Courtesy of East Timor Studies, I came across this 26 page paper from Australia which summarises as simply as I can handle, the 14 parties contesting the upcoming parliamentary election – “Political Parties and Groupings of Timor-Leste”.

It is not going to tell you that much about why one should (if you could) vote for any of the parties, but it gives a short history and names important movers and shakers. I prepared a little table (below) where I doodled a bit and threw in some info. I was interested in when the parties started and also which ones seemed to be pushing a different language emphasis. (The language thing is not detailed in any way. It is just a summary of what this paper mentions on the subject. If not mentioned, nothing is put in the table.)

It was also the 1st time I looked at the current parliamentary distribution of seats. Based on round one of the presidential election, the distribution is expected to change significantly, with ASDT/PSD, PD and CNRT gaining seats at the expense of Fretilin. Who knows how much support the others have, particularly those parties established after 2002 who do not currently have parliamentary representation.

As you can see, the mnemonics (ie abbreviated name of party) make it all pretty confusing.

Party	Started	Current Seats	Stated position on language	Key Players
ASDT	1974	6	Tetun, Portuguese, English	Xavier do Amaral
CNRT	2007	–		Xanana Gusmao, Agio Pereira, Dionisio Soares
Fretilin	1974	54	Tetun, Portuguese	Francisco “LuOlu” Guterres, Mari Alkatiri, Estanislau da Silva
KOTA	1974	2	Tetun, Portuguese, Bahasa, English	Manuel Tilman, Leao Pedro dos Reis Amaral
PD	2001	7	Tetun	Mariano Sabino Lopes, Fernando “LaSama” de Araujo, Joao Boavida
PDC	2000	3		Antonio Ximenes, Rev Arlindo Marcal
PMD	2005	–		Ermenegildo “Kupa” Lopes, Lettu Purn, Melio de Jesus
PNT	1999	2	Tetun, Bahasa, English, Portuguese	Dr. Abilio Araujo, Allanca Conceicao de Araujo
PPT	2000	1		Dr.Jacob Xavier
PR	2005	–	Tetun, Portuguese, English	Joao Saldanha
PSD	2000	6	Tetun, Portuguese, English	Mario Carrascalao, Zacarias Albano da Costa, Joao Goncalves
PST	1995?	6	Tetun, Portuguese	Avelino Coelho da Silva, Nelson Correia
PUN	2006	–		Fernando Borges
UDT	1974	2	Portuguese	Joao Carrascalao, Quiteria da Costa
Undertim	2005	–	Tetun, Portuguese, English, Bahasa	Cornelio “L7” Gama, Cristiano da Costa

Addendum : The ALP web site is no longer hosting the PDF file mentioned above. It can now be found at :

timor_leste_political_parties_and_groupings_2nd_edition.pdf