Mario de Queiroz, Lisbon – In the late 1970s, diplomats at United Nations headquarters in New York got used to seeing a discreet young man plying the hallways and conference rooms, trying to drum up support for what seemed a lost cause in a tiny country that few had even heard about.
"Nice to meet you. My name is Jose Ramos-Horta and I represent East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that was invaded by Indonesia in December 1975," was how he would introduce himself to diplomats and foreign correspondents from around the world who knew little or nothing about the tragedy that had cost the lives of one-third of the population of his country.
The responses ranged from "Timor? Where's that? Portugal had colonies near Indonesia? I had no idea," to "Yes it's a terrible tragedy, but it's already happened, and Indonesia is not going to pull out of your country."
Three decades later, against all predictions, the efforts of the persevering young man with a doctorate in international relations finally bore fruit. In 1999, the Indonesian army was forced by the international community to pull out, and in May 2002, East Timor became an independent nation.
Added to the success of his country is the success of his political career. His triumph in Wednesday's presidential elections came as no surprise. What was not expected was the magnitude of his landslide victory. With about 90 percent of the votes counted, it was announced Thursday that he had taken around 73 percent, beating out his rival Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres of the Fretilin party, who won 27 percent of the vote.
Ramos-Horta, who is currently prime minister, will take office as president on May 20 in Asia's newest country, whose territory of 15,000 square kilometres forms half of the island of Timor in the Indonesian archipelago, and which has a population of 1.1 million.
The future president took a conciliatory tone towards Guterres, saying his main tasks would be to unite the Timorese people, work for the poor, and resolve the latest conflicts, which last year triggered violent clashes. Democracy has won, said Ramos-Horta, who congratulated Guterres and Fretilin for a "well-run campaign."
When asked by IPS in a telephone interview whether the outcome could lead to a climate of instability provoked by his rival's party, Ramos-Horta said emphatically that "This is an important step forward in the consolidation of democracy in my country and it is also a victory for Fretilin, a party of which I was a founder. It must be made very clear that Fretilin did not lose," he stressed.
Analysts attribute Ramos-Horta's triumph not only to his national and international prestige, but also to the backing he received from the current president, legendary resistance leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao.
While the exiled Ramos-Horta was working tirelessly as the voice of the Timorese resistance abroad during the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation, Xanana Gusmao and a handful of guerrilla fighters, who numbered no more than 160 at their peak, waged war against 22,000 Indonesian occupation troops in the island's dense jungles.
Xanana Gusmao, meanwhile, was described by the press and analysts as a "poet-revolutionary" with the charisma of Argentine-Cuban guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who had become an almost mythical icon of revolutionary struggles around the world.
Ramos-Horta was born in Dili, the capital of the then Portuguese colony of Timor on Dec. 29, 1949, to a Timorese mother and a Portuguese father – a noncommissioned naval officer who was exiled to the Pacific island in 1933 after participating in an uprising against the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.
In fact, Ramos-Horta was already active in the independence struggle against Portugal during the colonial years. As a young man in 1970 and 1971, he was exiled by colonial authorities to Mozambique, another Portuguese colony, accused of "subversive activities" against Portugal.
After the Apr. 25, 1974 coup by the leftist Portuguese army captains who overthrew the Salazar dictatorship, he and other leaders in Timor founded Fretilin (the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor), which on Nov. 28, 1975 proclaimed the small country's independence.
Just 25 years old, Ramos-Horta was sworn in as foreign minister of East Timor, and his first mission was to travel to UN headquarters in New York to present his country's plight.
He was preparing to address the UN General Assembly when Indonesia invaded East Timor on Dec. 7, 1975. The invasion and occupation left a death toll of 210,000, out of a population at the time of 680,000.
A high point in his career came in 1996, when he and the Roman Catholic bishop of Dili, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
By then, he had already distanced himself from Fretilin, and was acting as representative abroad of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), which was headed by Xanana Gusmao.
In 2006, Ramos-Horta was considered a possible candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as UN secretary-general, until in an interview with IPS he cleared up the doubts, stating that he was not interested in the post "for now."
Lisbon issued one of the first official reactions to the results of the Timorese elections Thursday.
With the caution required by the fact that the official outcome has not yet been announced, Portuguese Foreign Minister Lums Amado said that if Ramos-Horta's victory is confirmed, East Timor will have a president who is a "figure of global stature, at a time when (the country) needs the international community to strengthen the development of its democracy."
Portuguese journalist and analyst Adelino Gomes, who has dedicated a large part of his career to Timor, said the current leaders must show "a special ability to build consensus," because "we are talking about a society that is just beginning to learn what democracy is about."