Reporter: Anne Barker

Elizabeth Jackson: A special ceremony will be held in East Timor today to swear in the country's second president, Jose Ramos Horta, who replaces Xanana Gusmao.

Under the Constitution the new president must take office on the anniversary of independence. It's five years today since East Timor became an independent nation.

But is East Timor better off today, with all the turmoil of the past year, than it was under Indonesian rule?

Our Correspondent Anne Barker has been back and forth to East Timor since the latest trouble began, and she filed this report.

Anne Barker: Several times during the recent campaign, East Timor's newly elected and long-divorced president Jose Ramos-Horta was asked by reporters, "Who will be East Timor's first lady if you win?"

And his reply each time, in his hesitant, heavily accented English was: "The first lady will be all the impoverished women of East Timor".

In a country of now one million people, where very few locals live in any real comfort, that's a lot of first ladies, and it's a reminder of just how poor this country is.

Since May last year I've spent nine separate weeks in East Timor, yet still the first thing that hits me every time I land in Dili is the overwhelming poverty.

The contrast between clean, civilised, first-world Darwin, just one-and-a-half hours away by plane, and impoverished East Timor couldn't be greater.

And I've seen plenty of poverty before. Over 20 years I've travelled widely through Asia, from remote villages in Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam, through Nepal and India, to many of the poorest parts of Indonesia.

In the end, East Timor is by far the least developed country I've seen, vastly less developed than Indonesia, itself a third world country. The capital Dili is hardly a city at all by our Western standards. Barely a single building is higher than two storeys.

All over town, entire buildings and hundreds of houses are trashed, burnt out, dilapidated, derelict. The human signs of poverty too are visible on every main street. Seemingly everywhere, young men in the prime of their lives sit around with literally nothing to do.

Far more people are unemployed here than in work, so it's hardly surprising that so many teenagers and young men engage in the vandalism and street violence that has wracked East Timor for more than a year.

Outside the capital too, life is simpler, but no easier. Families live in flimsy, bamboo huts, often scraping by on a tiny plot of vegetables, or a handful of chickens or a single cow, and everywhere those ubiquitous derelict buildings.

I'm constantly shocked at how many of these empty shells have been left like this, not just since last year's violence, but for eight years since the Indonesians trashed East Timor and left.

And I often wonder as I travel around, what would East Timor be now, if it had never voted for independence, and instead elected to stay part of Indonesia? Would things be better than this, as Indonesia makes its own democratic and economic progress? Would there be new roads, more jobs, development?

Would the East Timorese, given the chance, turn back the clock, if they'd known then the violence and poverty they'd endure years after winning their freedom? I don't know.

But for all the poverty and violence, the East Timorese are a stoic and resilient people, uncomplaining, almost happy in the face of adversity.

And perhaps the recent election offers one small insight. Well over 80 per cent of East Timorese voted not once, but twice, in the space of a month for a new president. Thousands of people waited in queues from seven o'clock in the morning to exercise their democratic right.

Many walked for miles to get to the nearest polling booth, and this in a country where voting is not compulsory.

It seems to me, the East Timorese value their right much more than the average Australian. And for most, poverty is still a small price for freedom.

Elizabeth Jackson: Anne Barker with that report.