March on

Yesterday was the first official day of the presidential election campaign. Which means that overnight, every spare post, tree and lamp in Dili has been reclaimed as an opportunity to hang yet another poster of a sparkly-eyed, Jesus T-shirt-wearing presidential candidate. Party flags abound, one Molotov cocktail has already been thrown and the local papers are featuring exciting news stories such as ‘ballot paper printing reaches 50%’. It’s on.

The cast of characters campaigning for presidency are too numerous for me to have any hope of knowing who’s who – I’m pretty sure there’s more than ten. Of course there’s the old bastion of international diplomacy, José Ramos-Horta, who has a penchant for riding round Dili in a golf buggy and tweeting things like “Two events in Los Angeles today, private lunch and cocktail party”.

Then there’s Taur Matan Ruak (whose name means ‘two sharp eyes’ in Tetun), an ex-military commander who says things like “Today I am only letting out bullet by bullet. What comes next is a cannon.”

There’s also Angela Freitas, former lover of a former coup leader who was actually thrown out of the campaign for not ticking some box or other. Her PR campaign has not wavered – every other day there’s a story of how she’s been targeted or her office has been ransacked, and ‘Viva Angela Freitas’ is apparently the top graffiti tag in town. 

As a humble outsider, all of this is totally confusing. Especially because everyone keeps telling me that the President of Timor-Leste is just a ceremonial position. If that is true (I have my doubts) these people must really be hankering after the keys to that golf buggy.

March 17 is the date in the diary, although the electoral system here means that there’ll probably be a second round a few weeks later, before the parliamentary elections in June. Which are apparently even more bamboozling and potentially volatile.

Death, taxes and leadership spills… it’s the same everywhere right?

This is much nicer to look at than a presidential candidate on an oversized poster.