Coming out of a perfect storm of the COVID-19 pandemic, devastating floods and political indecision of the previous year, Timor-Leste celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its independence in 2022 with some rays of hope. The presidential elections in May saw the return of José Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Prize colaureate, also a prior presidential office bearer between 2007 and 2012, as the new president. With his victory, the resistance generation leaders remain at the helm of Timor-Leste but they are confronted with a myriad of governance problems, including the shrinking sovereign wealth fund, lacklustre economic growth, food insecurity and youth unemployment. As a seasoned diplomat with international standing, Ramos-Horta has actively pursued a multi-pronged foreign policy to keep Timor-Leste on an even keel among key partners—namely, Australia, Indonesia, China and ASEAN.

The Shifting Political Landscape

The seeds of political crisis had been sown back in February 2020 with the withdrawal of the National Council for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) party, headed by resistance hero and former president José “Xanana” Gusmão from the three-party coalition comprising the CNRT, the People's Liberation Party (PLP) and the Kmanek Haburas Unidade Nasional Timor Oan (KHUNTO, which stands for “Enrich the National Unity of the Sons of Timor”). The youth-oriented KHUNTO, however, unexpectedly broke ranks with Gusmão and the CNRT afterwards and threw its support behind the fledgling alliance between the PLP and the Revolutionary Front for an Independent Timor-Leste (FRETILIN). This new coalition gave Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak, leader of the PLP and also former president of Timor-Leste, an extended mandate to govern until 2023 so that he would oversee the looming COVID-19 health crisis. He nominated five FRETILIN members and one member of the coalition partner Democratic Party (PD) to fill long-vacant positions in the government's Council of Ministers. By June 2020, the new coalition government—or the Eighth Constitutional Government, as the current administration is formally known—was in place with Gusmão sidelined and with the Ruak government continuing in office as of this writing. It was against this background that Gusmão plotted a comeback not directly but working through a trusted protégé to unseat the FRETILIN-held presidency.