Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – The huge white UN choppers, with their gruffly spoken Russian crews, have delivered hundreds of thousands of ballot papers and sealed boxes across the country; tiny pack ponies are standing by, ready to carry vital electoral materials across rocky streams in the most remote of locations.

Welcome to East Timor, which goes to a second-round run-off presidential election this week after two candidates – Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta, and the ruling Fretilin party's Francisco "Lo Olo" Guterres – emerged from a field of eight in polls a month ago, neither with a clear majority.

Expectations are high that Wednesday's vote will be just as peaceful as April's. Although there has been a steady murmur of gang violence around the capital, Dili, in recent weeks, the 1700-strong UN Policing force (UNPOL) has largely kept a lid on tensions.

The Australian-led International Stabilisation Force, effectively an ad hoc military operating outside of the UN's remit, has also been able to smother any potential firestorms in the districts, including by limiting the influence of fugitive former military policeman Alfredo Alves Reinado.

The actual conduct of the vote is expected to be straightforward and electoral officials are hopeful of a significantly improved performance in ballot counting, compared with the often dismal shambles of a month ago.

Although polling then was an overwhelmingly peaceful and orderly process, the national election commission was unable to provide a credible or consistent running result in the days immediately after polling.

The commission's standing was also undermined by the inexperience of its spokesman, Martinho Gusmao, who publicly backed one candidate – Fernando "Lasama" de Araujo – a week before the vote, then angrily denied his comments had been intended to endorse Mr de Araujo at all.

However, the UN's chief electoral officer, Steven Wagenseil, is confident of a "significant improvement" come Wednesday, after three weeks of intensive retraining of 7500 voting booth officials across the country, as well as close attention being paid to how the electoral commission's senior staff conduct the tabulation process.

"The electoral commission had never done this before, and they're happy to admit they made mistakes," the diplomat said, tactfully.

While keen to emphasise the UN's merely advisory role in the poll, Mr Wagenseil admits that the presidential election this week is in some ways a dry run for a parliamentary vote due on June 30. The test then will be whether Fretilin can cling to power. It holds 55 seats in the 88-seat parliament, short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass legislation, and even that legislative advantage is predicted to shrink at the June poll.

"Right now we're looking at the presidential race and it won't hinge on just one vote," Mr Wagenseil said. "But when it comes to the parliamentary election, with proportional voting, a fraction of the vote could determine whether a party gets one seat, two seats or no seats.

"So you could say that the first round was the test go at it, the second is the chance to polish the process but the parliamentary election is where the government will come from." Despite bitter claims of first-round ballot rigging and low turnout, official figures in fact showed more than 81 per cent of 522,000 registered voters took part, with just over 5 per cent of these votes invalid or blank.

All sides are waiting to see whether Fretilin, with its strong historical ties to East Timor's 1975 declaration of independence from Portugal and ensuing 24-year guerilla war against Indonesia – and a still-powerful grassroots support network – can call on its membership to deliver Mr Guterres the largely symbolic presidential post.

Most losing first-round candidates have directed their supporters to vote for Mr Ramos Horta, with key seats in a possible Horta government – particularly mining and energy, which controls the lucrative oil and gas money flowing into East Timor's $US1billion ($1.2 billion) petroleum fund – the hoped-for quid pro quo. Jostling for favour and a place in the inner circle will only increase after the election, but the general wisdom is that Mr Guterres enters Wednesday's race as the underdog.

Final rallies at the weekend overwhelmingly backed this picture, with Mr Guterres drawing about 500 people to a stump speech in Dili and Mr Ramos Horta attracting an estimated 8000 supporters to an event in the central districts town of Ermera, where his network has been working hard to stoke the fires of anti-Fretilin discontent.

However, Mr Ramos Horta's deal with the devil to keep that support alive could yet come back to haunt him.

His early backing of the Australian-led military campaign to hunt down the renegade Reinado cost him dearly in the central districts, where Democratic Party chairman Mr de Araujo's political capital is built heavily on the labour of Reinado supporters.

Mr Ramos Horta recently, and extravagantly, called off the search for Reinado, saying he preferred dialogue – except that the Australian commander of the International Security Force, Brigadier Mal Rerdon, pointed out that he had received no official order to that effect.

It turned out the statement did not actually come from the Prime Minister's office at all: Mr Ramos Horta, playing a canny game of wedge politics, was hoping the electorate would not notice it was Jose the presidential candidate, not Jose the Prime Minister, who had declared the hunt over.

So long as Mr de Araujo's supporters believe Reinado is no longer a fugitive, Mr Ramos Horta hopes, he will attract their significant bloc of votes. However, the thorny problem of what to do with Reinado almost pales alongside the sharp rifts that still exist in East Timorese society.

The wounds caused by 1999's violent separation from Indonesia remain visible on the heads and limbs of those who escaped crazed machete gangs, and in the psyches of those who fear a return to a riven society that knows no rule of law.

Atul Khare, head of the United Nations mission in East Timor, expects a resumption within weeks of a UN investigation into the 1999 atrocities, which will carry with it the possibility of criminal charges.

However, he is dismissive of the current joint East Timorese-Indonesian Commission for Truth and Friendship, "because the UN cannot support anything which carries with it the possibility of amnesty".

In its latest round of hearings, the toothless commission took evidence at the weekend from General Wiranto, the man in charge of Indonesian forces at the time of the slaughter and the subject previously of recommended war crimes charges.

The general took the "I know nothing" approach on the stand, saying that if any of his men were involved in the violence that claimed thousands of lives, that was not his business.

He blamed the violence on the short amount of time given security forces in the former Indonesian territory to prepare for the September 4, 1999, independence referendum. The vote was proposed by then Indonesian president B.J. Habibie only three months earlier – less than a year after the fall of dictator Suharto and under international pressure, particularly from Australia.

Evidence was in fact discovered after the bloodshed directly pinning responsibility on the Indonesian military, including through its arming and training of the main anti-independence militias.

General Wiranto's evidence at the weekend also suggested complicity – by way of negligence – by the previous UN administration in East Timor in the atrocities, a situation the Secretary-General has been called on to directly address.

"UN silence on this matter would not only assist in denying Indonesia's responsibility for the violence, but would actually perpetrate a grave injustice against the thousands of victims," the New York-based International Centre for Transitional Justice warned at the weekend.

The centre called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to directly rebut General Wiranto's evidence.

However, it would be disingenuous to ignore the general's point entirely – which is that there are deep divisions in East Timorese society, ready and able to be cynically manipulated as part of the political process.

Indeed, in this newly emerging democracy there are those, including some at the very top, who see such manipulation as legitimate tools in the hunt for power.

Such was the lesson, for many, of a 24-year-long fearful existence in the jungles, opposing the brutal Indonesian military machine.

This week's poll, and next month's parliamentary vote, will be a powerful test of whether East Timor's leadership has gone beyond those lessons or remains stuck, in adolescent fascination, in the classroom of angry revolution.