Article 65.3 of the Constitution of Timor-Leste, prescribes the principles of elections, such as the freedom to canvass, equality of opportunity and treatment for all candidacies, impartiality towards candidacies on the part of public bodies, transparency and supervision of electoral expenses. Law No. 5/2006 on the Electoral Administration Bodies stipulates the competencies of CNE, amongst others, to promote objective clarifications to the citizens about the electoral acts through the means of social communication.

In order to fulfil the aforementioned principles, since its establishment on 15 January 2007 the CNE has been developing and undertaking a series of policies regarding communications and media relations. CNE communication policies during the 2007 electoral cycles contained three (3) main objectives, as follows: (1) how to socialize its presence and the whole competencies to the public; (2) how to better set up and improve positively the CNE institutional image among in the public; (3) how to effectively and objectively (impartially) publish information on the whole electoral acts to the public including information regarding to the candidates for the presidential elections as well as political parties and coalitions running for the parliamentary elections.

As a new institution, CNE conducts efforts to socialize its presence to the public, both at the national level as well as at the districts up to the villages and sub-villages, in order to raise their awareness about CNE as an independent electoral body which deals with electoral processes, is ready to listen, accommodate and process the public’s concerns and complaints, based on their competence and the legal means established in the electoral laws; meanwhile this can provide them with access to all information regarding the elections.

To achieve the aforementioned goals, CNE has conducted efforts and utilized the technical support currently available, to introduce itself to the public through a website available at http://www.cne.tl. We promise to keep trying to ensure the availability of this website and to regularly update the website and present information in a way that we believe is appropriate and convenient to the public and other visitors.