Aniceto Guterres Lopes

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Aniceto Guterres Lopes (2020)

Aniceto Longuinhos Guterres Lopes (born December 10, 1967 in Tapo / Memo , Portuguese Timor ) is a politician in East Timor and has been a member of the East Timorese national parliament since 2007 . Here he was the leader of the FRETILIN parliamentary group from 2007 to 2017 until he was elected President of Parliament for the new legislative period on September 5, 2017. Guterres Lopes lost his post with the dissolution of parliament on January 26, 2018.

Career

Origin and first years

Guterres Lopes comes from a farming family in northwestern East Timor, near the border with Indonesia . In 1975 his homeland, which until then had been a Portuguese colony, was occupied by Indonesia. Even the proclamation of East Timor's independence from Portugal could no longer prevent the occupation.

Although Guterres Lopes was top of the class, he did not get a university place in Java . Thanks to Mário Viegas Carrascalão , the governor of East Timor ( then Timor Timur ), Guterres Lopes was able to begin his law studies at Udayana University in Bali in 1985 . There he met Indonesian lawyers and independence activists who were working against the Indonesian dictatorship. Guterres Lopes became an active member of the East Timorese pro-independence student movement Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste RENETIL ( German  National Resistance of Students from Timor-Leste ) by Fernando La Sama de Araújo from 1989 .

Upon his return, Carrascalão Guterres Lopes helped that he did not have to go into government services as required by the terms of the scholarship. Guterres Lopes instead settled in Dili as a lawyer . There he began to record the human rights violations by the Indonesian occupiers, which his clients reported. From 1992 to 1996 Guterres Lopes was Secretary General of Yayasan ETADEP (East Timor Agriculture and Development Project Foundation ). In 1996 Guterres Lopes co-founded the human rights organization Yayasan HAK , of which he was director from 1997. It should provide free legal assistance to victims of human rights abuses. At times Guterres Lopes was the only lawyer in the group. He defended prominent political prisoners as well as simple Timorese. Massacres, murders, torture, rape and arbitrary arrests were documented by the foundation and published in newspapers and radio. In the first year alone, 339 cases were registered. The aim was to educate the population about their rights under Indonesian and international law. Harassment and threats were the result for Guterres Lopes.

With the end of the Indonesian dictatorship in 1999 the way was cleared for a referendum on the future of East Timor . Guterres Lopes organized election observers for this. In the referendum, 78% of voters voted for independence from Indonesia. Pro-Indonesian militias then killed almost 2,000 more people, destroyed the infrastructure and burned houses, including the headquarters of the Human Rights Foundation and the home of Guterres Lopes. His parents had already been terrorized by the militias before the referendum in their home village of Tapo / Memo. Finally, an international reaction force landed in East Timor and the United Nations took control of the country with UNTAET . From January 2000 Guterres Lopes worked for the UNTAET Judicial Transitional Services Commission and in April 2000 was one of the founders of the East Timorese Lawyers Association .

Political career in independent East Timor

Aniceto Guterres Lopes (2012)

From October 2001 to July 2001 Guterres Lopes was a member of the National Council (NC), which should represent the people of East Timor in the UN administration. The NC was eventually replaced by the elected constituent assembly that later became the East Timorese national parliament.

After East Timor gained independence in 2002, Guterres Lopes became chairman of the Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission CAVR , which was commissioned by the United Nations to investigate human rights violations in East Timor between April 1974 and October 1999. The final report was presented in 2005.

On August 31, 2003, Guterres Lopes received the Philippine Ramon Magsaysay Prize . The jury recognized his courage to stand up for justice and the rule of law during the turbulent times in East Timor. In April 2005, Guterres Lopes, who had been teaching at the Universidade da Paz (UNPAZ) for several years , became the dean of the law faculty.

From May 2005 to 2007 Guterres Lopes was a member of the State Council .

In the parliamentary elections on June 30, 2007 , Guterres Lopes ran for eleventh position on the FRETILIN party list. He was elected to parliament together with 20 other FRETILIN candidates, where FRETILIN is now the largest parliamentary group thanks to 29.02% of the voters. During this term, Guterres Lopes was a member of the Commission on Constitutional Affairs, Justice, Public Administration, Local Jurisprudence and Government Legislation (Commission A). In the election of the President of Parliament on July 30, 2007 Guterres Lopes lost against the now chairman of the Partido Democrático PD Fernando de Araújo.

Back in eleventh place on the list, Guterres Lopes returned to parliament for FRETILIN after the parliamentary elections in 2012 . In addition to his position as group leader, Guterres Lopes was a member of the Commission on Constitutional Affairs, Justice, Public Administration, Local Justice and Anti-Corruption (Commission A).

President of Parliament

Lopes in the National Parliament (2020)

In the parliamentary elections in East Timor 2017 , Lopes ran for FRETILIN in third place and thus moved back into the national parliament . On September 4, 2017, Guterres Lopes was elected as the new President of Parliament.

On November 20, the opposition submitted a no-confidence motion against the government of FRETILIN and PD . However, Guterres Lopes did not put a vote on the agenda of the meetings, which is why the opposition also submitted an application against Guterres Lopes on December 4. But that remained unprocessed. In return, Guterres Lopes submitted a motion to the Tribunal de Recurso de Timor-Leste to review the constitutionality of the article of Parliament's rules of procedure that enabled its removal. He demanded an injunction against the application for removal, "in defense of the honor and dignity of the office".

Since the minority government of FRETILIN and PD could not prevail in parliament, President Francisco Guterres dissolved it on January 26, 2018 and called for new elections. In the new elections on May 12, 2018 , Guterres Lopes moved into FRETILIN's fourth list in parliament. On June 13, 2018, the newly elected parliament appointed Arão Noé da Costa Amaral ( CNRT ) as the new President of Parliament.

After the breakup of the ruling coalition Aliança para Mudança e Progresso (AMP) in January 2020, there was a power struggle in parliament between the CNRT on the one hand and FRETILIN and PLP on the other. The KHUNTO finally joined FRETILIN and PLP and the new majority applied for Amaral to be dismissed as President of Parliament, whom Amaral also tried to block by not processing. Vice-President Maria Angelina Lopes Sarmento (PLP) broke the blockade by issuing a summons to the meeting. After two turbulent days of meetings, the majority of MPs from FRETILIN, PLP and KHUNTO Amaral deposed on May 19 and re-elected his predecessor Aniceto Guterres Lopes as President of Parliament. Amaral filed a lawsuit against the entire proceedings with the Tribunal de Recurso de Timor-Leste , but vacated his office and gave Guterres Lopes his company car.

Web links

Commons : Aniceto Guterres Lopes  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

supporting documents

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Profile on Parliament's website, October 29, 2008 ( memento of October 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (Portuguese)
  2. ↑ a b Profile on Parliament's website ( memento of November 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Portuguese)
  3. ↑ a b Diário de Notícias: Chefe da bancada da Fretilin eleito para a presidência do Parlamento timorense , September 5, 2017 , accessed on September 5, 2017.
  4. ↑ CAVR : Chega! , P. 22 (English).
  5. ↑ Ruth Elizabeth Nuttall: The Origins and Onset of the 2006 Crisis in Timor-Leste , PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, February 2017 , accessed July 31, 2019.
  6. ↑ La'o Hamutuk: Who will be in Timor-Leste's next Parliament? / Se sei tuir iha Parlamentu Nasionál? , July 23, 2017 , accessed July 24, 2017.
  7. ^ Rui Graça Feijó: Timor-Leste: is Díli on (Political) Fire Again? , Presidental Power, December 11, 2017 , accessed December 11, 2017.
  8. ↑ Lusa: Presidente do Parlamento timorense recusa-se a indicar data de debate de pedido de destituição , May 8, 2020 , accessed on May 8, 2020.
  9. ^ Election lists for the 2018 parliamentary elections
  10. ↑ Tatoli: Deputadu Arão Noé Eleitu Ba Prezidente PN Lejizlatura Dalimak , accessed on June 13, 2018.
  11. ↑ Lusa: Ex-presidente do Parlamento timorense 'entrega' escritório e carros , May 21, 2020 , accessed on May 21, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Guterres Lopes, Aniceto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guterres Lopes, Aniceto Longhuinhos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION East Timorese human rights activist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Tapo / Memo , Portuguese Timor