Peaceful vote in E Timor raises hopes

A soldier guards while voters queue up to cast their ballots at a polling station in Baukau in East Timor yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

The orderly queues at polling stations across the former Portuguese colony were in sharp contrast to the violence of the past year, which saw foreign peacekeepers sent in to quiet the unrest.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta was seen as the favourite ahead of the ruling party's Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres after the two men came out on top in last month's first round of voting.

The United Nations said vote counting could take one to two days and both candidates, who accused each other of bribing voters, said they were confident of victory.

"Whatever the outcome, I will win," said Ramos-Horta, who won the Nobel Prize for his role in popularising the Timorese struggle for independence from neighbouring Indonesia after it invaded in 1975.

Guterres, a former resistance fighter and current leader of the ruling Fretilin party that Ramos-Horta founded and later left, echoed his words: "I am confident that I will be the winner."

The presidency is a largely ceremonial position but could have an influence in helping to guide the nation out of more than a year of troubles marked by unrest last year that left 37 people dead and more than 100,000 displaced.

A split between rival factions of the military spiralled into street violence that led officials including outgoing President Xanana Gusmao to appeal for international troops and police to come in and restore order.