Mari Alkatiri, the first Prime Minister of East Timor, resigns after weeks of political unrest.
Mari bin Amude Alkatiri, GCIH (Arabic: مرعي بن عمودة الكثيري Mar'ī bin Amūdah al-Kaṯīrī; born 26 November 1949) is a Timorese politician. He was Prime Minister of East Timor from May 2002 until his resignation on 26 June 2006 following weeks of political unrest in the country, and again from September 2017 until May 2018. He is the Secretary-General of the Fretilin party as well as President of the Special Administrative Region of Oecusse.
He is an Hadhrami Arab by ethnicity and comes from the Al-Kathiri tribe, a branch of which ruled the sultanate of Kathiri in the Hadhramaut, which is now part of Yemen. He is one of very few Muslim politicians in a country that is 97% Christian. The main issues facing his second term as prime minister were environmental conservation, cultural conservation, accession of East Timor to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, free public education and public health services, and building the country's economy, notably the lagging services and manufacturing sectors.