Sydney – East Timorese voters go to the polls next week to pick the person who will declare their country independent next month.

The winner of the April 14 presidential poll will take over the running of the half-island state from an interim United Nations administration May 20. The UN team was slotted in after Indonesia gave up the territory in 1999.

The victor is expected to be Xanana Gusmao, the handsome, charismatic former guerilla leader who served as an inspiration throughout the 24-year occupation.

Gusmao, 54, was the beacon of the independence movement even during his seven-year stint in a Jakarta jail. He has widespread support among the 800,000 people of a staunchly Roman Catholic country at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago.

Gusmao has the endorsement of Bishop Carlos Belo, a Nobel laureate and the spiritual leader of his people. "Xanana is a great revolutionary fighter," Belo has said. "For the international community, he is the only one with the reputation. They know his work with refugees and in restoring our relations with Indonesia."

Gusmao is just about everybody's hero, a figure who commands the sort of respect and reverence accorded to South Africa's Nelson Mandela and other resistance leaders who have been jailed for their beliefs.

Perhaps it is because he casts such a huge shadow that Fretilin, the party that garnered 57 per cent of the vote at last August's parliamentary elections, is not backing his run for the presidency. Fretilin is not officially supporting any candidate, but would probably like to see Gusmao's only challenger get a respectable slice of the vote.

Gusmao's rival is Francisco Xavier do Amaral, who leads the Timorese Social Democrat Association. A heart ailment has prevented Amaral from spending much time campaign outside Dili, the capital.

Gusmao has been at pains to assure Fretilin, a grouping of independence fighters he once led, that he is prepared to share power. The system of governance the East Timorese have chosen gives the president the power to disolve parliament and call fresh elections.

But the actual running of the country should be in the hands of the Fretilin government once independence is declared. "I am not trying to usurp power," Gusmao told an adoring crowd at a campaign rally earlier this month. "The constitution will be my bible. I will be watching every move and veto legislation if it curbs liberties, but that's all."

Gusmao has presented himself to voters as a very reluctant head of state. He only put up his hand for the job at the very last moment and frequently tells his followers how little he covets power. But he is well aware of his responsibilities. After leading a nation to freedom, there's an obvious obligation to see the job through.

East Timor is beset by mammoth problems, not least forging a workable relationship with Indonesia, the giant power next door that presided over the deaths of 200,000 people during its often-bloody occupation. It shares a border with West Timor, an Indonesian province more than double its size. And it is dirt poor.

East Timor's only serious export is coffee, its economy dependent on hand-outs from foreign donors and its borders still policed by the UN-mandated peacekeeping force that went in to quell violence after the overwhelming vote for independence in the 1999 referendum.