East Timor MPs bow to protesters, vote to scrap lifetime pensions

Demonstrators were angered by a program to walk $4.2m connected cars for lawmakers successful 1 of Southeast Asia’s poorest countries.

Lawmakers successful East Timor person voted to extremity a instrumentality providing beingness pensions for parliamentarians, pursuing student-led demonstrations against lavish perks for nationalist officials successful 1 of Southeast Asia’s poorest countries.

Former members of parliament (MPs) and immoderate nationalist officials were entitled nether a 2006 instrumentality to a beingness pension equivalent to their salary.

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But, connected Friday, 62 MPs unanimously passed a instrumentality scrapping their beingness pensions, arsenic good arsenic for erstwhile presidents, premier ministers and furniture ministers.

“To each assemblage students, your demands person been fulfilled. Please halt the demonstrations,” Olinda Guterres, an MP from the Khunto party, said aft the vote.

The instrumentality volition present beryllium sent to East Timor’s President Jose Ramos Horta – an independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize victor – to beryllium signed earlier taking effect.

Protests erupted successful East Timor’s superior Dili aft a fund item, approved past year, assigned $4.2m to bargain Toyota Prado SUVs for each of East Timor’s 65 members of parliament, astatine a outgo of $61,500 per vehicle.

The program triggered wide choler successful a federation wherever much than 40 percent of the colonisation lives successful poverty, according to World Bank statistics.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets connected September 15 demanding that parliamentarians ballot to cancel the plan.

Protester demands aboriginal widened to issues specified arsenic ending beingness pensions for nationalist officials.

University students transportation East Timor flags and banners during a protestation demanding that the authorities cancel plans to supply beingness pension and wellness allowances for lawmakers, extracurricular the parliamentary gathering successful Dili, East Timor, connected September 17, 2025 [Nelson da Cruz/Reuters]

Three days of tense protests – which saw demonstrators clash with police, who responded by firing teardrop state – ended erstwhile MPs agreed to scrap the car purchases and cancel their beingness pensions if the students ceased their demonstrations.

Parliamentarians came bully connected their committedness connected Friday, with Fortunata Alves, a 23-year-old assemblage student, telling the AFP quality bureau that the effect shows that “our fights are not futile.”

East Timor lone gained its independency successful 2002 aft spending much than 270 years arsenic a Portuguese colony and past astir 25 years nether convulsive concern by Indonesia, which witnessed its ain wide protests past month, prompted by the precocious outgo of surviving and unhappiness with the government’s economical policy.

The protestation that erupted successful neighbouring Indonesia rapidly turned into full-blown violence pursuing reports that politicians received a $3,000 lodging allowance connected apical of their salaries.

Tens of thousands of radical besides took to the streets of the Philippines capital, Manila, connected Sunday, protesting a corruption scandal linked to flood power projects that outgo taxpayers up to 118.5 cardinal pesos ($2bn) betwixt 2023 and 2025.