Ramos-Horta vows reform as East Timor president

EAST TIMOR: Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta vowed Friday to aggressively push for change in the troubled nation as he looked set to win this week’s presidential election in a landslide.

With 90 percent of ballots counted after Wednesday’s run-off, Ramos-Horta has an unbeatable lead in the race to succeed Xanana Gusmao, with 73 percent of the vote.

Although the role of president is a largely ceremonial one, Ramos-Horta said he would push the government to reform the troubled military and improve the economy to help East Timor’s desperately poor.

“The reform of the security sector, the armed forces and the police is one of the priorities,” Ramos-Horta said.

“We will also have to address the problems of IDPs (internally displaced persons) and how to accelerate the development of our economy,” he told reporters in the capital Dili.

East Timorese, who turned out in large numbers on Wednesday to vote, are hopeful the decisive election of Ramos-Horta will help secure peace and stability in the tiny nation after a year of bloodshed and unrest.

The election for president in East Timor is the first since it won independence in 2002 after a bloody separation from occupying Indonesia three years earlier.

The outcome is a major blow to the ruling Fretilin party, the former resistance movement, whose candidate Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres said he was ready to accept defeat.

“For me, winning or losing is a normal thing. For me personally, as Lu-Olo, it is alright (if I lose),” Guterres told AFP.

Guterres said he would now focus on parliamentary polls in June when Gusmao, the former guerrilla leader who remains a hero to many East Timorese, will run for the powerful post of prime minister.

Ramos-Horta, who won the Nobel prize after bringing the plight of East Timor to the world’s attention, said Guterres had offered his congratulations.

“I have met with (Fretilin leader) Mari Alkatiri, I went to his home and I spoke again this morning on the telephone with Lu-Olo and with other Fretilin leaders,” he said.

“The Fretilin leaders have congratulated me, and pledged to cooperate with me and I to work with them.” Australian Prime Minister John Howard congratulated Ramos-Horta, calling the Nobel laureate a “good friend of Australia”, while New Zealand said it looked forward to working with the new president to improve democracy in East Timor.

Both countries deployed troops to East Timor to quell violence last year which left at least 37 people dead and forced 150,000 to flee their homes. More than 30,000 remained displaced in Dili.

The unrest erupted after then prime minister Alkatiri dismissed hundreds of army deserters. Firefights broke out between factions of the military, and between the army and police, and degenerated into gang violence.

Foreign peacekeepers guarded polling stations this week, backed up by about 4,000 UN and local police, and remain on the streets in case of trouble.

Ramos-Horta said he would be more aggressive as president than Gusmao in working to improve the lives of the people in East Timor, which remains one of the world’s poorest nations.

“President Xanana was a bit too passive when it came to exercising his authority — too reactive rather than pro-active,” Ramos-Horta told the BBC.

“In a sense, he never spoke out on budget issues. He never took initiatives on the economic front. Well, I’m doing it. I intend to do it,” he said.

“I will speak my mind on economic issues so I really influence the decision-making by the government and by the parliament.”

Dili, Friday, AFP