Ramos Horta Confirmed Timor Poll Winner

Reporting from Dili on the East Timor election, Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio correspondent Anne Barker said the National Electoral Commission announced late on Thursday local time that Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta will be the new president.

“Ninety per cent of the vote has been counted. There are only two districts where votes still have to come on – Baucau and Lautem, which are probably very strong Fretilin [i.e. Guterres] areas. But at the end of the day even if every vote uncounted there went to Francisco Guterres, it wouldn’t be enough now to change the vote.

“The final figures – and these are provisional results, but certainly this is going to be part of the final result – are 73 per cent for Jose Ramos Horta and 27 per cent for Francisco Guterres.

“Some of the 13 districts have quite remarkable contrasts between the two votes. In Dili, for example, Jose Ramos Horta got 62,000 votes to Francisco Guterres’s 15,000. There have been very big differences in several other of the districts. But there could be three of the 13 districts that Fretilin still wins despite that…

“But one interesting thing in this is that Francisco Guterres has scored about 27 per cent of the vote this time. It’s only one per cent lower than what he got last month. So Jose Ramos Horta, who was on 22 per cent last time, has actually now risen to 73 per cent. So you could safely say that he has done this with the support of all six losing candidates. It really does look as if the people who voted for the six losing candidates last time, those minority parties, they have all switched to Jose Ramos Horta and that’s what’s delivered him victory today.”

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