The first (verbal) shots have been fired in Timor-Leste’s presidential elections, scheduled for 17 March. Among the announced candidates for the election are Fretilin’s president, Francisco ‘Lu-Olo’ Guterres and former commander of Timor-Leste’s armed forces (F-FDTL), Jose Maria Vasconcelos, better known as ‘Taur Matan Ruak’. Current president Jose Ramos-Horta has said he will announce whether he will stand for a second term as president in early February. The Timor-Leste presidency is, according to the constitution, a largely ceremonial position. However, Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmao before him have tested the constitutional limits of the office. In a speech to Fretilin village chiefs in Baucau recently, Taur Matan Ruak spoke strongly in favour of his candidacy for the presidency. Fretilin, he said, had not governed well as the first post-independence government. Ruak was quoted by Alex Tilman, in his blog, as saying: ‘Today my words have been a little heated, and that’s for Bucoli to hear, for Fretilin to hear, so I don't need to go around boasting about myself. If I boasted myself, what comes next will be like a cannon. It destroys mountains. Be careful. Today I am only letting out bullet by bullet. What comes next is a cannon’. Ruak described Lu-Olo as a ‘younger brother’ and that his time as president would come later. According to Tilman, Ruak indicated that, by standing as candidate, Lu-Olo might have breached a ‘sacred’ trust, forged during the resistance when Ruak was Lu-Olo’s commander. While swearing to respect hierarchy in within a military context, such criteria is no longer relevant in post-military life. Moreover, while notions of the ‘sacred’ are important to most East Timorese, this is a good example of where spiritual matters should not be confused with the temporal world. The public sphere, such as the candidacy for the presidency, can onl... Read more