In East Timor, half a million people will cast their votes on Saturday to elect their second government since gaining independence just five years ago. If no single party emerges as a clear winner, it could take weeks to negotiate the coalitions needed to form government. It's hoped the relative calm of the campaign period will be extended and there will be an end in sight to the social and political instability of the past year.

Presenter/Interviewer: Karon Snowdon

Speakers: Damien Kingsbury, Deakin University and leader of an Australian election monitor group; Political scientist Fransisco Guterres from the Timor Institute of Development Studies

Snowdon: It will take more than hope to bring East Timor up to its potential. It goes without saying, clear economic policies and good management of the nation's oil wealth will have to be the new government's first task. Forming that government and filling out its policy detail might take some time. With 14 parties contesting the parliamentary election, there will be no clear winner from Saturday's vote. The ruling Fretilin party of former Prime Minister Mari Alkitiri is slugging it out for seats with the National Congress for the Reconstruction of Timor, the CNRT headed by former President Xanana Gusmao, who wants to be Prime Minister. The bitter divide between the two former independence leaders typifies the wider political divisions which have threatened to shatter East Timor over the past year. Damien Kingsbury from Australia's Deakin University is a member of the biggest international observer group in the country for the elections. He says the big issue now is whether a workable coalition of parties will emerge.

Kingsbury: Fretilin will probably come out of the election with about 30% of the seats, but I doubt they will be able to pull across enough members of other parties to make up the 50% that they would require to form government. That then means that it would devolve to the next largest party which will probably be Xanana Gusmao's CNRT. Now CNRT has already been in discussion with other parties about a coalition and at this stage we can reasonably expect that a CNRT led coalition will form the next government.

Snowdon: Political scientist Fransisco Guterres from the Timor Institute of Development Studies says despite, the current administration will remain in a caretaker role for the time it will take to form a coalition government, avoiding a power vacuum in the meantime.

Gutterres: And then there will be intense negotiations between the parties to form the government. And there are a lot of agendas on the table, they will have to discuss, they have to agree before they can form the government so it may take some time, lets say three or four weeks before we have a new government.

Snowdon: Could this be a time of instability in East Timor as the manoeuvres are made over this month long period?

Gutterres: This depends very much on the political leaders. If they continue to incite the people on the ground, their supporters to carry out violence, then there will be violence. So it depends very much on the leaders' attitude, on the leaders' acceptance of the result of the election.

Snowdon: And while not writing off Fretilin's chances at gaining a majority entirely, Fransisco Gutterres says the Party could play an important role in opposition in the small democracy.

Gutterres: They will be a good Opposition too because they have at least five years experience and they can probably bring this experience in terms of controlling the new government and that will be good.

Snowdon: Damien Kingsbury predicts even bigger changes for Fretilin, East Timor's traditional revolutionary party which has seen its vote fall by at least half since it won a landslide in the first election five years ago.

Kingsbury: At this stage what I think we can expect to see is the so-called change group or the reform faction of Fretilin which split away to support CNRT for the election will go back into the party and will seek to reform the party, to rebuild itself from what really has so far been a fairly devastating couple of defeats. There's no way they can see that as anything other than as a political disaster. So there's very likely going to be a spill of the leadership and I think that we will see a move away from not so much policies which are actually quite sound.

Snowdon: that seems to be a prediction of the demise of people like Mari Alkitiri and perhaps Lu Olo Gutterres?

Kingsbury: Certainly Lu Olo Gutterres and Mari Alkitiri themselves are actually not getting along terribly well at the moment. So there are already splits between the senior ranks of the party so they're going to have a lot of issues to sort out. But I would imagine both those people would end up going, certainly Mari Alkitiri will be struggling to hold onto the leadership.