According to preliminary results published by the electoral office on Wednesday, Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta won the presidential elections in East Timor with a landslide.
According to the secretariat’s website, in spite of everything votes were counted on Wednesday, the 72-year-old received 397,145 votes, or 62.09 percent, in comparison with incumbent Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres’ 242,440 votes, or 37.91 percent.
The electoral commission in East Timor has not yet confirmed the election results.
Ramos-Horta might be re-elected for a second term. From 2007 to 2012, he was the president of the youngest country in Southeast Asia and its first prime minister.
Ramos-Horta will take office on May 20, the twentieth anniversary of Timor-Leste’s independence from Indonesia, which controlled the previous Portuguese territory for twenty-four years.
He promised to make use of his five-year term to beat the long deadlock between the 2 most important political parties.
The elections could usher in a time of uncertainty as Ramos-Horta has stated that if he wins, he’ll dissolve parliament.
About 860,000 people were eligible to vote within the country of 1.3 million people, and over 75% of voters went to vote within the second round.
This week’s vote was a repeat of the 2007 presidential election, which Ramos-Horta won just as easily with 69% of the vote. Ramos-Horta said he resigned from retirement to run again because he believed the outgoing president had broken the law.
Ramos-Horta dominated in the primary round of elections on March 19, winning 46% of the vote to Guterres’ 22%, but didn’t obtain the required majority.
He had the support of Xanana Gusmao, the country’s first president and current head of the National Congress for the Reconstruction of East Timor (CNRT). Gusmao often served as king in East Timor.
Ramos-Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his efforts to facilitate the resolution of the conflict in East Timor. In 2008, he miraculously escaped an assassination attempt.
The next president faces the difficult challenge of lifting the nation out of poverty. Timor-Leste continues to grapple with the economic consequences of the Covid-19 outbreak, with the World Bank estimating that 42 percent of the population lives in poverty.
