The directly elected president is a largely symbolic figure, with formal powers limited to the right to veto legislation and make certain appointments. The president may serve up to two five-year terms. Francisco Guterres, known as Lú-Olo, was elected president in 2017, following a campaign period a European Union (EU) observer mission praised for its generally peaceful conduct. The mission assessed the election itself as having been well administered.

The leader of the majority party or coalition in Parliament becomes prime minister, and serves as head of government. In June 2018, former independence fighter and former president José Maria Vasconcelos, popularly known as Taur Matan Ruak, was sworn in as prime minister.

Members of the 65-seat, unicameral Parliament are directly elected and serve five-year terms. Because the minority government that was seated after the 2017 election could not pass a budget, the president dissolved Parliament in January 2018 and called new elections, which were held that May. The sitting opposition parties—the National Congress for the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT), the Kmanek Haburas Unidade Nasional Timor Oan (KHUNTO), and the People’s Liberation Party (PLP)—came together as the Change for Progress Alliance (AMP) and won an outright majority of 34 seats. The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) won 23 seats, the Democratic Party (PD) won 5 seats, and the Democratic Development Front (FDD) won 3 seats.

An EU observer mission called the elections “transparent, well-managed and credible,” and they were generally peaceful and orderly, despite a few violent incidents during the campaign period.

The 2017 and 2018 EU election observation missions generally praised the National Election Commission (CNE) for its oversight of the years’ polls, but expressed concern that changes to the election laws in 2017 somewhat reduced the body’s supervisory responsibilities. Provisions governing elections are found across a number of pieces of legislation, and observers have called for legal mandates governing elections to be harmonized into a more coherent framework.

Some campaign finance regulations favor larger parties, such as a lack of caps on spending, and a system in which government campaign subsidies are awarded after elections, according to the number of votes a party won.

Nevertheless, political parties are generally free to form and operate. Two new parties, the youth-aligned KHUNTO and the PLP, concentrated enough support ahead of the 2017 elections to win 13 legislative seats between them that year. They later joined the AMP coalition in the 2018 elections, which won with an outright majority in Parliament.

The national elections in 2018 marked the third time since independence that governing power transferred between parties. The formation of a new majority AMP government comprised of the opposition parties from the 2017 elections includes the CNRT and two new parties, the PLP and KHUNTO.

While some smaller parties hold seats in Parliament, parties associated with the independence movement continue to dominate politics, with the 2017 government led by Fretilin and the 2018 government led by a coalition which includes the CNRT.

Politics are dominated by independence-movement figures who have formed political parties. However, some younger candidates have begun to emerge and win representation.

Ethnic minorities are generally well represented in politics. With 39 percent of lawmakers being women, Timor-Leste has the highest percentage of women in Parliament in the Asia-Pacific region. However, women have overwhelmingly expressed the opinion that there would be few if any women candidates on party lists in the absence of parity laws, and that in practice women politicians have difficulty participating meaningfully in political processes.

In 2017 and 2018, the government held competitive and peaceful elections without the supervision of a UN mission that had been deployed to help restore security following a 2006 political crisis. A new minority government was formed after the legislative elections in 2017, but due to its inability to pass a budget was dissolved by the president in January 2018. The new government elected in the May 2018 early polls debated and approved a 2018 budget in September 2018, and a 2019 budget in February 2019.

President Guterres, from Fretilin, remains in office, so for the first time the president and the prime minister are from different parties. Since 2018, the President has rejected nine of the nominated cabinet ministers, in addition to a number of vice ministers, leaving several ministries without leaders.

The World Bank estimates that Timor-Leste loses from 1.5 to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) annually to corruption. Anticorruption bodies lack enough funding to operate effectively. The independent Anti-Corruption Commission (CAC) was established in 2009 and has no powers of arrest or prosecution and must rely on the prosecutor general, with input from police and the courts, to follow up on corruption investigations. Furthermore, Timor-Leste has no legal framework to protect those reporting corruption. In 2019, efforts were underway to develop an anticorruption law.

While the state has attempted to make budgets more accessible, procurement processes remain largely opaque. Requests for public information are not always granted, and at times require applicants to undertake inconvenient travel. Information is often issued exclusively in Portuguese, which some Timorese do not speak.

Media freedom is protected in the constitution. In practice, domestic media outlets are vulnerable to political pressure due to their reliance on government financial support, in a small media market with limited nongovernmental sources of paid advertising. Journalists are often treated with suspicion, particularly by government officials, and practice self-censorship. However, in recent years, the country’s journalists have been more willing to produce articles critical of the government.

Freedom of religion is protected in the constitution, and Timor-Leste is a secular state. Approximately 97 percent of the population is Roman Catholic. Protestant groups have reported some cases of discrimination and harassment.

Academic freedom is generally respected.

There are few constraints on open and free private discussion, and citizens are free to discuss political and social issues. Topics related to the 2006 unrest, in which armed clashes between the police and mobilized civilian groups resulted in numerous deaths and the displacement of some 150,000 people, remain sensitive.

Freedom of assembly is constitutionally guaranteed, and while it is generally respected in practice, some laws can be invoked to restrict peaceful gatherings. Demonstrations deemed to be “questioning constitutional order,” or disparaging the reputations of the head of state and other government officials, are prohibited. Demonstrations must be authorized in advance, and laws restrict how close they can be to government buildings and critical infrastructure.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can generally operate without interference, although the state actively monitors and regulates their work. All registered NGOs receiving government or donor funds are under the oversight of the Ministry of Planning and Finance. Few NGOs operate outside of the capital.

Workers, other than police and military personnel, are permitted to form and join labor unions and bargain collectively, though a 2011 law requires written notification of demands and allows for five days for a response from employers in advance of striking. If employers do not respond or if an agreement is not reached within 20 days, then five days’ notice is required for a strike. In practice, few workers are unionized due to high levels of unemployment and informal economic activity.

Concerns over judicial independence remain for politically sensitive cases, and there is still reported political interference in the justice system.

After independence, the judicial system depended on contracted foreign judges and lawyers. In 2014, however, the government terminated contracts and visas of foreigners working in judicial, prosecutorial, and anticorruption institutions. As a result, legal proceedings in some courts were delayed or forced to restart with new personnel, and the Legal and Judicial Training Centre was closed. Later, a 2017 law explicitly permitting foreign judges allowed training courses for Timorese judges to recommence after a three-year closure. The Legal and Judicial Training Centre has now been reopened, with Portuguese lawyers and language instructors training judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, and coordinating training across justice-related institutions.

Score Change: The score improved from 1 to 2 because the judicial system has made progress in recovering from the abrupt dismissal of foreign judges in 2014, in part through the training of new Timorese judges.

Due process rights are often restricted or denied, owing in part to a dearth of resources and personnel. The training of new magistrates following the 2014 dismissals of foreign judges has been slow, resulting in significant case backlogs, although this is improving as the Legal and Judicial Training Centre has reopened and trainee judges have since completing training.

Cases involving past human rights abuses are required by law to be heard by a panel including two international judges, which has not been possible since foreign judges were dismissed in 2014. There have been no new human rights cases since, and cases opened before 2014 are indefinitely pending.

According to the US State Department, the police force operates without a clear legal definition of its mandates, and civilian complaints to police are often met with repeated requests that the complaint be submitted in writing.

Alternative methods of dispute resolution and customary law are widely used, though they lack enforcement mechanisms and have other significant shortcomings, including unequal treatment of women. Nine of 13 municipalities have no fixed courts and rely on mobile services. The use of Portuguese for court administration poses an obstacle, and a shortage of Portuguese interpreters often forces the adjournment of trials. As there are only four fixed courts set up in Timor, and geographical access to courts remains a challenge. The government has set up mobile courts as an interim measure, and has announced plans for the development of a hybrid justice system with more harmonization between formal and customary dispute resolution mechanisms.

Police officers and soldiers are regularly accused of excessive force and abuse of power, though the courts have had some success in prosecuting offenders. Public perception of the police has improved in recent years, as have general feelings of security.

While hate crimes based on sexual orientation are considered an aggravating circumstance in the penal code, other protections against discrimination for LGBT+ people are lacking. Gay men and transgender women in particular have trouble accessing employment opportunities due to low rates of access to education and discrimination. Lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women report cases of extreme physical violence from strangers and their own families, including cases of “corrective” rape and forced marriage or relationships with the opposite sex. Issues like sexual orientation and gender identity receive little public attention, though a small number of LGBT+ advocacy organizations have been active in recent years.

Equal rights for women are constitutionally guaranteed, but discrimination and gender inequality persist in practice and in customary law.

Citizens generally enjoy unrestricted travel, though travel by land to the enclave of Oecusse is hampered by visa requirements and Indonesian and Timorese checkpoints. Individuals enjoy free choice of residence and employment, but unemployment rates are high, especially among youth, and most of the population still relies on subsistence farming.

Timorese have the right to establish businesses, and the legal framework for doing so is fairly straightforward. However, practical aspects of establishing and operating a business are complicated by inefficiencies that make it difficult to gain appropriate permits and enforce contracts, as well as a difficulties in obtaining credit.

Property rights are complicated by past conflicts and the unclear status of communal or customary land rights. According to a September 2019 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation, a nonprofit development organization, land problems remain the biggest reported security issue in the country, and there are signs that land-related disputes have increased since 2015. There is no formal mechanism to address competing claims. A national land law designed to establish formal tenure and to help resolve disputes through arbitration was enacted in 2017, but still requires several implementing regulations.

Gender-based and domestic violence remain widespread. Civil society groups have criticized the courts’ use of prison sentences for only the most severe and injurious such cases, and few reported cases are actually investigated. A lack of training on gender-based violence hampers investigatory procedures into such cases, including investigators’ failure to recognize or collect evidence.

Timor-Leste has a teenage pregnancy rate of 24 percent. An estimated 19 percent of teenage girls are married by age 18.

Timor-Leste is both a source and destination country for human trafficking. Timorese from rural areas are vulnerable to human trafficking for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude, and children are sometimes placed in bonded labor. The government has increased its efforts to prosecute offenders, including by promulgating the 2017 Law on Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking. However, in 2018, the government investigated 65 trafficking cases, compared to 267 in 2017, and 176 in 2016. Few cases result in convictions.