Timor-Leste is now in the midst of an extended election season, with the April 9 presidential election moving on to the May 9 run-off elections to decide who the next President of the country will be. On June 30, the country will hold parliamentary elections. For the first time, Timor-Leste is in charge of administering its own national elections as a newly independent country, with the international community assisting closely.

USAID is actively supporting Timor-Leste through the electoral process. To ensure meaningful political participation, the International Republican Institution (IRI) is on the ground assisting political parties through a series of trainings. The trainings cover essential skills that political parties must have, such as message development, campaign strategies and internal party communication. IRI has so far trained some 700 political party members, of which 50 were women.

“This training brings us new ideas on how to approach our supporters and voters during the campaign in the future” said Partido Millenium Democrata (PMD) activist, Agostinho Gusmao. He added: “This training is particularly helpful and encouraging for small political parties.” Agostinho Gusmao was among the 30 participants that attended the IRI training in Baucau early this year.

Like Mr. Gusmao’s party, most of the 14 registered political parties have been recently established.

With its sight set on the parliamentary elections, IRI is continuing the training series between rounds of the presidential elections. The United Nations Development Program is assisting in IRI’s second round of district and party agent training.

The last phase of the training after the presidential elections aims to prepare party activists to be election monitors at the polling stations so they can effectively play a watchdog role in time for the parliamentary elections. The training for election monitors will be conducted through a train-the-trainers approach so that the political parties will then be able to train a larger number of party members to cover more polling stations.