Date set for Timor presidential vote

East Timorese will head back to the polls on April 14

By Joe Havely, CNN Hong Kong
and wire reports

DILI, East Timor -- The former Indonesian-controlled province of East Timor will hold presidential elections on April 14 the territory's U.N. administrator has announced.

The poll, with results expected three days later, will mark East Timor's final step towards independent nationhood after Portuguese colonial rule followed by more than two decades of brutal Indonesian occupation.

Formal independence has been set for May 20, although some politicians have expressed doubts the territory is ready to govern itself without United Nations assistance.

The head of the U.N. transitional administration, Sergio Vieira de Mello, announced the date shortly after East Timor's legislature passed a new election law.

He said all 16 parties represented in the legislature -- which will become East Timor's parliament after independence -- are expected to field candidates.

The man almost certain to become East Timor's first president though is former independence and guerilla leader Xanana Gusmao.

Reluctant

Gusmao is widely expected to sweep the board and bcome East Timor's first president

He is seen as something of a reluctant candidate having announced last year that he would not be standing for election.

However, he later announced that although he felt he did not have the necessary political skills, he would put himself in the running after coming under massive pressure to do so.

De Mello said there would be just one round of voting in the April poll and independent candidates would be allowed to stand if they collected 5,000 signatures of support.

East Timor voted overwhelmingly to cut ties with Jakarta in a U.N.-sponsored referendum in 1999.

The vote sparked a violent backlash from pro-Indonesian militias and members of the Indonesian military who went on a bloody rampage for weeks afterwards in which hundreds of East Timorese were killed.

Peace was eventually restored through the intervention of an Australian-led force and two years later the territory peacefully held its first election -- for the legistlature -- recording a turnout well above 90 percent.

Many analysts see the role of the presidency as something of a poisoned chalice saying the first occupant of the post is almost bound to fail.

After years of repression and poverty many East Timorese will be expecting to see rapid benefits from independence.

However, with East Timor reliant on international aid and much of its economic infrastructure destroyed in the violence of 1999, observers say it will be almost impossible to deliver on those expectations.