Former guerrilla leader slated to become East Timor president
Former guerrilla leader slated to become East Timor president
Sid Astbury, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Sydney, Australia
East Timorese voters go to the polls next week to pick the person
who will declare their country independent next month.
The winner of the April 14 presidential poll will take over
the running of the half-island state from an interim United
Nations administration May 20.
The UN team was slotted in after Indonesia gave up the
territory in 1999.
The victor is expected to be Xanana Gusmao, the handsome,
charismatic former guerrilla leader who served as an inspiration
throughout the 24-year occupation.
Gusmao, 54, was the beacon of the independence movement even
during his seven-year stint in a Jakarta jail.
He has widespread support among the 800,000 people of a
staunchly Roman Catholic country at the eastern end of the
Indonesian archipelago.
Gusmao has the endorsement of Bishop Carlos Belo, a Nobel
laureate and the spiritual leader of his people.
"Xanana is a great revolutionary fighter," Belo has said. "For
the international community, he is the only one with the
reputation. They know his work with refugees and in restoring our
relations with Indonesia."
Gusmao is just about everybody's hero, a figure who commands
the sort of respect and reverence accorded to South Africa's
Nelson Mandela and other resistance leaders who have been jailed
for their beliefs.
Perhaps it is because he casts such a huge shadow that
Fretilin, the party that garnered 57 per cent of the vote at last
August's parliamentary elections, is not backing his run for the
presidency.
Fretilin is not officially supporting any candidate, but would
probably like to see Gusmao's only challenger get a respectable
slice of the vote.
Gusmao's rival is Francisco Xavier do Amaral, who leads the
Timorese Social Democrat Association. A heart ailment has
prevented Amaral from spending much time campaign outside Dili,
the capital.
Gusmao has been at pains to assure Fretilin, a grouping of
independence fighters he once led, that he is prepared to share
power.
The system of governance the East Timorese have chosen gives
the president the power to dissolve parliament and call fresh
elections.
But the actual running of the country should be in the hands
of the Fretilin government once independence is declared.
"I am not trying to usurp power," Gusmao told an adoring crowd
at a campaign rally earlier this month. "The constitution will be
my bible. I will be watching every move and veto legislation if
it curbs liberties, but that's all."
Gusmao has presented himself to voters as a very reluctant
head of state. He only put up his hand for the job at the very
last moment and frequently tells his followers how little he
covets power.
But he is well aware of his responsibilities. After leading a
nation to freedom, there's an obvious obligation to see the job
through.
East Timor is beset by mammoth problems, not least forging a
workable relationship with Indonesia, the giant power next door
that presided over the deaths of 200,000 people during its often-
bloody occupation.
It shares a border with West Timor, an Indonesian province
more than double its size. And it is dirt poor.
East Timor's only serious export is coffee, its economy
dependent on hand-outs from foreign donors and its borders still
policed by the UN-mandated peacekeeping force that went in to
quell violence after the overwhelming vote for independence in
the 1999 referendum.