Paulo Freitas da Silva

Paulo Freitas da Silva (* 1939 in Ossu , Portuguese Timor ; † 2007 ) was an East Timorese politician.

Life

Paulo Freitas da Silva was born in the southeastern district of Viqueque and was named after his father. This fought on the side of the Australians in the Second World War in the Battle of Timor against the Japanese . He used his boat to travel to and from Australia several times to transport Australian soldiers for reconnaissance missions. During one such trip, Paulo Sr. was captured and beheaded by the Japanese.

Paulo Freitas da Silva was the first president of the Partido Trabalhista (PT), which he founded together with others in 1974. The party remained relatively small and insignificant. When it was founded, it consisted of only ten members. At that time, Freitas da Silva had connections to Indonesia . After the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia, he became a member of parliament for the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI) for five years . Freitas da Silva was also chairman of the East Timorese branch of the official Indonesian trade union, the SBSI. Only in the course of time did he turn away from Indonesia due to the brutality of the occupiers. In 1986 the PT was a founding member of the National Timorese Convergence (Convergencia Nacional Timorense CNT), the first umbrella organization of the Timorese resistance, and was also a member of the successor organizations Conselho Nacional de Resistência Ma Sauber (CNRM) and Conselho Nacional de Resistência Timorense (CNRT). 1999 took over the United Nations , the administration of East Timor . Even then, the PT criticized the CNRT's supposedly dictatorial style of government. In the parliamentary elections on August 30, 2001 , the party received only 0.56% of the vote and thus none of the 88 seats in Parliament of East Timor .

In 2007, Paulo's daughter Angela Freitas took over the chairmanship of the PT.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Partido Trabalhista: History. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 4, 2016 ; accessed on January 4, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.