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Gusmao appointment sparks Fretilin walkout threat
Topic Started: Feb 8 2009, 12:19 PM (62 Views)
Warren
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Gusmao appointment sparks Fretilin walkout threat

By Stephen Fitzpatrick

August 07, 2007 12:00am
Article from: The Australian

EAST Timor's former governing Fretilin party has threatened to walk out of the national parliament after President Jose Ramos Horta offered resistance hero Xanana Gusmao the prime minister's job yesterday.

Mr Gusmao will rule a coalition led by his National Council for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT), which failed to gain a majority in the June national elections but has formed a strategic alliance with several other anti-Fretilin groups.

Fretilin, which won 21 seats to the CNRT's 18 in the polls six weeks ago, is furious that it has been denied government despite having the greater number of representatives in the 66-seat parliament.

"The 21 members we have in the house will go to the people and ask them whether they want us to remain there at all," Filemeno Aleixo, a senior member of the one-time revolutionary party's still-powerful central committee, told The Australian yesterday.

Ex-prime minister and Fretilin secretary-general Mari Alkatiri had in recent weeks been desperately trying to shore up support to regain his old job, from which he was deposed by Mr Ramos Horta at the height of violence last year that left dozens dead.

However, Fretilin opponents had been calling for the Marxist-inspired movement to take the lead in inspiring a true multi-party democracy, with itself as a strong opposition force, rather than disputing the electoral results.

Mr Ramos Horta has been careful in recent weeks to be seen to be seeking consensus from all groups after the electoral deadlock, but yesterday's decision made real what most observers had been expecting.

Even Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in an extraordinary diplomatic intervention during a visit to East Timor a week ago, described Mr Gusmao as the country's likely next prime minister.

Fretilin's perceived economic mismanagement and failure to engage in basic infrastructure spending translated to shocking results for the party both at the national legislative election and a preceding presidential poll, which Mr Ramos Horta won comfortably.

The party, whose co-founders include Mr Ramos Horta and Mr Gusmao, had become increasingly marginalised in East Timorese politics as ordinary people questioned why millions of dollars in oil and gas money now flowing after landmark agreements with Australia was not being spent.
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