Jose Ramos-Horta wins East Timor election in a landslide

The vistory gives the Nobel laureate his second term in office.

Jose Ramos Horta after casting his ballot in Dili on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta has scored a landslide victory in East Timor’s presidential election.

The 72-year-old secured 397,145 votes, or 62.09 per cent, against incumbent Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres’ 242,440, or 37.91 per cent, the election secretariat’s website showed late on Wednesday after all ballots had been counted.

“The count of the district, national and regional vote has been completed”, said Acilino Manuel Branco, general director of the election secretariat.

The election results still need to be validated by the country’s electoral commission.

The victory gives Mr Ramos-Horta his second term in office. He served as president of Southeast Asia’s youngest country from 2007 to 2012 and was also the country’s first prime minister.

“The elections were competitive, and the campaign was largely peaceful,” EU observer Domenec Ruiz Devesa said, adding the counting process had been assessed “positively”.

Mr Ramos-Horta will be inaugurated on May 20, which is the 20th anniversary of East Timor’s independence from Indonesia, which occupied the ­former Portuguese colony for 24 years. He has pledged to use his five-year term to break a longstanding deadlock between the two main political parties.

The election could trigger a period of uncertainty, as Mr Ramos-Horta previously indicated he might dissolve the parliament if he won the election.

Nearly 860,000 people in the tiny nation of 1.3 million were eligible to vote, and more than 75 per cent of voters turned up to cast their ballots in the second round.

This week’s vote was a rematch of the 2007 presidential poll that also saw Mr Ramos-Horta win handily, with 69 per cent of the votes. Mr Ramos-Horta said he came out of retirement because he believed the outgoing president had violated the nation’s constitution.

He was dominant in the election’s March 19 first round, winning 46 per cent of votes versus M Guterres’ 22 per cent, but failed to secure the needed majority.

The Nobel laureate benefited from the backing of Xanana Gusmao, who is the country’s first president and current leader of the National Congress of the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste, and often a kingmaker in East Timor.

AFP