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Ramos-Horta tipped to reprise leading role

Sydney Morning Herald - January 31, 2012

Michael Bachelard, Jakarta – Nobel peace prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta is expected to announce today that he is in the running for another five-year term as president of East Timor.

Dr Ramos-Horta has been head of state of the tiny nation since May 2007, and before that he was prime minister. According to a confidant, Australian-based analyst James Dunn, Dr Ramos-Horta has seriously considered retiring to take a role in international politics.

However, on Sunday he accepted a petition from more than 116,300 people asking him to run again in the March 17 poll, and he promised to make his decision clear today. If, as widely expected, Dr Ramos-Horta elects to run again, he would be the favourite in a long list of candidates.

The head of the country's military, Major-General Taur Matan Ruak, said earlier this month that he is running as an independent and the party president of Fretilin, Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres, who ran second to Dr Ramos-Horta in 2007, is also making another bid for the presidency.

Mr Guterres beat Dr Ramos-Horta in the first round of voting in the 2007 election before losing in the second round.

Politics in East Timor are complex and sometimes fraught, and claims of corruption and cronyism are growing along with the country's wealth. Documents obtained by WikiLeaks last year revealed that Dr Ramos-Horta had told US embassy officials that the country's parliament was "corrupt and ineffective" and that Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao had an alcohol problem. Despite this, Dr Ramos Horta and Mr Gusmao are understood to remain close politically.

Parliamentary elections will also be held later in the year. Fretilin, the political party that grew out of the country's battle for independence, will hope to turn its plurality in parliament into a majority. At the moment it is in opposition against a coalition led by Mr Gusmao.

This year will also likely see the withdrawal of the UN mission and the Australian-led International Stabilisation Force, invited into the country by the Timorese government after unrest in 2006.