My 2nd and last parliamentary rally was the Fretilin rally held in the national stadium this afternoon. I could make some direct comparisons with the CNRT rally which I attended at the same location yesterday.

Memories play strange tricks sometimes but my gut feel was that CNRT had 10% more people yesterday. The guts also said the average Fretilin rallier was a shade younger.

Organisationally, the Fretilin rally was better run and they managed to get Mari Alkatiri on stage well before my patience ran thin. He was on at 2:30pm and talked his way through for about 70 minutes. There is no doubt he spent considerable time “boring it up” * Xanana and CNRT. Me thinks he will not be a complacent bystander if he becomes a member of the opposition.

The streets were nowhere near as volatile as they were during the presidential election campaign, even though I heard of an incident down at “Pig Bridge” sometime today.

* “boring it up” = slang for saying provocative and antagonistic things about someone