Amaral was sworn in as the country's first President on 28 November 1975, when East Timor declared independence from Portugal. His tenure in the presidency last only 10 days before he was forced to flee into the mountainous interior with the Fretilin due to the Indonesian invasion of the country on 7 December 1975. Though most world governments refused to recognise East Timor's independence or Amaral's authority during his ten-day rule in 1975, the East Timorese people regarded Amaral as the country's first president, according to Damien Kingsbury, a political science professor at Deakin University and a leading expert on East Timor.