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Singapore: Xanana Gusmao, the independence hero and first president of Timor-Leste, is poised to push to pipe natural gas from the Greater Sunrise fields to the country’s south coast rather than Darwin after romping to victory in the country’s parliamentary election.
The 76-year-old’s National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) party received 41.6 per cent of the popular vote and claimed 31 of the 65 seats in the national parliament, according to provisional results of Sunday’s poll.
Xanana Gusmao’s party dominated Sunday’s election.Credit: Raimundos Oki
It paves the way for Gusmao to return as prime minister, a post he held between 2007 and 2015, and for his party to resume governing after three years in opposition.
Timor-Leste’s other major party, Fretilin, was humbled in the poll, recording only 26.8 per cent of the overall vote and collecting just 19 seats when the count was completed on Tuesday.
The provisional numbers left the CNRT slightly short of achieving a 33-seat majority on its own. But that barrier is expected to be eliminated by a likely coalition with the third-placed Democratic Party, which has been aligned with the CNRT before and has won six seats.
It was a resounding triumph for Gusmao and a reminder of how strongly resistance-era credentials still resonate in the political arena in Timor-Leste, despite the south-east Asian nation’s young population.
People queue up to cast their votes at a polling station in Dili.Credit: AP
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, 73, also enjoyed a comfortable win in last year’s presidential race with the backing of Gusmao. The president’s role is mostly ceremonial, albeit with the power to block the appointment of ministers and dissolve parliament.
There has been no shortage of turbulence in the past six years, a period of heightened political feuding in Dili, but Gusmao has an ally in Ramos-Horta, who sees eye-to-eye with him on his greatest ambition. The former guerilla fighter told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in a pre-election interview in the south coast town of Suai that his immediate attention, if his party assumed government, would be on the economy, which has been overly reliant on dwindling oil and gas revenue from the Timor Sea.
He made no secret that as prime minister he would push to finally make the vision of processing gas from Sunrise in Timor-Leste a reality.
Ramos-Horta also pressed the case for Tasi Mane – as the proposed megaproject is called – during his visit to Canberra last year, suggesting Timor-Leste could turn to China or other Western investors if the plan could not be realised with Sunrise joint venture partner Woodside Energy, which has a 33.44 per cent interest in the field and has favoured processing in Darwin.
Gusmao believes the wider economic benefits from piping the gas to Timor-Leste’s south coast could be a game-changer for one of Asia’s poorest countries, and said he trusts the Australian government will help facilitate it, in part as reparation for past exploitation of resources.
But the project faces significant difficulties including doubts about its financial and technical viability, with an undersea pipeline having to traverse the Timor Trough, a three-kilometre-deep trench.
Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks, who has also previously been an advisor to Gusmao, is a key figure in negotiations as the Australian government’s special representative for Greater Sunrise.
He has been to Dili on multiple occasions since his appointment to that role late last year, and on Saturday was one of several Australians honoured with the Order of Timor-Leste for services to the nation.
The other recipients were Bernard Collaery, the lawyer who helped expose Australia’s bugging of the Timor-Leste government offices during maritime border negotiations, and media buyer Harold Mitchell, who has been a longtime supporter of the country.
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