Fretilin takes commanding lead in first election

Fretilin takes commanding lead in first election

DILI, East Timor (Agencies): East Timor's independence heroes, Fretilin, appear to have taken a commanding lead on Wednesday as counting in the territory's first democratic election nears an end.

UN chief electoral officer Carlos Valenzuela told reporters Fretilin had already won 11 of the 13 district seats in the 88- member constituent assembly. The assembly will prepare the UN-run territory for independence, most likely early next year.

Fretilin, which spearheaded the almost 24-year fight for independence from Indonesia, is averaging about 50 percent of votes for the remaining 75 seats as results come in from around the half-island territory.

Counting in the largest district, the capital Dili, is still going on, Valenzuela said.

So far, no other party has won a district seat. A pro-Fretilin independent, Antonio da Costa Lelan, has won the district seat of Oecussi and the 13th has yet to be decided.

There was a huge turnout for Thursday's elections -- the first since the fledgling nation shook off more than two decades of Indonesian rule, and four centuries of Portuguese domination.

An estimated 91 percent of East Timorese voters went to the polls to choose 13 district and 75 national representatives to sit on the constituent assembly, which will draft a founding constitution and become the parliament.

In the national vote Fretilin has outpaced its rivals in 10 of the 11 districts tallied so far, even polling as 74.9 percent of the vote in one district.

ASDT, the Timorese Social Democratic Association, led by Fretilin's former leader, Xavier do Amaral, wiped Fretilin out in Aileu district, garnering 52.3 percent of the vote there.

Amaral was president of East Timor for nine days in 1975, in the brief window between Fretilin's proclamation of independence and Indonesia's invasion.

Fretilin, formed as a radical left-wing pro-independence party in 1974 as the Portuguese colonialists were departing, has failed to score the 85 to 88 percent victory its leaders were predicting ahead of the Aug. 30 poll, according to provisional tallies.

The final, uncertified tally will be announced Thursday after election organizers meet with the political parties, spokeswoman for the United Nations administration in East Timor, Barbara Reis, told AFP by phone from Dili.

The allocation of national seats, which will be calculated proportionally, will also be announced, she added.

Parties will have four days to appeal, while the count is being certified and confirmed. Official, confirmed results will be announced on Sept. 10.

The assembly is expected to be inaugurated in the following week.

The UN's chief administrator in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, will pick the cabinet, which will be all-Timorese, replace the current transitional cabinet on which foreigners and Timorese sit.

The cabinet will be answerable to de Mello until full independence, which is expected to be declared after presidential elections around March or April next year.

Indonesia's 24 year rule of East Timor ended in 1999 when almost 80 percent of East Timorese voted in a UN-organized ballot to split from Jakarta, triggering a wave of killing and destruction by Indonesian-backed local militias.