Wednesday, July 04, 2007



Timor election update

The people of Timor-Leste went to the polls on Saturday to elect a new 65-member Parliament. So, who's winning? The latest results [PDF] from the Timorese electoral commission (with around 75% of the vote counted) show FRETILIN leading with 29.1% of the vote, followed by Xanana Gusmao's National Congress of East Timor's Reconstruction (CNRT) on 22.5%, the Association of Timorese Democrats-Social Democrat Party (ASDT-PSD) coalition on 16.2%, and the Democratic Party (PD) on 11.6%. And those numbers are only going to get worse for FRETILIN - their heartland has mostly been counted, while Dili, solid CNRT territory, is less than 50% complete. As for the eventual government, the three large non-FRETILIN parties had agreed before the election to form a united front, so unless there is a dramatic change in the direction of the count, they seem certain to form a coalition government with Gusmao as Prime Minister.