Fidelis Leite Magalhães

Fidelis Manuel Leite Magalhães is an East Timorese political economist, public policy specialist and politician, and a former member of the People's Liberation Party (PLP).

From May 2020 to July 2023, he was the President of the Council of Ministers, serving in the VIII Constitutional Government of East Timor led by Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak.

Previously, from 2018 to 2020, he was Minister for Legislative Reform and Parliamentary Affairs in the same government, and, from July 2019, also acting Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs and acting Minister of Tourism, Trade and Industry.

Early life and career Magalhães was raised in , the capital of what is now the municipality of Bobonaro in the west of East Timor. He is the second child of Manuel Magalhães and Regina Cardoso Gouveia Leite, who had five daughters and three other sons, including the PD politician , State Secretary for Youth and Labor from 2017 to 2018.

Manuel Magalhães was killed during the 1999 East Timorese crisis.

While still a child, Fidelis Magalhães joined the resistance against the Indonesian occupation. At the age of 13, he became a member of the (Holy Family), a resistance movement with religious features. Magalhães was also a member of a youth gang, Tuba Corente (Firm Chain).

In April 1999, due to the wave of violence leading up to the East Timorese independence referendum, the Magalhães family had to flee from Maliana. Indonesian troops had burned down their house and arrested Manuel Magalhães. Fidelis Magalhães, then 16, took refuge in the mountainous jungle of the then Bobonaro district. For six months, he and a friend, Gilberto, lived on dried cassavas, roots, and the charity of jungle villagers, who were equally impoverished and starving. At the end of that year, Magalhães became one of the co-founders of the People's Liberation Party, which is closely associated with Taur Matan Ruak.

In the 2017 East Timorese parliamentary election, Magalhães was ranked as #2 on the list of the PLP, and was therefore elected as a member of the National Parliament. Following his election, he became the leader of the parliamentary PLP, and President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Security (Commission-B).

On the ballots for the early election in 2018, Magalhães was ranked #7 in the Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP), which was made up of the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (, CNRT), the PLP, and Kmanek Haburas Unidade Nasional Timor Oan (, KHUNTO). In the AMP, Magalhães was Vice President of the Alliance. During the election campaign, he conceded that some horse-trading had been necessary to form the alliance. "It was a big compromise for us, yes ...", he told The Irish Times, "... but CNRT has also made compromises. We have had to try to understand each other's programme better."

On 22 June 2018, Magalhães was sworn in as Minister for Legislative Reform and Parliamentary Affairs, which meant that he automatically had to give up his parliamentary seat.

In 2019, Magalhães was appointed as Timor-Leste's Chief Negotiator for the World Trade Organization. Since July 2019, he has been the Chair of the Sixth Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development, organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Also in July 2019, he was appointed as acting Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs and acting Minister of Tourism, Trade and Industry.

On 12 May 2020, following the breakdown of the AMP coalition during the first few months of 2020, the Council of Ministers approved a restructure of the ministry that included the abolition of Magalhães' portfolio of Minister for Legislative Reform and Parliamentary Affairs, and the absorption of its responsibilities by the Ministry of Justice. On 29 May 2020, Magalhães was sworn in as holder of the re-established, more senior, position of Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Magalhães' tenure as Minister ended when the IX Constitutional Government took office on 1 July 2023. He was succeeded by Ágio Pereira. In 2023, Magalhães began reading for a DPhil in law at the University of Oxford. In 2026, he joined the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program at Yale University as a Yale World Fellow.