UN reports huge turnout in E. Timor polls

UN reports huge turnout in E. Timor polls

DILI, East Timor (AFP): An estimated 93 percent of eligible East Timorese cast ballots in their first free election on Thursday, two years to the day after their vote to split from Indonesia unleashed a militia orgy of death and destruction.

Carlos Valenzuela, chief electoral officer of the United Nations' Independent Electoral Commission, said the estimate was based on reports from 145 of the 248 polling centers.

He described the poll -- for a constituent assembly which will become the parliament of the future nation -- as a "general success."

Valenzuela told a press conference most polling centers had now closed. Those which stayed open to accommodate queues of eager voters would close by 7:45 p.m. (5:45 p.m. in Jakarta).

"The whole world is once again watching us. We will be the first nation of this millennium," Dili's Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo told voters in a pastoral letter before the ballot.

The poll is a milestone on the road to nationhood for the impoverished territory, colonized for four centuries by Portugal and from 1975 by Indonesia.

Almost 99 percent of electors voted in the 1999 referendum. Close to 80 percent chose to end 24 years of Indonesian rule, triggering off a savage backlash.

This time up to 425,000 people were electing an 88-member assembly, which will draft a constitution for the fledgling nation and become its parliament by early December.

Under a baking sun and blue skies, in whitewashed ruins of towns still being rebuilt, voters thronged polling booths in the shells of destroyed schools and torched government buildings.

Voting in Dili were Nelson Cordonez, 31, a former member of the Indonesian military, and his Indonesian wife, Shanti.

"The soldiers tortured me with electricity in 1993 and told me to join the air force or be killed," Cordonez said.

"I was on duty in Indonesia during the 1999 ballot but I crossed the border and voted for independence. I took a risk," he said.

For Antonius Martins, 25, the historic poll was bitter-sweet.

"I feel joy because this is what we fought for. But it's mixed with sadness when I think of my family. Four of them were killed in Liquica after the independence vote," he told AFP.

Outside Dili, villagers dressed in their best sarongs walked through the pre-dawn darkness to polling centers and queued in their thousands until they opened.

"We're voting for us, the people. For our children," said Filomena Sampaio, 43, who returned to Liquica -- scene of a guerrilla massacre in 1999 -- to vote.

Ballots were cast under the guard of UN and East Timorese police and no major incidents were reported.

Former independence fighter Xanana Gusmao voted in his birthplace, the parched coastal town of Manatuto east of Dili. The likely future president stood in line to vote in a school still being rebuilt, clutching his 11-month-old son.

Campaigning by the 16 parties and five independents has been remarkably peaceful. Fretilin, which headed the armed independence struggle through its guerrilla wing Falantil, predicts a landslide victory.

The UN's chief administrator in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, urged people to vote in droves in a national radio announcement.

"This will be your day to stand up and be counted and for your voices to be heard," he said.

The UN has since October 1999 been overseeing the transition to independence.

Provisional results will be announced on Sept. 5 and confirmed on Sept. 10.

Full independence may be declared when the result of presidential elections, expected in March or April, is announced, according to de Mello.

James Kelly, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, said in Dili there were "many promising signs" for the future nation of East Timor.