indonesia's 24-year occupation and is seen as the wild card in Saturday's poll.
Rallies by Guterres and Ruak have pulled in the largest number of supporters.
Two weeks of campaigning officially came to a halt on Thursday, two days ahead of the polls.
"In our estimation things have gone very well as the campaigning period is concerned," Haq said, noting that no serious violations or incidents were reported.
Haq said the the UN was providing logistical support to the candidates and elections, including helicopter service to transport ballot papers to remote regions of the impoverished nation, which is virtually without infrastructure.
President Ramos-Horta faces re-election battle in East Timor
AlertNet/Reuters, 16 March 2012, By Tito Belo
DILI, March 16 (Reuters) - Nobel Peace prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta faces a battle on Saturday to win re-election as president of East Timor with 11 other candidates standing, several of whom also played major roles in the nation struggle for independence from Indonesia.
The president of Asia newest and poorest nation plays little role in policy but is vital in projecting stability in East Timor after its bloody struggle for independence in 2002 and scattered violence around parliamentary elections in 2007.
Ramos-Horta, who survived an assassination attempt in 2008, shared the Nobel prize in 1996 for working for a peaceful solution to the East Timor conflict and his key role in the independence movement appeals to voters.
More than 9,000 supporters signed a petition asking Ramos-Horta to stand in the March 17 presidential election.
"If I am elected for a second term I will continue my success that I have achieved now, which is peace," Ramos-Horta told a crowd in Maliana district, southwest of the capital Dili, on Wednesday.
During East Timor long campaign for independence, Ramos-Horta lived in exile, acting as a defacto foreign minister and drumming up international support for independence.
One of his main rivals will be former army chief and guerrilla leader Jose Maria de Vasconcelos, also known as Taur Matan Ruak.
"I fought for 24 years with (former guerilla leader and now Prime Minister) Xanana Gusmao and the people for the independence of East Timor," Matan Ruak said in a speech.
"Ten years after independence people are still poor and this has become my responsibility to be the president and bring hope to all citizens," he said.
Analysts said other rivals with a good chance to progress to a second round of voting on May 9 are Francisco Guterres from the Fretilin party that won the most votes in the parliamentary poll in 2007 and Fernando de Araujo of the Democratic Party.
East Timor is Asia poorest nation but it has vast offshore natural gas reserves and is strugggling to unlock this wealth.
For many voters economic issues are key, as 41 percent of East Timor 1.2 million people live below $0.88 a day, according to a World Bank report, and malnourishment is a significant public health issue.
One of the main problems for East Timor leaders is a dispute with Australia Woodside Petroleum over the development of a big offshore gas field.
Woodside, which heads a consortium of firms developing the Greater Sunrise project gas field, wants to use a floating LNG plant, while East Timor wants the plant to be built onshore in order to create jobs.
The value of a petroleum fund has jumped to $6.9 billion in 2010 from $370 million in 2004 but is yet to be fully used to build the economy, said Damien Kingsbury, a professor from Australia Deakin University.
The presidential campaign, which formally ended on Wednesday, was conducted through a series of rallies at which candidates vied to project a message of peace and stability.
Supporters plastered the dusty capital Dili with posters and toured on motor-bikes or campaign carts blasting out slogans.
"There is progress this year. I can feel this celebration of democracy and a growing tolerance among people and I feel I have my freedom to vote for the person I like," student Laurinda Beti Pinto told Reuters by phone from Dili.
The peaceful campaign has been in itself an achievement, said Cillian Nolan, Southeast Asia expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.
"These elections for many Timorese are an exercise in trying to develop more confidence to where the country is going and to project that image to the outside world," Nolan told Reuters.
(Additional reporting and writing by Olivia Rondonuwu in JAKARTA; Editing by Matthew Bigg and Michael Perry)
Australia to decide future of Timor force
Herald Sun/AAP, 16 March 2012
AUSTRALIA is set to decide the future of its military presence in East Timor after the country's parliamentary elections due in June.
Defence force chief General David Hurley said East Timor's armed forces, the FFDTL, did not depend on Australian troops and were quite capable of independent operations.
He said they and East Timorese police would take responsibility for security in the presidential elections being held this weekend and the parliamentary elections to be held in June.
"We are really a third- or fourth-tier force behind the UN police force and the national forces," he told a parliamentary committee.
General Hurley said the Australian force would remain at its current strength and structure until after the parliamentary elections.
"Then we will go into discussions with the Government of Timor Leste about the form of Australia's future security or defence engagement," he said.
"There are a number of options."
Currently there are some 390 Australian troops in East Timor. With 70 soldiers from New Zealand, they make up the International Stabilisation Force.
As security in East Timor has improved, troop numbers have been progressively reduced.
General Hurley said Australia could stay in East Timor with a smaller force or move to a traditional defence cooperation program in which it would assist with training.
No comments:
Post a Comment