East Timor hero Xanana Gusmao calls for restraint after campaign violence

VIKEKE, East Timor: East Timorese independence hero Xanana Gusmao is calling on supporters not to be provoked after campaigning for elections this week was marred by violence.
Gusmao’s National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction party said 18 of its supporters in Vikeke district were injured over the weekend and two vehicles damaged in an attack by members of rival faction Fretilin.
The parliamentary elections next Saturday are the second in less than a year for East Timor after the Fretilin-led minority government collapsed in January.
After the alleged attack last Saturday, Gusmao said Fretilin was a party of violence that should be shut down but also urged his supporters to show restraint.
“I ask all of you not to respond to provocation from other parties’ members,” he said. “When you return home, you should keep your own security and do not serve violence.”
Jorge Ribeiro, a local official with Gusmao’s party, said police and soldiers who responded to the violence have not arrested anyone. Vikeke’s police commander Antonio Mauluto said the incident is being investigated. Mari Alkatari, secretary-general of Fretilin, did not immediately respond to phone calls or text messages seeking comment.
The election pits a loose grouping of Fretilin and one minor party against a formal alliance of three parties led by Gusmao’s National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction, who together voted against Fretilin’s policy program and budget, resulting in the new election.
East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was occupied by Indonesia for a quarter century. It gained independence after a UN-sponsored referendum in 1999 but reprisals by the Indonesian military devastated the East Timorese half of the island of Timor.
Today, the country of 1.3 million people still faces grim poverty. Leaders including Gusmao, who was East Timor’s first president, from 2002 to 2007, and prime minister from 2007 to 2015, have focused on big-ticket infrastructure projects to develop the economy, funding them from a dwindling supply of former oil riches, but progress is slow.
Presidential and parliamentary elections last year were the first held without UN supervision.