United Nations – In an effort to prevent retaliation against voters, the results of East Timor's upcoming ballot won't contain a geographic breakdown of independence supporters and opponents, a senior UN official said Tuesday.
Not even UN electoral counters will know where the ballots are coming from when they arrive at a central warehouse in the capital Dili to be tallied, said Carina Perelli, director of the electoral division in the UN department of political affairs.
The August 30 ballot is to allow East Timor's 800,000 people to decide whether they want to remain a part of Indonesia or be put on the path towards independence. Indonesia occupied the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and East Timor has been wracked by guerrilla warfare and human rights abuses since.
"It's one of the advantages that we have in this sort of consultation," Perelli told a news conference. "Because it is a single district sort of vote, there is no technical or political reason that would ... justify any sort of breakdown because there is no territorial representation involved."
The prospect of an independent East Timor has already polarized the Timorese, and a geographic breakdown of independence supporters and opponents could further divide the half-island territory.
Anti-independence militias, allegedly formed with the support of Indonesia's military, are blamed for a wave of violence in recent months that has killed dozens of civilians and uprooted tens of thousands.
Perelli said that despite incidents of violence, the UN was "extremely encouraged." Voter registration and campaigning, which began Saturday, have been progressing "in a manner that lets us expect that there's not going to be any major upheaval during the consultation itself," she said.
To ensure the fairest of votes and the minimum of retaliation, ballot boxes will be taken to the Dili warehouse under the supervision of UN civilian police and observers, she said.
Once the boxes are registered, all identifying marks will be stripped so that the boxes look identical by the time they reach the vote counters, she said.
Perelli acknowledged that it would be easier to catch evidence of fraud and ballot-stuffing if the votes were counted at regional ballot centers, but said the UN had built in sufficient measures to ensure that no such fraud occurs.
Ballots from overseas Timorese will be counted at those overseas polling stations and the results relayed to the UN on a secure phone line in code, she said.