Xanana Gusmao’s party wins East Timor’s legislative elections

Xanana Gusmao's party, the National Congress for the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT), has won the legislative elections in East Timor. This result paves the way for Xanana Gusmao to return to power if he can form a coalition.

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The party of Xanana Gusmao, East Timor’s independence hero, has won the legislative elections in the Southeast Asian country, without obtaining an absolute majority, according to official results released Tuesday.

The opposition National Congress for the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT) won 41.6 percent of the vote, compared with 25.7 percent for the party leading the outgoing coalition, the National Congress for the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT), according to election commission figures released after the count was completed. The result of Sunday’s election paves the way for 76-year-old Xanana Gusmao, the first president of the young democracy, to return to power if he can form a coalition.

If no party wins an absolute majority, the constitution gives the party with the most votes the opportunity to form a coalition. Voters were to renew the terms of 65 members of the national parliament, hoping to end the years-long political stalemate in Asia’s youngest country. The CNRT won 31 seats, and will have to join forces with one or more other parties to govern. This party won the presidential elections last year, bringing Jose Ramos-Horta, an ally of Xanana Gusmao, to the presidency.

However, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) led the outgoing coalition government with a relative majority in parliament. Fretilin fought the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and Xanana Gusmao was the head of its armed wing. He spent the last years of the Indonesian occupation in prison, and was elected the first president of East Timor upon the country’s independence in 2002. In 2007 he left Fretilin to found the CNRT. Then became Prime Minister the same year, until 2015.

More than twenty years after independence, East Timor is trying to emerge from poverty, after being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and a cyclone in 2021 that devastated part of its territory and killed at least 40 people. The budget of the former Portuguese colony is heavily dependent on oil revenues, but projects currently under development are expected to come to an end soon.

The next government will have to make strategic decisions to enable the development of the giant Greater Sunrise gas project and secure the country’s finances.

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