ETimor candidate demands vote recount

ETimor candidate demands vote recount

East Timor presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta demanded a vote recount Thursday despite making it to the second round, saying thousands of voters may have been harassed and threatened.

His remarks came amid growing questions about the conduct of the violence-torn nation's vote on Monday, the first presidential poll since the country won independence in 2002.

Although the bloodshed feared on voting day did not occur, doubts about the election have heightened fears that one of the world's newest nations could see a resurgence of political turmoil and violence.

"There has to be an investigation," said Ramos-Horta, the current prime minister, who qualified for the run-off against Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres of the ruling Fretilin party.

He said more than 150,000 of 520,000 registered voters had not voted, despite a massive turn-out marked by hours-long queues and shortages of ballot papers, and called for the United Nations to hold an inquiry.

"Were they intimidated or simply did not show up?" said Ramos-Horta, who shared the Nobel peace prize in 1996 for his role in the campaign that eventually won independence from Indonesia.

"I ask the UN for an explanation," he said. "I think there should be another count."

An Indonesian human rights group said it had received reports that the ruling Fretilin, the most powerful political force in this country of one million people, had gone door-to-door to intimidate voters.

Ramos-Horta founded Fretilin as a resistance movement against Indonesia, which occupied the country in 1974 after former colonial power Portugal withdrew.

But he left in 1988, and Fretilin has since transformed from underground movement to mainstream political party -- and one repeatedly accused of using intimidation tactics against its opponents.

Rights group Yayasan HAK said it had received reports that Fretilin had harassed voters and even beaten up a priest and a journalist.

"They noted the identity numbers of people and said if you don't choose Fretilin, your number will show on the computer," said the group's spokesman, Jose Luis de Oliveira.

"Even if that's not true, people are afraid," he said. A Fretilin spokesman said the party did not encourage its supporters to use violence.

Meanwhile the election commission rejected a formal protest with similar claims filed Wednesday by five of the six candidates who did not make it into the May 8 run-off election.

"We have no legal basis to accept that," said commission spokesman Martinho Gusmao.

International observers have generally praised the conduct of the polls, but Yayasan HAK's de Oliveira said they did not have a proper understanding of the situation in the country.

"They cannot see or feel what's happening," he said.

A Timor analyst with the International Crisis Group, Sophia Cason, said election monitors had said they found discrepancies between local tallies and the national election figures as well as ballot boxes uncounted.

"That's what some of the observers from the parties are worried about -- that the figures just aren't adding up," she said. "So there seems to be some sort of discrepancy in some of the figures."

Final first-round results are due on Sunday.

Foreign peacekeepers have been on the streets of East Timor, formally known as Timor-Leste, for nearly a year after gang violence left 37 people dead and sent 150,000 fleeing their homes in April and May 2006.

ETimor candidate demands vote recount