Tensions high as East Timor govt decision due

East Timor’s president is due to announce the formation of a new government today, as recently ousted prime minister Mari Alkatiri said he wanted his old job back.

Leaders remain bitterly divided a year after clashes between security forces spiralled into gang warfare and looting, leaving dozens dead and sending 150,000 others fleeing homes before the young government collapsed.

Parliamentary elections in June failed to produce a clear winner and, with rival parties unable to agree on who should govern, President Jose Ramos-Horta was preparing to make the decision unilaterally, as is his constitutional right.

There are fears, however, that his selection of prime minister and other top government posts could spark fresh violence.

Alkatiri had earlier claimed he did not want his old job, but announced today he would be the prime ministerial candidate for the former ruling Fretilin party, which won the parliamentary polls but without the majority needed to govern alone.

A coalition of parties headed by former president Xanana Gusmao commands more seats, and says it should head the next government.

“I am ready to come back,” said Alkatiri, who was ousted at the height of last year’s unrest and still has many bitter enemies within the ruling elite.

“If a person like Xanana Gusmao is ready to be prime minister ... why not a person like me?” he asked reporters. “As president, he failed to guarantee national unity and national reconciliation.”

East Timor, which broke free from decades of often brutal Indonesian rule in 1999 following a UN-sponsored ballot, is facing major security, humanitarian and economic challenges just five years after it officially became Asia’s newest state.

Unemployment in the nation of less than a million hovers at around 50 percent, gang battles continue to break out in the capital, and aid agencies have warned that a fifth of the population is threatened by food shortages after crop failures.