DILI, East Timor, March 22, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-
Horta has taken a dominant lead in East Timor's presidential election held
over the weekend but failed to secure a majority, officials said, leaving
Southeast Asia's youngest country on course for a second round of voting.

  The 72-year-old revolutionary hero won 46.58 percent of the vote against
22.16 percent for incumbent president and former guerrilla fighter Francisco
"Lu-Olo" Guterres, a preliminary ballot count showed Monday.

  With all votes counted, they must now be verified and validated by the
country's election commission before the final results are announced, top
election official Acilino Manuel Branco said in televised remarks.

  If confirmed that no candidate secured a majority, a second round will be
held on April 19 and the winner will take office on May 20 -- East Timor's
20th anniversary of independence from Indonesia, which occupied the former
Portuguese colony for 24 years.

  Voters headed to the polls on Saturday to choose from 16 candidates for the
five-year term in what is the most competitive election in the country's
history.

  Major political events in East Timor have often been marred by violence and
conflict, but observers said the vote passed without incident.

  "Timor-Leste held credible, transparent, and peaceful elections," said
Domenec Ruiz Devesa, chief observer of the European Union Election
Observation Mission, in a press release.

  Ramos-Horta, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his efforts
towards a peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor, led the country
from 2007 to 2012 but came out of retirement to challenge Guterres.

  Political tensions between the country's two main parties -- Guterres'
Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) and Ramos-
Horta's National Congress of the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT) -- have
risen in the past four years.

  It has led to a political deadlock that has seen the government fail to
pass budgets for several years, economically paralysing the mostly rural
country of 1.3 million people already hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic.