By Christine Tjandraningsih and Antonio Mali,
The leftist Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor has won the Southeast Asian country's legislative election, but appears unlikely to claim the absolute majority required to govern outright, the vote count showed Monday.
With all 567,964 valid votes counted, the party better known as Fretilin, which captured 29.65 percent of the vote total, is expected to get 19-20 seats in the 65-seat parliament -- short of the 33 needed to control the unicameral parliament outright.
The party led by East Timor's first post-independence prime minister Mari Alkatiri seems open to forming a coalition with its chief rival, the center-left National Congress for East Timorese Reconstruction party, or CNRT.
According to the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration, CNRT, led by former independence fighter Xanana Gusmao, the country's first president after independence, was at 29.46 percent and is expected to get around the same number of seats.
CNRT won the most votes in the 2012 election but had to form a coalition government.
Trailing the two main parties are the newly established Popular Liberation Party, led by former President and guerilla fighter Taur Matan Ruak, at 10.58 percent and Democratic Party at 9.79 percent. Both of them are likely to get 6-7 seats each, respectively.
Another smaller party, Khunto, held 6.43 percent, putting it on track to pass the 4 percent threshold to win 4-5 seats in the parliament.
The other 16 parties may not get any seats for failing to pass the required threshold of the vote.
Based on the results, which must be legalized by a court, 76.74 percent of East Timor's 760,907 eligible voters cast their ballots in the election. Saturday's parliamentary election was the country's first without U.N. supervision.
In a victory speech Sunday, Alkatiri told Fretilin supporters they "will embrace others to join into the government."
Alkatiri, however, stressed Fretilin will "continue to cooperate with my brother Xanana Gusmao to develop the country in efforts to improve its economy to free the East Timorese people from poverty," signaling his openness to form a coalition with the CNRT.
It was not immediately clear, however, if CNRT is willing to set up a coalition. During a one-month election campaign prior to the election, Gusmao consistently said CNRT would choose to be in opposition if they secured less than 33 seats in the parliament rather than seek a government coalition.
CNRT members are scheduled to hold a meeting on Monday with Gusmao to decide what to do after the election results.
In the last election held in 2012, Fretilin won nearly 30 percent of the vote, the second-highest share after the CNRT, and initially entered the opposition after the CNRT formed a coalition with two smaller parties.
In 2015, Fretilin and the CNRT entered a "unity government," with CNRT inviting some Fretilin members to join the administration, including physician Rui Araujo to be the current prime minister.
Parliamentarians are elected through a party-list proportional representation system.
After 15 years of independence, the young democracy's government continues to face a slew of economic issues including high unemployment.
An opinion poll conducted last December by the Asia Foundation, a nonprofit international development organization, showed an overall downward trend in views about the country's outlook, with increasing levels of discontent among younger voters.
Indonesia annexed East Timor by force in 1974 after it had been under Portuguese colonial rule for about 400 years. East Timor formally gained independence in 2002 after two and a half years under U.N. administration following a referendum in 1999, in which the East Timorese overwhelmingly voted for separation.
