Dili – Almost anywhere else there would be unalloyed delight in an 86-per cent turn-out for a presidential election.
But this is East Timor, the world's soon-to-be newest nation, and Sunday's poll has pundits reflecting deeply on why 14 voters in every 100 either stayed at home or spoiled their ballot papers.
They don't doubt that war hero Xanana Gusmao will have a handy margin when the results are declared on Wednesday, but they worry that the poll has exposed clefts in the body politic that bode ill for the future.
Last time around, at the parliamentary elections in August, 91 per cent cast a vote, giving the Fretilin Party 55 of the 88 seats in parliament and paving the way for Mari Alkatiri to become prime minister on independence day, May 20.
Alkatiri was among those who played truant from the polling booth on Sunday. He has fallen out with Gusmao, and while he didn't call on Fretilin followers to boycott the poll, he led by example.
Gusmao ran as an independent; Fretilin did not put up a candidate. Gusmao's only rival was Francisco Xavier do Amaral, the leader of a party that only scored 8 per cent of votes at last year's parliamentary election. Amaral does not expect to win.
The worry is that come May 20, East Timor will have a prime minister who is not on speaking terms with the president.
After breaking away from Indonesia after a 1999 United Nations-supervised referendum, East Timor settled on a semi-presidential system. The real power was to be with parliament. The president was to be more of a figurehead.
Gusmao, who lacks a lust for power, initially turned down any role in the running of the country. But he was persuaded to put his name forward for president when it was impressed on him that foreign aid donors, international business and neighbouring Indonesia and Australia wanted someone they knew and someone they could trust in a position of power.
The reasoning was that, although on paper the president is not all that mighty, a huge mandate from the people at the ballot box would give him the clout to balance the power of Fretilin and keep its hot-heads in check.
Some are still predicting that Gusmao will get over 80 per cent of the popular vote. But they concede that the smaller the margin, the less influence he will have over governance. To exercise moral authority, he needs a big mandate from the people.
This tiny nation of 750,000, perched on half an island at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, desperately needs the goodwill of the international community. While it has a share of revenue from oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea, the only cash crop for the farmers who make up the bulk of the population is coffee.
Alkatiri has a bit of form as a prickly politician. Last year he needed a lot of persuasion to attend a signing ceremony with Australian government officials for the joint development of the Bayu-Undan gas project in the Timor Sea in which 90 per cent of the revenues will go to East Timor and the remainder to Australia.
Alkatiri initially said personal animosities generated during the bargaining meant he could not bring himself to shake hands on a deal that is set to bring Dili 7 billion US dollars in revenue over the next 17 years.
Gusmao, jailed in Jakarta for seven years for his resistance to Indonesia's often brutal 24-year occupation of East Timor, is charming and easy to get along with. He is loved and revered by his people and respected by well wishers in the international community.
Above all he is patient. East Timor, a Portuguese colony for 400 years, had to endure almost a quarter of a century of rule from Jakarta before it finally freed itself from colonization in 1999.
As president, Gusmao would serve five years alongside putative prime minister Alkatiri. This is why a huge vote of confidence is important. To many political analysts, Gusmao needs to garner more than the 57 per cent of the vote that Fretilin won at last year's parliamentary election to fulfill the role of counterweight to Alkatiri that they have set for him.