There are 696 voting centers now confirmed and prepared to facilitate the presidential election to be held on March 2017.
The General Director of the Secretariat for Technical and Electoral Administration (STAE), Acilino Manuel Branco, said of that number 693 were inside the country and another three were outside Timor-Leste in Australia and Portugal.
He said public schools would be used as voting centers and there would be a total of 941 voting stations across the country.
The voting centers in Australia will be located in Darwin and Sydney and in Portugal’s capital Lisbon.
He said officials were now raising awareness among communities about the election date and a list of registered voters was also being displayed in each suku (village) so that any misspellings of names could be corrected.
He said some election materials are already being distributed in the municipalities, except ballot papers.
He said the government had been contacted by some of international organizations from Australia and the European Union that wanted to observe the presidential and parliamentary elections, both of which are being held this year.
Over 740,000 people are due to cast their vote in the upcoming elections, with more than 1300 overseas voters also expected to participate.
Voting for the presidential election will take place simultaneously on March 20 inside and outside the country, depending on the local time in Australia and Portugal.
Meanwhile, First Lady Isabel Ferreira called on young people to remain calm throughout the campaign process until the results are announced.
“Young people are a potential source of conflict because they are young and hot-tempered and so we think it is important to share information to young people so that they stay calm during the campaign and accept the results rationally,” she said at a national seminar on peace and justice at the Dili Convention Center.
Violence flared across the country during the 2007 elections and the First Lady said there was also potential for conflict this year.
“We are a small country and the majority of the population is poor and not well educated, but we have a maturity and that makes us different from the rest of the world,” she said.
