UNMIT - Press Conference - 05 April 2007

Obrigado Barracks, Dili

Introduction by Allison Cooper, UNMIT spokesperson: Good afternoon everybody, thank you for coming for our press briefing today. Before we get underway and hear from SRSG Atul Khare and DSRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen, I just want to go through some housekeeping with you of what you can expect from the UN over the next few days and what we will be doing.

First of all there are a number of press statements on this table behind me. They are in English, Tetum and Bahasa, please take them before you go. One of those is from the Electoral Certification Team regarding the timing for their next report.

Another thing to put for you all to put on your diary: there will be a press briefing at 4pm on Election Day to provide you with an overview of the security situation, and that will be held in this room.

Our press briefing at 4pm on the 9th of April will be followed by another press briefing the following day at midday where you will be hearing from the SRSG Atul Khare and other senior UN staff.

While you are all here in one place, especially for those of you who are new arrivals, this woman here is Monica Rodrigues, she’s the UNPol spokesperson and her number is 7230749. She should be your first point of contact over the next few days for any issues to do with security. Of course, I’m always available as well, my number is 723 0453.

I also want to make sure that you have Miguel Caldiera’s number. He is the press advisor for the STAE and the CNE, he is the person to put you in contact with the relevant spokesperson for those organizations. He is on 7266007.

There is another spokesperson here at back in the blue shirt, he is Marcus Prior, he is from the World Food Program and he is on 732 6795.

There is a piece of paper circulating, if you can give me your name, numbers, and contact details we can call you if we are going to organize any further press briefings.

We are in the process of organizing two helicopter trips for the election day. There will be a media pool operating on each of those helicopters. Five places for internationals and five places for national members of the press. If you are keen to be involved with that please stay afterwards and talk to me, I have the relevant paperwork for you and need to sort out who is going where. The final thing I want to say before I pass over to SRSG is that the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon is making a statement on the elections and that will be available on a UNIFEED link. You all have my number, so please contact me in the next couple of days and I will let you know what time it will be available and the logistics of getting that statement. I now hand over to SRSG Atul Khare who will provide a statement followed by DSRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen and then we will then open for questioning. Once again thank you for coming.

SRSG Atul Khare: Good afternoon, boa tarde. Thank you Allison, and thank you all of you for coming.

This morning the senior management from the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste, UNMIT, members of the Diplomatic community, and those who represent the countries of the Core Group in New York had their innovative experience of a video teleconference which had been organized for the first time between the UN and the residents members of the Core Group of the Diplomatic Community in Timor-Leste, with the Ambassadors of the Core Group in New York and the senior DPKO leadership in New York.

It is clear to me that there is very strong international support from the United Nations and the international community for Monday’s elections.

This will be clear to the people of Timor Leste and indeed to the rest of the world through a statement from the Security Council and the statement of the Secretary General, which Allison already told you about. The statement from the Security Council is already available here and you can take a copy as you leave. The message of the Secretary General to the people of Timor-Leste will be available early in the morning of April 8, Sunday. As far as details of UNIFEED are concerned to get the message in a video format, these are available and you can have copies of them as you leave.

Clearly, the people of this country do have the support of many friends around the world, the Secretary General, the Security Council and so on.

Campaigning for the Presidential elections concludes officially tomorrow and I am quite impressed with the process so far.

128 rallies and campaign events were held since March 23, and in one way I am happy that only 15 of them - a little over 10% - were marred by violent incidents. So on the whole, 90% of the campaign events have been violence free. Nevertheless, the 15 incidents of violence caused concerned for me, because they have affected practically all campaigns at one time or another. Fortunately none of the incidents have been extremely serious and none have prevented the campaign from proceeding. Still, we strongly condemn all use of violence during election campaign. Police are taking appropriate action to conclude the situation and to arrest the perpetrators, but at the same time I would again urge all parties to call on their supporters to refrain from such behavior. Such behavior, particularly incidents of violence, have no place in a democratic society.

I was also troubled to hear that yesterday there was an incident whereby some individuals forcibly entered the office of the National Electoral Commission. As you are aware the access control to this building as for any other building has been provided by a private security arrangement, which is currently financed under a UNDP project. In addition there are also UN police officers on the premises and I was happy that the UN police officers were able to escort the four people who forcible entered the building out. While condemning these incidents I also asked the Police Commissioner to strengthen security at CNE. But again, as I have said earlier, the 90% of the campaign has gone well and peacefully.

This conduct of the campaign is a tribute first and foremost to the people of this country and secondly to the level of commitment from all presidential candidates to the Code of Conduct which they all signed a few weeks ago

The body running the election, the STAE, and the organization supervising the election, the CNE, have worked well until now. And this shows that there is good capacity in this country to organize elections.

I am confident that this will be a peaceful election.

I am confident that it will be free, fair and transparent

I am confident that the police service, both UNPol and the PNTL, working as a single unit – assisted by the International Stabilization Forces – will ensure that the space for democratic choice through voting will be safe.

I am also confident that the many different observers, both international and national, will provide the independent observation that will be needed to ensure that the public accepts whatever the results may be.

Before I give the floor DSRSG Finn Reske-Nielsen, let me mention an issue of which has not been mentioned much in last few weeks. As I said from my very first press conference here in mid-December justice is an essential pre-requisite for reconciliation. I strongly believe that there is need for energetic follow up to the recommendations of the Independent Special Commission of Inquiry into the events of April-May last year. And in this regard I will like to repeat again, that as far as fugitive Major Reinado is concerned, he should either submit to justice peacefully or he has to be brought to justice. Justice, accountability, and strengthening of the rule of law, are critical issues for the government of this country. Let me now hand over to DSRSG Mr. Finn Reske-Nielsen.

DSRSG Finn Reske Nielsen: Thank you, boa tarde, good afternoon.

I would like to briefly provide you with some facts and figures about the preparations for the upcoming presidential elections. Let me at the outset note, as I noted on many occasions, the elections next week have been organized, conducted and supervised by the national authorities of Timor-Leste. And this is been done in a country that is only five years old - five years young I should say - and therefore it is a big task for the electoral institutions to carry this out, and so far they have done very well. As you know the government completed the voter registration process last week and as a result of that there are 522,933 registered voters: 51% of them men and 49% of them women. Over the past several months extensive voter education campaigns have taken place across the country led by the government, but with strong technical and logistic support from the United Nations. This is all been aimed at ensuring that the voters would know when to vote, where to vote, how to vote, and what it is to vote in a multi party democracy.

Monday’s presidential election would be managed through more than 500 polling centers and more than 700 polling stations across the country. Those centers will be run by more than 3500 electoral officials who have been trained in the electoral procedures over the past week or so.

As you know the sensitive electoral materials including the ballot papers were distributed to the district capitals yesterday and they are now being repackaged and ready for subsequent dispatch to all the polling centers and polling stations on Sunday. And all of this is being done by STAE, the Secretariat responsible for the elections, within the Ministry of State Administration under the supervision of the National Electoral Commission, and with support from the United Nations. The support from the United Nations will include vehicles but we would also on Sunday use our four helicopters to help with the distribution of sensitive materials to places that are not accessible by roads either because they very remote or because roads could have been washed away due to the recent rains.

The government will also be using more than 400 porters and around 90 horses to distribute in a cost effective manner the sensitive materials that are in hard to get to places.

Security as SRSG has mentioned before, is a primary concern. So far things have been going quite well. There will be a further straightening of tighten security in the lead up to election day itself and immediate post election period. This is done in collaborative efforts between UNPOL and PNTL as one force to ensure that everybody will be safe on election day. Finally a few words on the electoral observers, at the present time there are more than 2000 national observers. They have all been accredited by STAE and there are 232 international observers from a large number of countries and regional groupings. Those observers are receiving support from the United Nations to help them do their job in the coming days and coordinate their activities in such a way that would have the broadest possible geographic coverage. Thank you very much, obrigado barrack.

Question: Lindsay Murdock from The Age, could I ask DSRSG Finn, there have been serious issues raised about the election by the Certification Team. How many of those have been addressed and how many do the organizers have left to address before this election is seen as fair enough?

DSRSG Reske-Nielsen: The Certification Team indeed so far has issued five reports. They just started the 6th visit and we expect the sixth report will be issued some time towards the end of this visit in about two to three weeks. And during the course of their five visits so far they have made a number of observations and a number of recommendations regarding the different stages and facets of the electoral process. They made a number of comments regarding the [inaudible] framework and recommended in a number of cases that supplementary legislation be enacted by the Parliament and signed by the President. So far one supplementary law has already been passed and signed into law. And a number of regulations have been issued by STAE and by the CNE in order to comply as best as possible to the recommendations of the team. A number of recommendations, we are hopeful, will be implemented after the first round of the presidential elections.

Q: Anne Barker from the ABC. Could you just explain the process of assessing the result on Monday, what would it be and what sort of threshold has to be reached to decide to go to the second round of elections?

DSRSG Reske-Nielsen: The actual casting of the vote will take place between 7am and 4pm Monday. The counting will be done in [inaudible] at the polling centers and polling stations. The first tabulation will be done at the district level immediately thereafter. The ballot boxes and the ballot papers will be transported to Dili where the final tabulation will be done by the CNE. And I believe the plan is that the chairman of the CNE will announce the official result sometime towards the end of next week.
As regards the second question, under the Presidential election law there will be a need for a run off election if no candidate gets 50% plus one of the total votes cast. So if that is the case of there will be a second round one month from the 9th of April.

SRSG Khare: Let me just add one small issue. After CNE announce the result of the elections, I hope and I trust that the candidates will accept the results of the elections, but if by chance they do not accept there is an opportunity to appeal at the Court of Appeals and the Court of Appeals has to give a ruling thereafter. So that is a process that might also take a bit of time. I trust that all candidates will either peacefully accept the results of the elections or challenge it in the court.

Q: The group that forcibly entered the office of CNE based on information that we received, they brought with them stones and also some other handmade weapons. I would like to ask the question to Mr. Atul, is it due to weak provision of security that these people managed to get in? If that so then is there any need to provide additional strong security ahead of Monday’s elections?

SRSG Khare: Thank you. As I said in the beginning, that this is an incident that has to be condemned very strongly. There was already security for the building. For this building, security has to be provided by private security agencies. UNDP is helping the government, because the government has to provide security, but UNDP under its program is helping the government by bearing the cost of security of six people who provide security around the clock. In addition, as a special case, UN police officers have also been posted there. It was the presence of these police officers which ensured that these people could be taken out immediately as they forcibly entered. I have not been told that they had any weapons. I am told they had a few sticks with them but obviously by the quick action of the police they could not create any damage and they were taken out of the building. Having said that, I already asked the police Commissioner to provide more police officers. At the same time I must say that police in any country around the world can only control the incident, as they did this time - they can contain and control. It is not possible to prevent each and every incident anywhere in the world. And I think as far as containment and control is concerned, they have done very well.

Q: Steven Fitzpatrick from The Australian newspaper. Given that there will be a few days between voting on Monday as you say and a formal announcement of results later that week, do you have any concerns or any specific information that any groups or supporters of candidates might be planning to cause trouble or has the capacity to cause trouble, and what sort of specific precautions you have in place to deal with that?

SRSG Khare: Democracy is a process that requires internalization of norms of non-violence and mutual respect. It is of course concerning that there is possibility and there is always possibility of disturbances between now and the election day and between the election day and the announcement of the results and even after the announcement of the results. I will not enter into operational details but this is to be tackled on three fronts.
First and foremost the police is gathering the required information to try and take preemptive action and also station its forces with the support of ISF as needed to ensure that when an incident occurs it can be controlled quickly. Secondly, the candidates have to call on their supporters to scrupulously respect the code of conduct, which they themselves have signed, and the broader concept of elections in any democracy to refrain from violence. In this regards I have just made an appeal to all of you just now for all candidates and political parties to refrain from violence and to encourage their supporters to do the same. I have also been told the leaders of the church and the president of the country will be making similar appeals for maintenance of peace over the next three days. And finally there is the role of the international community, which is watching, very carefully, and I do believe that a statement just issued by the Security Council and the message to be delivered by the Secretary General will have an effect.

Q: Richard Lloyd, London Times. In making your contingency plans for security over the election period, which group or elements have you identified as most likely to threaten security? And a separate question, could you just run through the incidents yesterday in [inaudible] and I know there were a few others. Could you just tell us briefly what happened, what injuries there were and who was involved and so on.

SRSG Khare: Let me quickly run through the incidents of yesterday. There were five campaigning events which were held in one day, which is already a very strong challenge and task. In fact in all the campaign events I am told that the security was largely quite reasonable and no major violence occurred during the campaign. Events have occurred when convoys of supporters were either going towards the campaign events or returning from it. There are details where Fretilin were victims, there were people from PD who were victims and there were victims from supporters of other party too. Two of the major incidents are the one which took place in the evening in Gleno in Ermera where of course the situation was control in a short period of time but I believe that close to 20 people sustained injuries some with rama ambons, steel darts, two of them, and some with stones. Some of the injuries were minors and total number of injuries approximately twenty, some were minor, and four had required hospitalization. On the other side of Dili, in the evening when supporters of one candidate were returning back from the rally they were stoned near the Metinaro IDP camp and around 15 or so of them sustained injuries.
I am not going into all the incidents because we can provide that information to you after the press conference and to anybody else who wants it from the spokesperson but I want to highlight the fact that there were five rallies, and despite that all the rallies went off peacefully. I want to also highlight that we have three UN vehicles which have sustained considerable damage while trying to prevent these incidents and control these incidents and in fact two UN police officers also sustained injuries. Luckily they were minor and the officers were so committed that after first aid they continued their work in a short period of time.

Q: And the first question, who have you identified as the potential trouble makers?

SRSG Khare: Well obviously the operational details, which we have both from the police and the ISF, I would not like to share in the public meeting. But what I would say is that one category which we have clearly identified as perpetrators of violence are those who do not have the interest of this country and people at heart. Those who do not believe in democracy, and those who do not have place in a democratic society. So clearly that means all the perpetrators of violence. Of course we have specific information we keep on collecting specific information and we control the situation.

Q: I am Karen, from AAP, I didn’t want to go through all the incidents but I was just wondering if you could confirm one: at the CNE press conference an hour ago they said that the Lasama campaign had complained to them that some of their supporters were shot at with guns yesterday and I was just wondering if you could confirm that, and given that CNE at the press conference said that they felt threatened when people invaded their compound yesterday, why you confident that the elections will be free and fair?

SRSG Khare: Obviously I cannot confirm what Lasama has said or not said to the CNE, but I what I can confirm is that there were no guns shots yesterday except those used by the police to calm the situation. As I said, I am quite saddened that supporters of all political parties seemed to have engaged in some violence or other against other political party. As far as CNE is concerned as I said in the beginning that not only do I condemn this incident and not only have we asked for enhancement of security but we have to recall that the four people did not create any damage the situation was contained and controlled and they were escorted out of the building and I hope that with the increasing number of security in CNE the psychological perception of some members of CNE of fear will be removed and they will be encouraged to do the work as indeed others are doing.

Q: Brian Thomson, SBS. Can you give us an idea the range of security forces that you have on the ground here. ISF, police number etc…

SRSG Khare: There are 1655 international police. In addition there are nearly about 2800 national police officers working in Dili and in the districts and they are supported as required by a close to 1000 strong international stabilization force led by Australian.

Spokesperson Cooper: Are there any questions from a Timorese journalist?

Q: Sebastian from Daily Telegraph. A straight factual answer would be really appreciated. Are supporters of Fretilin responsible for more violence than supporters of any other party?

SRSG Khare: I do not believe that any political leader supports violence and what we have seen is that supporters from all political parties have suffered from some degree of violence at this stage in the campaign, and based upon the investigation of the police I am not prepared to make a judgment on who the perpetrators of the violence were. What we know is who the victims were. I am sorry I don’t have a one word answer.

Q: Can you tell us whether there were any arrests yesterday?

SRSG Khare: As I see it here nearly 15 people were arrested yesterday in Dili. Most of them were arrested for rock throwing because that was the main mechanism by which they were inflicting attack on other party supporters. A few were also arrested for possession of illegal ammunition, bullets, and some were arrested for riotous behavior and finally, while concentrating and focusing on the elections the police continues to do its normal work so one person was arrested for burglary and another person was arrested following up a warrant issued by the Prosecutor General – a case allegedly of paedophilia. We have the names here, but obviously working on the basis that they are innocent unless convicted by the court I will not be able to give the names and since this is the last question before we conclude the press conference on behalf of UNMIT on behalf of my senior leadership wish all of you a very happy Easter and a peaceful elections.

Spokesperson Cooper: We will see you back here at 4 o’clock on April the 9th.