The key to successful elections in Timor-Leste: professional security forces
The big day has finally arrived for voters all across Timor-Leste and, for the first time since the restoration of independence in 2002, for Timorese also living in Australia and Portugal. According to the electoral administration body STAE, there are 747,583 Timorese voters registered to vote during the March 20 presidential election and the July legislative election. Voting in Timor-Leste is a sacred duty, and the high turnout rates in this small Southeast Asian nation prove that. Timorese will still get up before dawn to walk to their nearest polling station to pierce their ballot paper. Yet there is a sense of dramatic unease around these elections with the usual Timor-Leste pessimists casting shadows over the country’s ability to organize peaceful elections in 2017. These pessimists argue zealously that Timor-Leste will again fall into political crisis, centering their arguments mostly on historical records without deep analysis of the substantial advances or developments of the past 15 years since independence.
