What a strange week or so.  Tons of international election observer teams praising the election process (with a few minor gripes), then leaving town.  But we still don’t have a result.

And the UN pledging to support the new government – whatever it is.

And a parliamentary minority claiming victory against a majority coalition of opposing parties who (publically) say they will not vote with the aforementioned minority.

And for the last 2 nights, an increase in night-time security incidents involving rock throwing and tyre burning.  The boys are restless.

Constitutional lawyers … come on down.  Maybe there is a clause about settling election results by an arm wrestle.

Dear Jeb,

A few weeks back, I praised the progress in the Timorese electoral process and cast excrement on your part in the Florida fiasco.  I would like to apologise unreservedly.

Clearly, I should have retained some excrement and I obviously threw way too early.

I am not sure if you sent out the rednecks at midnight to do some re-education through the knuckle, but you should take note of the possibilities for next time.  As the boss’s brother, you play a very important part in influencing public opinion.  Yeah, I know its hard when he’s the ugly one.

yours feyfully

It looks like that a coalition of CNRT, ASDT/PSD and PD may have been successfully formed.  This coalition has more than 50% of the seats in parliament and therefore can pass legislation.

Fretilin have claimed that as the party with the most votes, they are entitled to receive the first invitation from the president to form a government.  They have said they have 60 days (or was it 90 ?) to act on this.  It is unclear if a signed agreement from the coalition takes precedence over the 60 days.

Jose Teixeira from Fretilin (via Radio OZ) has said that the constitution permits Fretilin to form a minority government.  He makes a clear distinction between a pre-election coalition and post-election coalition, basically asserting that a post-election coalition has no other additional rights apart from the ability to vote on a majority basis.  I am not sure just how a minority government can get any legislation passed.  I understand that if the budget is rejected twice, then the president has grounds to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections.

So on the one hand, it is possible that once the final elections results have been released within the next week, that a coalition could be invited to form a government.  On the other hand, it could take 2 months before Fretilin finally concede that they can not form a majority government.  They could go for the minority government option which may eventually lead to a fresh election.

Take your pick or anything in between.

The parliamentary vote counting finished just after lunch today. So that’s 4.3 x 15 hour counting days or 65 hours of counting. The result seemed known about Tuesday once trends had been set.

The key outcomes are :

• Fretilin had the most votes with 29.0%, followed by CNRT with 24.1%
• Both ASDT/PSD and PD seemed to lose votes when compared to the presidential elections
• However, about 9% of the vote went to minor parties who failed to meet the 3% threshold and hence those votes basically are totally wasted
• It is assumed that the above 9% of votes has all come from the non-Fretilin parties while Fretilin has pretty much held their supporter base

The seat allocation is expected to be :

Presumably a coalition needs to be formed with a minimum of 33 seats of the total 65 seats. It would be a huge surprise for a lot of people if Fretilin could obtain such a coalition arrangement. Most people assume a CNRT-ASDT/PSD-PD coalition.

The latest figures from CNE (the electoral authority) show that over 40% of the vote has now been counted.

With the Dili vote not starting until mid-morning on Tuesday, the figures had been a bit distorted with an early strong showing from the strong Fretilin areas in the east. But as the strong CNRT vote in Dili came on-stream, the Fretilin vote dropped to a more predictable level.

Both CNRT and Fretilin have done well in the areas you would expect with Fretilin doing quite well in Oecussi where most other parties did not campaign anywhere near as hard. I don’t know how they did it but the Oecussi vote was completed well before the end of Tuesday. Several of the other districts will still be battling to finish by Friday. Dili counting may yet go into the weekend.

Even though there are days to go before counting is complete, the international observer groups are falling all over themselves to release press statements on how well the voting process (mostly voting day itself and the pre-election campaigning) was conducted. Look up your thesaurus under gush.